SIC 3484 Small Arms
SIC 3484
This category includes establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing small firearms or parts for small firearms. Small firearms, defined as having a bore of 30 millimeters (mm) or less, include pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, and submachine guns. This category also includes establishments that manufacture weapons with bores greater than 30 mm but that nevertheless are carried and employed by individuals, including grenade launchers and heavy field machine guns. Establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing artillery and mortars having bores greater than 30 mm are classified in SIC 3489: Ordnance and Accessories, Not Elsewhere Classified.
332994
Small Arms Manufacturing
In 2003 the small arms manufacturing industry shipped products valued at $2.05 billion, well over 2002 shipment totals, which were valued at $1.56 billion. Likewise, employment increased from 9,956 in 2002 to 11,015 in 2003. Historically, the small-arms industry has been cyclical and subject to many external pressures, including the general state of the economy, worldwide military conflicts, and public and political vagaries concerning private ownership of firearms.
There were approximately 400 gun makers in the United States, and nearly all of the major gun manufacturers were privately owned companies; the only public company was Sturm, Ruger & Co. Many small-arms companies began operation in the late nineteenth century in the Connecticut River Valley between Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts, which soon became known as Gun Valley because of its concentration of armories. Because of this long tradition, several small-arms companies that no longer had manufacturing facilities in Gun Valley maintained headquarters there.
The small-arms industry played an important part in both the historical development of the United States and in the myths and ideals that accompanied that development. Early- to mid-nineteenth-century guns pioneered the use of interchangeable standardized parts, the technology that gave rise to modern manufacturing. Moreover, guns bearing the names Remington, Winchester, and Colt were associated with the settlement of the Old West, Manifest Destiny, and the development of the United States as a world power.
Although many prominent craftsmen produced firearms in colonial America, gun making as an industry did not truly begin until 1775, when the Continental Congress established the Committee of Safety, whose responsibilities included ensuring that the Continental Army had sufficient firearms. The Committee of Safety established specifications for manufacturing flintlock muskets and awarded contracts to various American gun makers. In 1794 Congress established a national armory at Springfield, Massachusetts that stored and manufactured muskets for military use. A second armory was established at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1796. The armory at Harper's Ferry was eventually burned in 1861 to keep it out of the hands of Confederate forces. The Springfield armory was in operation until 1975.
In 1808, as tensions mounted between the United States and England (which would eventually erupt into the War of 1812), the federal armories tooled up to manufacture 40,000 muskets a year. Private gun makers also were awarded contracts to manufacture between 2,500 and 10,000 muskets each, with the goal of supplying nearly 100,000 militiamen. The federal armories provided "pattern" muskets for the private manufacturers to copy.
One of the earliest gun makers to receive a government contract was Eli Whitney, best known as the inventor of the cotton gin, who had established an armory in New Haven, Connecticut in 1798. Whitney was a Yale-educated engineer who realized that the most efficient and cost-effective way to make guns was to manufacture interchangeable parts that could then be assembled by unskilled workers. Although Whitney was far from being the most successful gun maker of the day, he amazed government officials who were inspecting his plant by assembling muskets from parts chosen at random. Whitney was the first U.S. industrialist to manufacture interchangeable parts and was considered the father of mass production long before Henry Ford began building cars. By the 1850s, Whitney's "American System" of manufacturing was known throughout Europe. The Whitney Armory continued to manufacture guns until 1888.
Although rifles were invented in the early 1500s and the famous Pennsylvania-made Kentucky rifles were used by some militiamen during the American Revolution, smoothbore muskets remained common into the early nineteenth century. Despite their inaccuracy, they were easier to load and fire than a firearm with a rifled barrel. Then, in 1810, American gunsmith John H. Hall invented a breech-loading flintlock rifle that could be loaded quickly using a paper cartridge containing ball and powder. The U.S. Army ordered 200 rifles in 1818 for experimentation, and Hall supervised their construction at the federal armory at Harper's Ferry. The rifles performed well, but the military continued to rely on muskets up until the Civil War. Although the Springfield Armory did not begin manufacturing rifles until 1858, it produced more than 840,000 by the end of 1865. On the other hand, hunters and frontiersmen who favored accuracy switched to breech-loading rifles much sooner. The 200 Hall rifles built in 1818 also were the first firearms manufactured in a government armory using interchangeable parts.
Samuel Colt was the first great American gun maker. He was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1814 and left school at the age of 10 to work in his father's silk mill in Ware, Massachusetts. At the age of 16, he joined the crew of a ship bound for London and Calcutta. In London, Colt apparently saw a display of early attempts at designing repeating firearms. During the voyage home, and possibly inspired by the ship's clutch-controlled rotating capstan, he whittled a crude wooden model of a pistol with a revolving cylinder.
Between 1832 and 1835, Colt financed development of his revolving pistol as a lecturer and "practical chemist," billing himself as "the celebrated Dr. S. Colt of London and Calcutta" and giving demonstrations of laughing gas in the United States and Canada. He sent money and ideas for improvements in his design to John Pearson, a Baltimore gunsmith, who created a working model. Colt received patents on his design from England and France in 1835, and from the United States in 1836. The most unique feature of Colt's design was a ratchet that rotated and locked the cylinder in place when the gun was cocked.
Colt established the Patent Arms Manufacturing Co. in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1836 to produce revolving pistols and rifles. The head of U.S. Army Ordnance, however, was not impressed with a demonstration, and the company failed to receive a military contract. Although the army eventually did order about 100 rifles and a few five-shot revolvers for fighting the Seminole Indians in Florida, Colt was forced to close down his company in 1842.
At the start of the Mexican War in 1846, General Zachary Taylor, who had used an early Paterson-model Colt revolver, asked Colt for 1,000 revolvers to be delivered within three months. Captain Samuel Walker of the Texas Rangers, who had used Colt revolvers to fight the Comanches, also asked for guns, but he wanted a larger caliber revolver that would fire six shots. Colt designed a gun to Walker's specifications, but without a factory of his own, Colt subcontracted the manufacturing to Eli Whitney Jr., who was then running the armory his father had founded and was the army's primary contractor for muskets. Colt, however, personally supervised the manufacturing. The .44...
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