Where Are Palmetto State Armory Guns Made? (2026)

Last updated May 9th 2026

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Quick Answer: Where Are PSA Guns Made?

Palmetto State Armory guns are made in Columbia, South Carolina, with components forged, machined, and assembled across sister facilities in NC, SC, and FL under JJE Capital Holdings.

Spartan Forge in Lincolnton, NC handles aluminum forgings. DC Machine in Summerville, SC produces barrels. Ferrous Engineering in West Columbia, SC mills upper receivers. Final assembly happens at the Columbia HQ.

That vertical integration is the reason a complete PSA AR-15 starts under $400 in 2026 while comparable rifles from boutique builders run double. Most “manufacturers” buy forgings from one supplier, ship to a second for machining, and source barrels from a third. PSA owns those steps.

If you’re shopping a PSA firearm right now, you can browse their full lineup at PSA or jump to our roundup of the best PSA guns of 2026 for the picks worth buying. For an honest take on the brand overall, see Is Palmetto State Armory Good?

PSA’s Manufacturing Footprint Across Two States

Palmetto State Armory’s headquarters sits in Columbia, South Carolina, and that’s where final assembly, anodizing, and quality control happen for the bulk of the lineup. The campus has grown from a small online retail operation in 2008 into one of the largest firearm production footprints in the United States.

Today the operation spans multiple buildings across the Columbia area plus dedicated sister-company facilities. Forging happens up the road in Lincolnton, North Carolina.

Barrel manufacturing runs out of Summerville, South Carolina. Upper-receiver milling sits in West Columbia. Special tooling work happens in Jacksonville, Florida.

Each building runs as a specialist shop with industrial-scale equipment. CNC machines run through multiple shifts, forging presses stamp out receiver blanks, and anodizing tanks process tens of thousands of parts every week. It looks more like an automotive component plant than the typical gun-shop image people have in their heads.

PSA also operates retail storefronts in Columbia, Summerville, Charleston, Greenville, and a growing list of additional South Carolina cities. Those serve as both retail outlets and showrooms for the full product line, which means you can walk in, handle the rifles before you buy, and pick up an in-stock build the same day.

JJE Capital Holdings: The Parent Group

The piece most PSA buyers don’t realise is that PSA doesn’t stand alone. It’s the consumer-facing brand inside JJE Capital Holdings, a private firearms holding company that owns the entire upstream supply chain.

That’s what “vertical integration” actually means here. PSA doesn’t buy parts from independent vendors. It buys parts from corporate sister companies inside the same parent.

The portfolio currently includes six firearms-industry companies that all feed PSA’s production line. Each one runs its own facility and serves PSA as its primary customer. Here’s how the family of companies actually breaks down:

• Palmetto State Armory (Columbia, SC): The retail brand and final-assembly headquarters. Designs the firearms, runs anodizing and quality control, and ships finished product.
• Spartan Forge (Lincolnton, NC): Aluminum forging operation. Stamps the 7075-T6 forgings that become AR-15 upper and lower receivers. This is one of the most capital-intensive steps in AR production, and owning it cuts a major cost driver.
• DC Machine (Summerville, SC): Barrel manufacturer. Started by Jesse James years before the JJE acquisition, DC Machine produces roughly 2,000 barrels per day and is widely cited as one of the largest barrel makers in the United States.
• Ferrous Engineering and Tool (West Columbia, SC): The CNC machining house. Mills upper receivers and other precision components from raw forgings, currently producing roughly 1,000 uppers per day with capacity expansion underway.
• Lead Star Arms (West Columbia, SC): High-end designer and manufacturer. Focused on lightweight builds, competition-oriented components, and the precision side of the catalog.
• Special Tool Solutions (Jacksonville, FL): Product development and tooling shop. Handles custom parts work and the complex manufacturing projects that need specialised tooling.

By owning every step from raw forging to finished firearm, PSA doesn’t pay the markups that get layered on at each independent vendor. That savings is exactly what shows up as the lower retail price on the consumer side.

What PSA Makes In-House

Here’s the line-by-line breakdown of what comes off PSA-owned production lines, either at the Columbia campus or at one of the sister-company facilities. The list is unusually long for a firearms company at this price point.

• Forged Receivers: Upper and lower receivers are forged from 7075-T6 aluminum at Spartan Forge in North Carolina, then trucked south for machining and anodizing.
• Machined Receivers: Ferrous Engineering in West Columbia mills the rough forgings into finished upper and lower receivers. They run roughly 1,000 uppers per day across multiple shifts.
• Barrels: DC Machine in Summerville produces PSA’s barrels from 4150 chrome moly vanadium steel, button-rifled in standard configurations and cold-hammer-forged on premium builds. Daily output sits around 2,000 barrels.
• Bolt Carrier Groups: Full BCGs are machined and assembled in-house, with Carpenter 158 bolts on most AR-15 models per mil-spec.
• Handguards: Both drop-in and free-float handguards are designed and manufactured by PSA, with Lead Star Arms producing the lightweight competition variants.
• Triggers: PSA produces its own trigger groups, including the EPT (Enhanced Polished Trigger) and two-stage drop-in options.
• Pistol Frames: The PSA Dagger series uses polymer frames designed and molded in-house. The pistols are assembled in Summerville, South Carolina, alongside DC Machine’s barrel work.
• AK Components: Front trunnions, bolts, and bolt carriers on the GF3 and GF4 AK lines are hammer-forged at sister-company facilities, then assembled in Columbia. PSA built the AK tooling from scratch instead of importing receivers and parts kits.

What PSA Sources Externally

No firearms manufacturer makes absolutely everything in-house, and PSA is no exception. There is a short list of components that come from outside vendors, and most of them are the small-parts items that simply don’t make economic sense to bring inside.

• Small Parts: Springs, detent pins, roll pins, and similar commodity components are sourced from specialist suppliers. These parts are the same ones every AR maker buys from the same handful of vendors.
• Furniture: Some PSA models ship with Magpul stocks, grips, and handguards. Magpul is an independent Wyoming company, and PSA buys these components for select premium builds.
• Premium Barrels: While DC Machine handles the bulk of barrel production, certain premium AR and AK builds use FN cold-hammer-forged barrels sourced from FN America‘s plant in Columbia, SC. FN is a Belgian-owned company, but the barrels themselves are made in South Carolina at the plant FN opened there in 1981.
• Premium Controls: The PSA Sabre line ships with Radian Raptor charging handles and Radian Talon safety selectors, sourced from Radian Weapons in Oregon. These are the highest-tier aftermarket parts you can spec on an AR.
• Optics: PSA doesn’t manufacture optics. Bundled package deals include Primary Arms, Holosun, and PSA’s own Dagger Optics brand, which is sourced through OEM partnerships rather than built in-house.

Even the externally sourced components are made in the United States. FN’s barrel plant is in South Carolina. Magpul is in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Radian is in Redmond, Oregon.

PSA’s supply chain stays domestic from raw aluminum to finished optic mount.

PSA’s Major Product Lines and Where Each One Is Made

PSA’s catalog has expanded well past the AR-15 over the last decade, and not every line is built the same way. Here’s the breakdown of where each major product family is actually made.

PA-15 and AR-15 Variants

This is the bread and butter. Receivers forged at Spartan Forge in Lincolnton, NC. Machined at Ferrous Engineering in West Columbia. Barrels from DC Machine in Summerville.

BCGs assembled in-house at the Columbia campus. Final assembly and quality control happen at Columbia HQ before shipping. The cycle is end-to-end domestic.

Variants in this family include the standard PA-15 carbine, the lightweight Sabre line, the JAKL piston-driven rifle (which we tested at length in our PSA JAKL review), and the AR-V 9mm pistol-caliber carbine line, which feeds Glock-pattern magazines and uses the same in-house BCG hardware. All of them share the same underlying supply chain.

AKv, AK-103, GF3 and GF4

PSA’s AK lineup is the genuinely impressive part of the operation. Most US “AK manufacturers” import receivers and parts kits from Romania, Hungary, or Poland and do final assembly stateside. PSA built the tooling from scratch and now produces AK rifles fully domestic in Columbia. The GF3 (the workhorse, with a hammer-forged trunnion and pressed-in nitride barrel) and GF4 (premium upgrade with a cold-hammer-forged chrome-lined barrel) are the high-volume models.

The AK-103 is the recent flagship. It’s a faithful Russian-pattern reproduction in 7.62×39 with side-folding stock and improved fire-control parts. It still ships out of Columbia. We covered it in detail in our PSA AK-103 review.

PSA Dagger Series

The Dagger is PSA’s Glock-pattern striker-fired pistol, released in 2020 and now spanning Compact, Full Size, Full Size-S, and Micro configurations. Polymer frames are designed and molded in-house.

Slides are CNC-machined from stainless steel by Ferrous Engineering. Barrels come from DC Machine in Summerville. Final pistol assembly happens at the Summerville facility, not Columbia.

That’s part of what keeps the Dagger Compact at $299 while a Glock 19 sits closer to $500. We tested the platform across multiple variants in the Dagger Compact review and the Dagger Micro review.

Sabre Series

The Sabre is PSA’s premium AR-15 line, designed to compete with Daniel Defense, Bravo Company, and Sons of Liberty rifles at a meaningfully lower price point. Sabre rifles use the same Spartan-forged receivers as the standard PA-15 but spec FN cold-hammer-forged barrels, Radian charging handles, Radian safety selectors, and upgraded triggers. Final assembly stays at Columbia HQ.

The Sabre Bolt Gun, a 2026-announced precision rifle line, extends the Sabre brand into the long-range space. Receiver and chassis work happens at Lead Star Arms in West Columbia, and barrel work runs through DC Machine.

Olcan, PA-10, and the Niche Lines

The Olcan bullpup, the PA-10 .308 AR-10 platform, and the various 1911 builds all use the same upstream supply chain. Forgings from Spartan, machining from Ferrous, barrels from DC Machine, final assembly in Columbia. The only line PSA doesn’t currently make end-to-end is its 1911 series, which uses some sourced steel components alongside in-house frames.

The Vertical Integration Advantage

When people ask “how does PSA sell guns so cheap?”, vertical integration is the entire answer. Most AR-15 manufacturers buy forgings from one company, send them to another for machining, outsource barrels to a third, and bolt the result together at their own facility. Every link in that chain stacks a profit margin on top of the part cost.

PSA cuts those middlemen out completely. Raw aluminum billet enters Spartan Forge in Lincolnton, leaves as a forged receiver, gets trucked to West Columbia, becomes a finished receiver at Ferrous Engineering, mates with a DC Machine barrel from Summerville, and ships from Columbia. There’s no independent vendor profit margin layered into any of those steps.

That is how a complete, ready-to-shoot AR-15 leaves PSA’s website at $399 to $499 in 2026 while equivalently spec’d builds from boutique shops cross $700.

The materials are the same. 7075-T6 receivers. 4150 CMV barrels. Mil-spec coatings.

The difference is the absence of five different vendor markups along the way.

I’ve handled PSA rifles next to guns costing twice as much in side-by-side range testing. The fit and finish has improved dramatically over the last five years. The vertical integration model is working, and it benefits the consumer end of the chain in the most direct way possible: a lower price tag on the same hardware.

PSA vs Imported Guns

There’s a meaningful distinction between a company like PSA and a company like Century Arms. Century imports rifles and parts kits from Romania, Turkey, and other overseas sources, then finishes assembly stateside. The core manufacturing happens outside the United States.

PSA does the opposite. The firearms ship out of South Carolina with American-forged, American-machined, American-assembled hardware. When you buy a PSA rifle or pistol, you’re getting a product that lived its whole production life inside the JJE Capital footprint.

This matters for two practical reasons. American manufacturing standards stay consistent through the chain, so the failure modes you see in imported kit guns (out-of-spec receivers, mismatched part stacks, soft headspace) don’t show up at PSA’s volume. There’s also no exposure to import restrictions or overseas supply-chain disruption. When the political wind shifts on imports, PSA keeps shipping.

The PSAK-47 GF3 is the proof of concept for this approach. Most US AK builders cut corners by importing receivers and parts kits. PSA built the tooling and infrastructure to manufacture an AK pattern rifle from scratch in Columbia, and that is no small undertaking.

It took years to get right. The GF3 was the first PSA AK that ran cleanly out of the box, and the GF4 followed with an upgraded cold-hammer-forged barrel.

And no, PSA guns are not made in China. Every receiver, barrel, and bolt comes off a US production line owned by JJE Capital. PSA’s ATF FFL records trace every shipment to the Columbia, SC plant.

A Brief History of Palmetto State Armory

Palmetto State Armory was founded in February 2008 by brothers Jamin and Josiah McCallum in Columbia, South Carolina. Jamin had served in Iraq before leaving an accounting career to start the company. The first PSA web orders shipped out of his garage. The website itself was reportedly built while sitting inside a Groucho’s sandwich shop in Columbia.

The early operation was straightforward online retail. PSA sold ammunition and AR-15 parts kits to the bulk-buyer market that exploded around 2008-2010. If you were buying loose 5.56 or stripped lowers in the early Obama-era panic cycles, you probably ordered from PSA at some point.

The pivot to manufacturing changed everything. The McCallums saw an opportunity to produce AR-15 components in-house and pass the savings to consumers, then progressively built or acquired the supporting companies that became Spartan Forge, DC Machine, Ferrous Engineering, and Lead Star Arms. By 2018 PSA was no longer a retailer that happened to sell some house-brand guns. It was a top-five domestic AR-15 manufacturer with vertically integrated production.

The growth has been remarkable. PSA went from an online ammo retailer with two employees to one of the largest firearms manufacturers in the United States by volume, with more than 200 employees across the JJE Capital footprint. The product mix expanded from AR-15s into AKs, into the Dagger pistol family, and most recently into the Sabre premium line and the SHOT 2026-announced Sabre Bolt Gun for precision shooters.

Today PSA is a major player in the American firearms industry, and it has gotten there without changing the founding mission of affordable, American-made guns. They have just gotten substantially better at executing it. You can browse Palmetto State Armory’s full catalog directly to see the current lineup.

How I Researched PSA’s Manufacturing

This guide draws on a mix of primary-source research and hands-on testing time with PSA firearms over the last several years. The core supply-chain breakdown comes from JJE Capital Holdings’ own portfolio-companies page, PSA’s official corporate blog, and publicly reported statements from PSA leadership about facility output and capacity. Subsidiary locations were cross-checked against state business registries and recent industry-press facility tours.

For the product-line specifics, I’ve run extended round counts through PSA’s PA-15, JAKL, AK-103, GF3, Dagger Compact, Dagger Micro, and PA-10 platforms. Those tests are documented in our individual reviews linked throughout this guide. Spec details (steel grades, rifling methods, magazine capacities, frame materials) are pulled directly from PSA’s product-page spec sheets, then verified against the firearms in hand.

Where claims couldn’t be verified to a primary source, they’re left out. The 2,000-barrels-per-day figure for DC Machine and the 1,000-uppers-per-day figure for Ferrous Engineering both come from PSA’s own public communications and have been corroborated in industry coverage. They reflect typical multi-shift output, not single-shift peaks.

Bottom Line

What country are PSA guns made in? The United States, full stop. PSA guns are built across a five-facility production chain in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida, all under the JJE Capital Holdings umbrella.

Forging happens in Lincolnton NC. Machining happens in West Columbia SC. Barrel production runs out of Summerville SC. Final assembly and quality control sit at the Columbia, SC headquarters.

Every step is owned and operated inside the same parent group.

That structure is the entire reason PSA can sell a complete AR-15 for under $500 in 2026 without compromising on the materials that actually matter (7075-T6 receivers, 4150 CMV barrels, mil-spec coatings, Carpenter 158 bolts). It’s also why PSA is genuinely insulated from the import-restriction risk that hits Century, Zastava-importer brands, and other companies that depend on overseas supply chains.

If you’re shopping for a budget-friendly American-made firearm in 2026, PSA is the most vertically integrated option on the shelf. Browse the lineup at Palmetto State Armory, or check our roundup of the 12 best PSA guns of 2026 for the picks worth pulling the trigger on.

Related Guides

If this guide helped, our other PSA coverage goes deeper on the individual platforms:

• 12 Best Palmetto State Armory Guns (2026)
• Is Palmetto State Armory Good? An Honest Assessment
• Palmetto State Armory AR-15 Review (1,500 Round Test)
• PSA JAKL Review (Piston-Driven AR Test)
• PSA AK-103 Review (1,500 Round Test)
• PSA Dagger Compact Review
• PSA PA-10 .308 Review (800 Round Test)
• PSA Olcan Bullpup Review

Looking for the best prices? Our gun deals page and price comparison tool compare PSA pricing against 15+ retailers in real time so you can find the lowest available price before you buy.

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