88 Million Gun Owners. 40 Million AR-15s. 2.2 Million Defensive Uses Per Year. The 2026 National Firearms Survey Just Changed the Viramontes Calculus.

September 11, 2026 — Twenty-five years ago today, Americans were reminded that freedom requires defense, and that defense begins with the people themselves. We remember.

Georgetown University Professor William English published the second wave of his National Firearms Survey on August 24, 2026 — 51,398 respondents, nearly 17,000 gun owners, all 50 states and D.C. The headline numbers: 88 million American adults own 461 million firearms. Approximately 40 million are AR-15 type rifles, owned by 22 million adults specifically — 26.4 million when you include similar semi-auto rifles. Defensive gun uses: 2.2 million annually. Gun ownership is growing among women and people of color. And it all arrives six weeks before Viramontes v. Cook County oral argument at SCOTUS, on the question of whether AR-15 platform rifles are in common use. They are.

Georgetown University Professor William English published the second wave of his National Firearms Survey on August 24, 2026. The survey is the most comprehensive independent scientific examination of American firearms ownership and use available — 51,398 respondents, nearly 17,000 self-identified gun owners, conducted in July and August 2026 across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

English's 2021 first wave of the survey already landed in roughly 65 legal briefs across Second Amendment litigation, including Supreme Court argument in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Critics published a methodological critique in the SMU Law Review in 2024. English addressed those criticisms in the 2026 second wave with six methodological adjustments, including a verification step requiring respondents to confirm ownership in two separate questions before being counted as gun owners. The results did not go in the direction the critics expected. Most key findings stayed the same or strengthened.

The publication date — August 24, 2026 — places the 2026 National Firearms Survey directly in the pre-argument phase of Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, the consolidated SCOTUS cases on AR-15 platform rifle bans scheduled for oral argument December 2. The central constitutional question in Viramontes is whether AR-15 platform rifles are in common use for lawful purposes. Professor English's data provides the most current and methodologically robust available answer to that question.

“In sum, firearms ownership has continued to grow, and firearms owners are more diverse than ever.” — Georgetown Professor William English, 2026 National Firearms Survey

The Complete Findings: Every Number That Matters

Why This Survey Matters for Viramontes v. Cook County

The timing between the English survey's August 24 publication and the December 2 Viramontes oral argument is not coincidental in its significance. The constitutional standard that will decide Viramontes is the Heller “common use” test: whether AR-15 platform rifles are in common use by law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes. If they are, the Second Amendment protects them and the assault weapons bans in Cook County, Connecticut, and eleven other states cannot stand under Bruen's text-and-history framework.

The English survey provides the most current, methodologically scrutinized empirical answer to that question: 40 million AR-15 type rifles. Twenty-six and a half million adults who own at least one rifle in the AR-15 or similar category. Twenty-five percent of all gun owners specifically own an AR-15. These are not fringe numbers. They are not the numbers of a weapon in unusual or exotic use. They are the numbers of the most popular rifle category in the United States, owned by more Americans than the population of Texas.

Mark W. Smith, constitutional scholar and host of the Four Boxes Diner channel, framed the legal significance precisely after the survey published: the burden of proof is on the government to demonstrate that AR-15s and semi-automatic rifles are not in common use. The English survey does not merely support the petitioners' argument — it makes the government's burden extraordinarily difficult to meet. At 40 million rifles in 26.4 million hands, the “dangerous and unusual” carve-out from Heller protection would require the Court to define “dangerous and unusual” in a way that includes firearms owned by one in four gun-owning Americans.

Why the 2026 Wave Is More Credible Than Its 2021 Predecessor

English's 2021 survey already produced some of the most-cited firearms ownership data in Second Amendment litigation. Its AR-15 ownership estimates and defensive gun use numbers were cited in Bruen briefs and drew academic scrutiny. In 2024, five academics published a critique in the SMU Law Review arguing that the survey's methodology overcounted gun owners and inflated defensive gun use estimates.

English designed the 2026 second wave specifically to address those criticisms. He made six documented changes:

• Dual-confirmation ownership verification: respondents must confirm gun ownership in the screening question AND report at least one specific firearm type (handgun, rifle, or shotgun). Single-source self-report is no longer sufficient to be counted.
• AR-15 ownership split out separately from other rifles, allowing precise enumeration rather than inference from a combined category.
• Expanded sample: 51,398 respondents vs. the 2021 wave, providing better statistical power and tighter confidence intervals.
• Geographic stratification across all 50 states and D.C. with state-level demographic weighting.
• Additional screening questions to identify response patterns inconsistent with genuine gun ownership.
• Separate tracking of “currently own” vs. “ever owned” for all firearm categories.

The result: the estimated rate of defensive gun uses actually increased from 1.6 million to 2.2 million per year after the methodology was tightened. The AR-15 ownership numbers stayed similar. RedState's analysis noted that English's updated estimates closely resemble those from Gallup, Pew Research Center, and other major pollsters on overall gun ownership rates, giving them broad external validation. This is not a survey that produced results the gun rights community wanted and then found a methodology to support them. It is a survey that was critiqued, redesigned with those critiques explicitly addressed, and produced results that were largely confirmed.

2.2 Million Defensive Gun Uses Per Year: What the Number Means

The defensive gun use figure from the English survey — 2.2 million annually — is worth addressing specifically because it is one of the most contested statistics in American firearms policy debates.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention commissioned criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz to study defensive gun use in the 1990s and suppressed the results when they found that defensive gun uses numbered somewhere between 800,000 and 2.5 million annually — numbers that did not support the CDC's preferred policy conclusions. The Kleck-Gertz methodology was challenged. Other researchers using different methodologies produced lower estimates. The debate has continued for decades with no consensus.

The English 2026 figure of 2.2 million is within the range of the Kleck-Gertz estimate. It is substantially higher than figures produced by the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which consistently estimates annual defensive gun uses at around 60,000–100,000. The gap between survey-based estimates and crime report-based estimates is not a contradiction — it reflects the fact that most defensive gun uses do not result in a crime report, a discharge of the weapon, or any official record. They are encounters where the display of a firearm ended a threat without escalation. Those encounters are invisible to the NCVS but visible in direct survey methodology.

The honest position on the 2.2 million figure: it is a survey estimate with a confidence interval, derived from self-report, and contested by competing methodologies. It is not a number to state as established fact. It is a number to state as the best current survey estimate with appropriate qualification. What it tells you with confidence: defensive gun use is not a rare or marginal phenomenon. It is sufficiently common that a survey of 51,000 Americans found 37.6% of gun owners reporting a personal defensive use.

The Growing Diversity of American Gun Ownership

The finding that gets less attention than the AR-15 numbers but carries significant long-term political implications: gun ownership among women and people of color has grown substantially since 2021.

The English survey found that gun ownership increased among nearly every minority group between 2021 and 2026. Black, Hispanic, and Asian gun ownership all increased. Women's gun ownership increased. This trend began with COVID-era purchasing and has persisted in the years since.

The political and legal significance of this trend is underappreciated. The gun control debate has been consistently framed as a conflict between a predominantly white, rural, conservative gun-owning population and an urban, diverse, progressive population skeptical of firearms. That framing is becoming less accurate with every survey cycle. Policies that restrict gun ownership disproportionately burden people in urban environments who have the fewest alternatives for personal protection and the lowest likelihood of law enforcement response in time to be useful. The growth of gun ownership among communities historically underserved by law enforcement is a direct response to that reality.

“Firearm ownership has continued to grow, and firearms owners are more diverse than ever. Gun ownership among nearly every minority group increased from the last National Firearms Survey fielded in 2021.” — Prof. William English, Georgetown University, 2026 NFS Second Wave

539 Million: The Magazine Number Nobody Is Talking About

Buried in the survey findings is a number that deserves more attention in the policy debate over magazine capacity restrictions: approximately 539 million magazines holding more than 10 rounds are currently in private ownership, owned by 44.5 million adults — 50.5% of all gun owners.

New Jersey's 10-round magazine limit — currently reinstated by the Third Circuit's stay, with a cert petition due at SCOTUS October 15 — would affect 539 million magazines already in private hands. Maryland's Glock ban (Bathras v. Moore, effective January 1, 2027) targets pistols that commonly ship with magazines above 10 rounds. The English survey's magazine data establishes the same thing the AR-15 data establishes: these are not restricted or specialized items. They are standard consumer goods owned by half the gun-owning population.

The Heller common use test applies to magazines as logically as it applies to rifles. A magazine holding more than 10 rounds is in common use by more Americans than own AR-15 rifles. The SCOTUS resolution of Viramontes will not directly address magazines — the Grant cert order covered rifles, not magazine capacity — but the English survey's magazine numbers strengthen the constitutional argument in New Jersey's pending cert petition and in every state-level magazine case currently in litigation.

Full Survey Reference Data

Bottom Line: 40 Million AR-15s, Six Weeks Before Oral Argument

The 2026 National Firearms Survey is the most significant data publication in the Second Amendment debate in five years. It arrives at the precise moment when the Supreme Court is preparing to hear argument on whether AR-15 platform rifles are protected by the Second Amendment — six weeks before December 2.

The data says what it says: 40 million AR-15 type rifles. Twenty-six and a half million Americans who own at least one rifle in that broader category. One in four gun owners specifically own an AR-15. These are the numbers of a firearm in common use by law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes. Under Heller's own standard, that is the constitutional protection test. Under Bruen's text-and-history framework, the government must identify a historical tradition of banning firearms in common use to justify modern restrictions. No such tradition exists because no such tradition has ever been necessary when a firearm is genuinely in common use.

Gun Talk Media will have pre-argument analysis as December 2 approaches and same-day coverage of the oral argument itself. The survey is publicly available on SSRN. Read it. The numbers are as straightforward as they are significant. This is the empirical foundation of the constitutional argument — and Professor English just made it harder to contest than it has ever been.