The data used on this page is sourced from various ATF sources.  The ATF publishes data on the commerce of firearms and includes much of this data about the firearms industry.  However, the reports are delayed by at least two years so as not to give a competitive advantage to any particular company.  Some if this data is gathered from published Fact Sheets and the National Firearms Comemrce and Trafficking Assesmnet (NFCTA)

To gather this information, the ATF relies on its own figures from the ATF licensing center and also from the submission of the annually required Annual Firearms Manufactured and Exported Report (AFMER) from manufacturer FFLs.

We gather, organize, and publish this data asan industry leader in the FFL space.  To date, we've helped over 20,000 FFLs and we were founded by, and our courses have been created and are taught by, Ryan Cleckner a firearms attorney that specailizes in federal firearms law and ATF Compliance, a bestselling author, firearms industry executive, and former special operations sniper and university professor.

A federal firearms license, or FFL, is a license issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) taht allows the holder of the license to engage in business concenring firearms.

The type of business activity allowed depends on the type of FFL.  For example, a Type 01 FFL, the most common type of FFL, allows for dealing in firearms (a gun shop) and gunsmithing.  The second most common type of business FFL, the Type 07 FFL, allows for the manufacturing of firearms and also dealing.

In this section, we display the data for the total number of FFLs, the amount of FFLs by licnese type, and the number of FFLs by state.

The total number of FFLs in this country has remained just above 100,000 for the past 30 years. There has been a steady increase in the 2000s to a total of 127,739 FFLs last year.

As you can see in the graph and table below, the number of FFLs reached an all time high in 1992 of 284,117 and then significantly dropped until 1997.

This large drop was due to the Clinton administration's efforts to shut down "kitchen-table" or home-based FFLs. Since then, however, home-based FFLs are not only permitted, they are incredibly popular and make up the majority of FFLs in the country today.

Read the full guide: How to Get a Home Based FFL →

The dispersion of licenses by type largely stays the same year over year. Type 01 FFLs are the most popular business FFLs and Type 07 FFLs are the second most popular business FFLs.

It is most accurate to point out that the most common type of FFL is actually the Type 03 Collectors FFL, however, that is not a business FFL and does NOT allow the holder to engage in business with firearms (buying, selling, making, etc) and instead only allows for the collecting of "curio and relic" firearms. Even though there are more Type 03 FFLs than any other, they are largely ignored for our purposes because even though they are technically an "FFL,"  they should really be called a "collector's license" and they do not affect the firearms industry.

To that end, we will display the breakdown of license by type for the most recent year as a graph below and then inlcude the totals of FFLs by type of the years as raw data below.

There are 9 Types of FFLs:

•  Type 01 FFL - Dealers and Gunsmiths
• Type 02 FFL - Pawnbrokers
• Type 03 FFL - Collectors of Curios and Relics
• Type 06 FFL - Manufacturer of Ammunition
• Type 07 FFL - Manufacturer of FIrearms
• Type 08 FFL - Importer of Firearms
• Type 09 FFL - Dealer of Desctructive Devices
• Type 10 FFL - Manufacturer of Destructive Devices
• Type 11 FFL - Importer of Destructive Devices

Read the full guide: FFL License Types → 

As you can see by the graph below, although the distribution of FFLs by type is unchanged over the years, the amount of Type 01 and Type 03 FFLs has decreased while the amount of Type 07 FFLs has increased.

We hope that we've had some influence on that because in our Get Your FFL course, we recomend getting aType 07 FFL when possible becuase it is not only cheaper the first three years than a Type 01 Dealers FFL at $150 for the first three years vs $200 (go figure), it also allows everything a Type 01 FFL allows plus it also allows manufacturing.

The number of FFLs in each state may surprise you - for being largely "anti-gun," the state of California has the second most FFLs following, of course, Texas.