Quote:
Originally Posted by Pinhead Slim
Something else to consider would be how well armed a unit might be based on its state of origin. I don't imagine there are many gunsmiths in most parts of the East Coast but here in Arizona you can't throw a rock without hitting a guy with a small machine shop in his garage, doing good work out of it. I imagine after the nukes full all sorts of those garage-shops will churn out a few select-fire ARs of various quality, and probably a ton of parts like "lightning links" that turn ARs into full auto only but are very simple and easy to make.
Combined with the sheer amount of guns in the state and any unit that began operating out of Phoenix could have all sorts of unique guns, many of them full auto. I have been personally offered an illegal unregistered select fire Mac-10 in trade before, and of course I turned it down but that kind of stuff just happens here. I mean heck, the Big Sandy shoot has been happening twice a year since the 90s, imagine if the largest private gathering of machine guns and artillery pieces in the United States got together right before Thanksgiving Day 1997. All of that firepower and enough ammo to feed it for the several all-day/all-night shoots in one area.
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USA Carry lists 44 gunsmiths in Arizona. There are 45 in Florida, 21 in Georgia, 11 in South Carolina, 45 in North Carolina, 42 in Virginia, 23 in Maryland, 19 in Pennsylvania, 2 in Delaware, 9 in New Jersey, 29 in New York, 13 in Connecticut, 5 in Rhode Island (!), 13 in Massachusetts, 15 in New Hampshire, 9 in Vermont, and 13 in Maine. All those numbers are probably low, since the number of gunsmiths is way higher than what shows on their site, but it gives a rough idea of the proportions involved. I decided to go look at manufacturers as well.
Speaking specifically of Florida (I'm more familiar with it than where I live now), there are a lot of small manufacturers, to the extent that Florida is #2 in the US for manufacturers with 691 licensed gun manufacturers (only Texas has more, with 1,103 - together, they account for 17% of the nation's manufacturers). Brevard County alone has 48, ranging from the fairly major (Kel-Tec, Knight's Armament, Diamondback) to small shops that manufacture components or do final assembly.
That said, the number of manufacturers has exploded in the past few years. From 2009 to 2015, the country went from 3,040 licensed manufacturers to 10,503. I don't know what it looked like in the early 90s.