So what was the big issue with airsoft guns being manufactured in China anyways? Well, the main probably is that airsoft guns are illegal in China, and apparently even manufacturing them in China was illegal as well. However, this did not stop the major airsoft rifle manufactures from producing airsoft guns in China.

Even though manufacturing airsoft guns was illegal in China, many major airsoft manufactures went ahead and did it anyways. Of course, they had to play a never ending game of cat and mouse with the authorities, and they would often have one factory shut down, only to move to a new location and open a new one. This went on for years in China, but unfortunately this game of cat and mouse came with a big price.

Chinese authorities would literally destroy tens of thousands of airsoft guns at a time. In fact, they would run them over with large steam rollers, completely crushing and destroying them. And at one point, they even arrested a bunch of the factory owners too (this happened quite a bit in 2010).

Shortly after that, most of the bigger Chinese manufactures decided to finally just move their operations out of China entirely. While this meant slightly higher production costs, it finally ended the game of cat and mouse for good, since they were no longer breaking the law when they manufactured airsoft guns.

This is not only a good thing for the manufactures themselves, this is also a good thing for airsoft consumers. Now all of the name brand airsoft guns (IE: Echo 1, TSD, Cybergun, UTG, etc.) are MUCH easier to find, and even when they do run out of stock, they now come back in stock much sooner. In fact, over the last year or so, we have hardly ever run out of stock on any of the UTG airsoft sniper rifles that we sell. If you go back a couple of years, you would find that we were out of stock on many of our UTG sniper rifles on a fairly regular basis (which was a real shame, since the UTG airsoft sniper rifles have always been our best selling airsoft rifles).

So how much more do the airsoft guns that used to be produced in China now cost? Well, on average, the price has only gone up by about 10-15% on average, which is a very small price to pay, VS not being able to even FIND the airsoft gun that you want, for months on end. And on top of that, since the big airsoft manufactures have finally moved to locations where they can legally produce and sell airsoft guns in bulk to wholesalers & distributors, many new models of airsoft guns have started to hit the market, especially from big name brands such as UTG, Echo 1, TSD, and even Cybergun.