The Biomac Foundation

The United States by far is the most concentrated market for guns in the world. Of an estimated 600 million total guns worldwide, about one-third are located in the U.S. (The estimates vary widely from about 193 million to about 283 million. Well-accepted estimates of annual production and importation show that about 5 million new guns are added to the U.S. market each year. Military and law enforcement purchases of guns are a significant additional factor.

But the United States is not the only significant gun market. There are some 67 million privately held guns in Europe. The ratio of long guns is slightly higher in Europe than in America—about two-thirds — but this nonetheless means there are approximately 22 million pistols in the European retrofit market. And there are significant stocks of small arms in Latin America and elsewhere in the world.  Biomac is developing the first practical biometric access system for retrofitting to an existing pistol.