Survey Says…  by Tom Reynolds

The Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) decision in District of Columbia v. Heller held that arms “in common use” for lawful purposes cannot be banned.  But that hasn’t stopped the Left from ignoring SCOTUS and trying to outlaw commonly held guns, especially AR15’s (Modern Sporting Rifles) that the left likes to characterize as “Assault Weapons.”

To counteract that effort, William English’s 2026 National Firearms Survey provides evidence that AR-15s and similar rifles are “in common use”…if you believe that tens of millions qualifies as “in common use.”

English surveyed 51,398 American adults and identified 16,688 valid gun owners.  The survey asked about firearms that the respondents personally and currently owned and separated AR-15-type rifles from other similarly styled semi-automatic rifles.

32.7% of U.S. adults personally own firearms; approximately 88 million American adults.  (That’s in line with most estimates of 80 to 100 million.)

30% of U.S. gun owners currently own at least one rifle commonly labelled by the left as an “assault weapon;” 26.4 million adults.  (Also, in line with most estimates of 20+ million.)

25% of U.S. gun owners currently own an AR-15-type rifle; 22.1 million adults.

12.9% of other gun owners own a similarly styled semi-automatic rifle with a pistol grip.

7.9% of U.S. gun owners own rifles in both categories.

On Monday, I wrote about Defensive Gun Use.* (DGU.)  The survey backs up the higher estimates of DGU’s in that article and adds more details:

guns are used defensively by firearms owners in approximately 2.2 million incidents per year;

76.3% reported that no shot was fired;

34.7% of gun owners reported that the mere presence of a gun has deterred criminal conduct;

70.6% of incidents resulted in no crime reported to the police.  (This is why DGU surveys based only on police reports or media reports show lower numbers and are meaningless.)

Then there is the attempt to outlaw “large’ capacity magazines.  (If the left had their wishes, two rounds would qualify as large capacity).  The survey tells us why we need large capacity magazines: “50.8% involved more than one assailant.”

And as to whether or not large capacity magazines are “in common use; ”50.5% of gun owners (44.5 million adults) report that they currently own magazines that hold more than 10 rounds (539 million such magazines, in total) and 88.0% of these owners cite a defensive purpose for owning them.

For some more on large capacity magazines being necessary, read this article in Ammoland:  Survey: 180,000 Gun Uses Against Animals Each Year

As for the male stereotyping of gun owners, the survey says 45.7% of validated gun owners are female, which leaves 54.3% as male.  (The survey did not attempt to characterize based on gender dysphoria.)

And the Left always wants to yell “racism.”  But the survey finds the gap in ownership rates between White Americans (34.6%) and Black Americans (33.0%) has narrowed to less than two percentage points.

*S.C.O.P.E. Shooters Committee On Political Education
- DGU’s Return by Tom Reynolds