Gun control activists wanted better numbers, and the latest survey handed them something far more uncomfortable. New findings from Georgetown professor William English’s updated National Firearms Survey deepen the case that defensive gun use is more common than critics admit, that so-called “assault weapons” are widely owned, and that gun ownership is spreading across a broader slice of America.
That is exactly why the new results sting. The 2021 version of the survey already rattled the anti-gun crowd by showing large numbers of Americans owning AR-15-style rifles, high-capacity magazines and firearms for self-defense, but critics insisted the data was flawed and overstated the reality.
Instead of folding, English tightened up the design and ran the survey again in 2026. The updated version did not rescue the gun control argument. It made the picture sharper, and for activists, a lot worse.
One of the biggest takeaways is that ownership of AR-15-style rifles is not some fringe habit. The new survey estimates that 26.4 million American adults now own an AR-15 or a similar semiautomatic rifle with a pistol grip, which undercuts the familiar claim that these firearms are rare or outside ordinary lawful use.
High-capacity magazines show the same pattern. The latest data estimates 44.5 million Americans currently own one, and gun owners are now slightly more likely to own one than not. That is a big problem for activists who still rely on the phrase “weapons of war” as if repetition can erase common ownership.
The findings on defensive gun use may be even more awkward for the anti-gun side. English’s original survey estimated that adults use firearms for protection about 1.67 million times a year, and critics mocked that number as unbelievable.
The redesigned survey pushed the estimate higher, not lower. It now places annual defensive gun use at about 2.2 million incidents, with some of the increase tied to reported protection against animal attacks, which makes the real-world picture look even more grounded in lived experience.
That matters because the debate over gun rights often gets flattened into slogans. People who carry and people who keep firearms for protection are not talking about fantasy scenarios, but about the daily reality of crime, danger and the right to respond when trouble shows up fast.
The survey also shows a major shift in public carry. About 70% of gun owners now say there are at least some circumstances in which they carry a handgun for self-defense, up from 56% in the earlier survey. That is a serious cultural move, not a small statistical wobble.
English’s estimate of 33.6 million public carriers makes the trend even harder to ignore. Permitless carry laws in a growing number of states, along with the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, have helped more law-abiding citizens exercise their rights without jumping through endless hoops.
Crime has played a role too. When violent crime rises, people notice, and they adjust their behavior accordingly. The shift in attitudes around self-defense is not happening in a vacuum, and it is clearly not moving in the direction gun control activists hoped for.
The newest survey also breaks another tired stereotype: gun owners are becoming more diverse. More women and more people from demographic groups that historically owned guns at lower rates now appear in the ownership data, which chips away at the old image of the American gun owner as one narrow, predictable type of person.
That was another claim critics tried to use against the 2021 survey, especially when female ownership looked higher than expected. The 2026 version cut off that escape route by asking respondents to count only firearms they personally own, not their spouse’s, and women still showed up in greater numbers than before.
The bigger story here is not just that the numbers changed. It is that the attempt to dismiss the original survey ended up producing an even clearer snapshot of a country where gun ownership is widespread, self-defense is taken seriously, and the old talking points keep colliding with reality.
3 Comments
VIctory 1 Hooray
The Constitution haters got a wakeup call, 2.2 million defensive firearm uses annually is a huge number. More and more women are carrying for defensive purposes since the soft on crime loony left defunded police, and soft on crime prosecutors and judges made the streets unsafe.
Those Lower then Dirt Policy Makers that allowed Foreign Illegal Invaders to walk right into America and get benefits and protections that all of us actual Citizens Worked and Paid for over the years; while additionally many of these Invading Law Breaking Criminal Trespassers as defined by the US Constitution and Immigration Laws are violent Criminals that attack American Citizens, all of which is a HUGE HEADS UP! It’s about damn time We the People (Citizens) are allowed our unfettered not infringed in any way, Second Amendment Right as per the US Constitution to Protect Ourselves and Our Loved Ones 100%! This right has never been as important at any time in history than Right Now with all of these millions of Illegal Aliens running loose throughout the United States; this time in history when crime and perpetrators of crime are encouraged by our own government bureaucrats!!!