That is now many Taurus firearms are mnufactured, and sold in compairison to other makers. With increased production comes the increased possibility of a "lemon" getting out.
A poll like this one, assuming accurate responses, largely takes that into account because it's not relying solely on the number of problem reports, but is comparing the number of owners/past owners to the number of owners/past owners with problem guns. It does make the assumption that the applicable poll responders all own/have owned roughly the same number of Taurus firearms.
As far as determining the total production figures for Taurus, it's possible to make an educated guess at that figure by looking at the handgun imports from Brazil. The ATF reports those figures annually.
The most recent figures I can find are from 2011 and indicate that 359,846 handguns came into the U.S. from Brazil. Most of those are Taurus products, but there are also some Rossis and some are the Springfield guns made by Imbel.
Total handgun imports to the U.S. in 2011 were 1.725 million--Austria is the largest handgun exporter to the U.S. with over half a million handguns (2011 stats).
We make handguns here in the states at the rate of about 2.8 million a year (2010 stats) and exports of handguns are negligible.
So the total number of handguns sold in a given year in the U.S. (imports and domestic manufacture) amounts to about 4.5 million of which about 8% come from Brazil.
So if we assume that all of the 360,000 handguns from Brazil were from Taurus and further assume that all handguns have problems at about the same rate and that all problems are reported, we would expect that Taurus problem reports would amount to no more than 8% of the total number of problem reports.
One way to get a quick feel for how the problem reports stack up would be to be to look at BBB complaint data.
We know that Taurus probably imported somewhere around 300,000 pistols to the U.S. and that Glock probably imported about 500,000 pistols in the same year, so assuming that the two brands are comparable in quality and customer service, we would expect, all else being equal for the number of complaints to be similar.
http://www.bbb.org/south-east-flori...national-manufacturing-in-hialeah-fl-27002288
Taurus
- 75 complaints in the last 3 years, 26 in the last 12 months.
- Failure to honor commitment to arbitrate disputes or mediate disputes.
- Failure to respond to 4 complaints filed against business.
- 4 complaints filed against business that were not resolved.
Glock
- 3 complaints in the last 3 years, 0 in the last 12 months.
- Response to 3 complaint(s) filed against business.
- Resolution of complaint(s) filed against business.
Ruger is the number one volume gun maker in the U.S. Let's see how their massive production volume figures into the number of complaints.
Ruger
- 4 complaints in the last 3 years, 1 in the last 12 months
- Response to 4 complaint(s) filed against business.
- Resolution of complaint(s) filed against business.
So, even though both Glock and Ruger make and sell more guns in the U.S. than Taurus, together they accounted for only 7 complaints in the last 3 years compared to Taurus 75 complaints over the same timeframe.
So Taurus sells about 5 times fewer guns in the U.S. than Glock and Ruger combined and yet accounts for 10 times more complaints. That's significant, in my opinion.