New Source Material Just Dropped.
Bill English’s 2021 National Firearms Survey is an important part of my attitude towards firearms. The 2021 survey, published by Georgetown University, showed that legal armed self-defense was not uncommon in the United States, and that most of the time (better than 80%), no shots were fired by the good guy.
Well, the 2026 version just dropped, and it’s just as interesting. Some highlights from the abstract:
- 32.7% of U.S. adults own guns
- 45.7% of gun owners are female
- Gun ownership rates between white Americans (34.6%) and Black Americans (33.0%) has narrowed to less than two percentage points
- Guns are used defensively by firearms owners in approximately 2.2 million incidents per year
- There’s more of a need to send rounds downrange: The most recent survey shows that shots were fired in 76.3% of encounters versus 81.9% from 2021
- 70.6% of respondents reported that the defensive use was successful to the extent that no crime remained to be reported to the police
- The average gun owner owns about 5.2 firearms
- 25.0% of gun owners currently own an AR-15 type rifle
- 50.5% of gun owners own a magazine which holds 10 rounds or more.
Read, as they say, the whole thing, then share it with your anti-gun friends.