Maksim V. Kuzyuk, a board member of Izhmash and former chief executive, said that he studied the global market for small arms before deciding to focus on the United States.

“Typically, an American family will have five or six short- and long-barreled guns,” Mr. Kuzyuk, a former director of the Boston Consulting Group in Moscow, said in an interview. “Some collectors have more than 20 guns.”

And in the United States, Izhmash cannot be underpriced by Chinese competitors. The federal government has banned most imports of Chinese handguns and rifles since 1994.

Selling Saigas in the United States is integral to the enterprise’s evolving business model of making single-shot civilian guns to occupy workers and equipment in between government orders for fully automatic assault rifles. About 70 percent of the factory’s output is now civilian rifles, up from 50 percent two years ago. Of the civilian arms, about 40 percent are exported to the United States.

That means American consumers are now buying about the same number of Kalashnikov-style weapons from Izhmash as the Russian army and police.

This shift has been encouraged by the Kremlin, which wants to revive a range of military industries by improving their economies of scale and helping them blend military and civilian manufacturing.


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