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While politics does influence imports, the bad/good news is that we have not had a major war for 70 years or so, so the supply of military surplus weapons is drying up. Those huge warehouses full of Mausers, Enfields, Carcanos, and Mosin-Nagants just don't exist any more; the guns are gone. (Dick Winter, VP of Interarms, once wondered aloud, "Where do they go, where do they all go?")
And current military small arms are made in smaller numbers (no more armies of millions) and rifles are usually selective fire, less likely to be released to the civilian market. Add the current leftist/anti-war political sentiment, and I doubt we will ever again see the surplus arms market that we had in the 1945-1970 period.
Jim
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