In 1994, the Clinton Administration conducted a gun control study, particularly addressing the number of defensive gun uses every year. They were certain they’d debunk the numbers—up to 2.5 million—which would produce more restrictive laws. Despite using biased methodology, they found, to their horror, 1.5 million. They tried to bury the results, but they leaked. They learned an important lesson: be careful what you ask for; you might not get it.
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In The CDC honestly reports; gun grabbers would prefer they didn’t, I reported on another updated effort gun grabbers hoped would damage that 2.5 million reality. It didn’t:
In 2021, professor William English published the findings of his National Firearms Survey, by far the most comprehensive assessment of gun ownership ever conducted. The data demonstrated that defensive gun uses were commonplace, that ordinary Americans really like the weapons gun control activists hate most and that longstanding stereotypes about the “sort” of Americans who exercise their Second Amendment rights were misplaced.
Gun control activists predictably hated this. They attacked the report’s conclusions and author, blasting the survey over nitpicky concerns. English explained how the alleged problems wouldn’t have significantly impacted the results. Critics categorically dismissed the report anyway.
So, English humored them. He re-administered the survey, “fixing” its alleged “mistakes.”
Graphic: AR-15, Author.
With the Supreme Court soon to clarify the Bruen “in common use” test, Gun grabbers were desperate to prove virtually no one owns AR-15s and “high-capacity magazines.” The new survey estimated 26.4 million own AR-15s and 44.5 million own magazines with greater than 10-round capacity. Because surveys are always taken from small samples compared with the actual population, and gun owners are notoriously suspicious of gun surveys, both numbers are surely low.
The original 2021 survey found 1.67 annual defensive gun uses. That appalled gun grabbers who were certain that must be mistaken. This time, the survey horrified them even more:
The new dataset yielded an annual average of 2.2 million defensive gun uses. Part of the increase likely came from asking about protection against animal attacks, which accounted for over 8% of reported uses.
The original survey estimated that 56% of Americans carry guns for self-defense. The do-over showed a jaw-dropping increase:
That doesn’t necessarily reflect public carry, since some may carry only on private property. Still, the new report estimates that 33.6 million Americans are “public carriers” — that is, they have a concealed carry permit and carry for self-defense “at least sometimes.” That’s a remarkable 60% increase in five years.
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Gun grabbers should have known better, but Democrats are infamous for ignoring reality in favor of what they want reality to be:
Since July 1, 2021, 12 states with over 117 million people have enacted permitless carry laws, making it easier for law-abiding gun owners to arm themselves in public. Montana’s law took effect during the original survey. The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in “New York State Rifle & Pistol Association” also opened the door for tens of millions of Americans to finally engage in some manner of public carry, even if the 10 states whose public carry laws were implicated still make it incredibly difficult, expensive and time-consuming to get a concealed carry permit.
This increased access to public carry, combined with historically unprecedented violent crime spikes, seems to have facilitated something of a nationwide “come to Jesus” moment about the importance of armed self-defense in public spaces. And it’s fundamentally changing societal perceptions regarding the right to bear arms and not in the direction that gun control activists favor.
To add to the gun grabber’s woes, it turns out gun owners are the very definition of “diversity:”
Finally, the 2026 survey indicates that more Americans from all walks of life are recognizing the importance of their Second Amendment rights. An even greater proportion of gun owners now hail from demographic groups that historically owned guns at much lower rates. It’s a consequential cultural shift that undermines some of anti-gun activists’ favorite tropes about gun owners.
Importantly, the new report puts to rest conjectures by anti-gun activists that the original survey found surprisingly high rates of female gun ownership only because women reported their husbands’ “household” guns as their own. The 2026 design explicitly told respondents to count only firearms that they personally own and not to include their spouse’s guns. Even with this change, the estimated proportion of gun owners who are female increased by 3.5% compared to 2021. It turns out that women weren’t confused by the original question, after all.
Reality-based Americans could have told them that, and every other conclusion of the new survey. The delicious irony is that the increases in gun ownership, carrying, and defensive gun use are in direct response to Democrat rhetoric, threats, and policies.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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