alt Hacker News0.03% is ten times less than 0.3%, so I agree it is not even close. The money to manufacturers from smuggling is a rounding error. The numbers are from anti-gun activists, so they are incentivized to over state, not understate the smuggling.
The fact that supposedly every American owns 4 or 5 guns should hint at how bad the smuggling problem is
I think it shows how disconnected non-gun owners are from people who own guns. None of my liberal gun owning friends in California have fewer than 4-5 guns. My conservative gun owning friends in Texas have 20-30 guns. I've never met a gun owner that had 1-2.
There are three types of people:
1. people who don't have a gun
2. "gun owners"... who have them as a hobby and have a bunch of guns
3. people who just happen to have a gun at home. you don't hear about these people because they aren't "into" guns and don't talk about them.