Geographical dataset of firearms manufacturing in the United States: 2000–2020

Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Export Reports (AFMER) published annually by the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were digitized, cleaned, merged, aggregated, and georeferenced to produce a geographical time-series dataset. By preserving unique identifiers and locational information, the geographical dataset of firearms manufacturing enables quantitative research across public health data records, including compliance reporting by U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Association, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Commerce. The dataset includes records for 8,707 unique manufacturing licensees, with a total of 133,952,899 firearms released into commerce between 2000 and 2020. Records include the latitude and longitude attributes for manufacturing locations that produced more than one percent of firearms released into commerce during the study timeframe (n=100). To facilitate research, the dataset was stored in multiple formats, including table formats, such as comma-separate values and excel format, as well as GIS shapefile format. The data may be explored in multiple dimensions: by time, by location, and by type of firearm released into commerce. Types of firearms include: miscellaneous firearms, pistols (by caliber: 22, 25, 32, 38, 50, 9mm), rifles, revolvers (by caliber: 22, 32, 35, 38, 44, 50), and shotguns. Total firearms manufactured by year and in aggregate and total exports, by firearm type, and by year were calculated. Percentage of total firearms manufactured for each location was also determined. The dataset does not include used firearms or firearms imported to the United States. Several software packages enabled the production of this dataset. Adobe Acrobat software was used to convert archival .PDF files into comma-separated value tables. The authors systematically verified and validated the conversion process. Annual tables were merged by the unique identifier, RDS Key, across time periods, using Stata statistical software. Aggregation took place in Stata and Excel software, and percent of total firearms manufactured was calculated for each location. Aggregate tables identifying locations in descending order for total reported firearms released into commerce (2000-2020) were generated in Excel. ArcGIS Online software was used to geocode manufacturing locations where more than one percent of total study firearms were produced. ArcGIS Pro software was used to identify centroid, or latitude and longitude locations for the facilities. ArcGIS Pro software was also used to create a summary figure, and GIS shapefile feature data.