Up to 2 million Spanish Star Model A/B/M/P?ģ million India Pattern Short Land Carbine made from 1795 ġ.6 million made in Birmingham and 2.7 million in London 800,000+ imported into the US in 2012 ĥ million at the Izhevsk factory alone Ģ million + Belgian FN FAL, 1.15 million British L1A1 ġ million + Indian 1A1, 250,000 South African R1 (plus 30,000 sold to Rhodesia ), 230,000 Australian L1A1 and L2A1 ~200,000 Brazilian IMBEL M964, ~150,000 Austrian StG 58, ~65,000 Canadian C1Ģ,700,000 military models (various contractors)
~560,000 Type 30, 3 million plus Type 38 ĥ million sold by 2007 and 1 million in 2013 alone. ( March 2017)ĥ million milled AK type 3, 10 million AKM, 5 million AK-74 15-20 million Chinese Type 56 ģ million Yugoslav Zastava M70, 2 million East German Mpiġ0 million military M16/M4, (Colt production only as of 2011) 5-10 million civilian AR-15 (as of 2016) This list is incomplete you can help by adding missing items. Furthermore, as late as the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war most Chinese soldiers were armed with another weapon, the Type 56 carbine (an SKS copy), and were soon after re-equipped with the Type 81 assault rifle, followed later by the QBZ-95 and QBZ-03, all of which are unrelated to the Kalashnikov design.
However, the true strength of the People's Liberation Army was around 1.5 million in 2013. McNab bases that estimate on the "apparent" strength of the Chinese armed forces of 10 million (3 million regular troops and 5-7 million reservists) and presumed export sales. In his 2001 book 'The AK-47', Chris McNab claims it is "feasible" that production of the Chinese Type 56 assault rifle – a license-built AK-47 copy – reached 15-20 million. Various sources quote figures between 35 and 150 million. Įstimates put the production of firearm cartridges at 10-14 billion per year according to Oxfam, or 27-38 million a day.Įstimates of production of the Kalashnikov AK-47 and derivative weapons may be exaggerated. Law enforcement agencies control about 23 million (about 2 percent) of the global total of small arms. This amounts to "120.5 firearms for every 100 residents." The world's armed forces control about 133 million (about 13 percent) of the global total of small arms, of which over 43 percent belong to two countries, the Russian Federation (30.3 million) and the People's Republic of China (27.5 million). civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms. In 2018, Small Arms Survey reported that there are over one billion small arms distributed globally, of which 857 million (about 85 percent) are in civilian hands. Many of those produced have been destroyed, deactivated or fallen into disrepair, but others will have been kept in working order and sold or passed on from one generation to another down the years. Others are designed for civilian hunting and sport shooting, which generally sell very well in countries such as the U.S. Many of the firearms on this list are military weapons which were used during both World Wars, so it is unsurprising that they were manufactured in such high numbers.
Many more types have been made in the hundreds of thousands. This page lists more than 100 small arms designs which have been produced in numbers exceeding one million since the late 18th century.