WASHINGTON - The US Commerce Deparrtment is halting exports of most US-made firearms to Thailand and other major markets for 90 days and reviewing its support of the country’s biggest gun trade show to ensure it “does not undermine US policy interests” — steps that could slow two decades of growth of gun sales abroad.
The US gun industry’s successful strategies to increase global sales of its products — in combination with friendly US policies — have been the subject of a months-long investigation by Bloomberg.
The investigation began in July with an examination of gun sales to Thailand, which last year suffered one of the world’s worst mass killings, when a former policeman killed 35 people, including 22 children (most of whom were stabbed), at a nursery in Nong Bua Lam Phu.
The Sig Sauer P365 used by the killer was one of a growing number of semiautomatic handguns and rifles exported by American gunmakers and linked to violent crimes, the investigation revealed.
Thailand has been the largest market in the world by far for US-made semiautomatic firearms. From 2005 to 2022, the investigation showed, 795,000 such weapons were exported to Thailand from the United States, representing 21.5% of the global total of 3.7 million.
The investigation also details how Sig Sauer landed two contracts with the Royal Thai Police for a total of 400,000 guns for the “welfare guns” programme that puts cut-price weapons in the hands of individual police officers and other state officials.
The sheer size of the orders created a new “asset class” of guns for trading and investment purposes, according to Bloomberg. Thousands of welfare guns are resold for profit amid lax oversight.
Another story published on Oct 19 examined the lavish support the Commerce Department gives the SHOT (Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade) Show, including steering more than 3,200 international buyers to the event this year.
The Commerce Department on Friday announced the pause in approval of new export licences for semiautomatic and non-automatic firearms sold to non-government entities around the world. The freeze does not apply to Israel, Ukraine and about 40 other countries that participate with the US in a multilateral export-control agreement.
But it does cover some of the biggest markets for American gunmakers, including Thailand, Brazil and Guatemala, where the Bloomberg investigation documented the impact of US government assistance for those companies.
“The review will be conducted with urgency and will enable the Department to more effectively assess and mitigate risk of firearms being diverted to entities or activities that promote regional instability, violate human rights, or fuel criminal activities,” the Department said in announcing the pause.
While the department gave no indication of what long-term changes it will make, the review could alter or even reverse a set of notably pro-industry policies that have helped domestic manufacturers expand sales abroad.
Those include shifting in 2020 the oversight of most commercial gun exports from the State Department to the business-friendly Department of Commerce and strong support for the SHOT Show, a gun marketing expo held every January in Las Vegas.
Two decades ago, the US sold few guns internationally. However, as domestic manufacturers looked for new markets, sales of rapid-fire and military-style firearms have grown rapidly, with a total of more than 3.7 million sold since 2005.
Many of the guns are exported to countries plagued by skyrocketing gun crime, while others go to authoritarian regimes, with many of the sales supported by Democratic and Republican presidents alike. But some Democrats in Congress have recently grown more vocal in the criticism of those sales.