New Survey Finds 60 Million AR-Style Rifles as Supreme Court Weighs AR-15 Bans
A new national firearms survey estimating that approximately 26 million Americans currently own AR-15-type or similarly styled semi-automatic rifles has already become evidence in the Supreme Court case that could decide whether state and local governments may continue banning America’s most popular rifle.
The survey is not sitting on a shelf waiting for academics to argue over it. Attorneys challenging the Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut rifle bans cited the findings repeatedly in their newly filed brief to the Supreme Court. The brief was filed on behalf of individual gun owners, the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the Connecticut Citizens Defense League.
The consolidated cases, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins, ask one direct question: “Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.”
As AmmoLand previously reported, the Supreme Court granted both cases on June 30, 2026. The cases have been consolidated for briefing and oral argument, and allotted one hour for argument. No oral argument date has yet been listed on the Supreme Court docket.
William English’s 2026 National Firearms Survey now gives the justices fresh evidence that AR-15s and similar rifles are not merely common. They are owned by tens of millions of Americans for overwhelmingly lawful purposes.
Survey Puts 26 Million Rifle Owners Before the Court
English’s survey included 51,398 American adults and identified 16,688 validated gun owners. Unlike the 2021 survey, the new questions specifically asked about firearms respondents personally and currently owned, not guns owned by a spouse or rifles they possessed years earlier.
The survey also separated AR-15-type rifles from other similarly styled semi-automatic rifles.
It found that 25% of gun owners currently own an AR-15-type rifle. Another 12.9% own a similarly styled semi-automatic rifle with a pistol grip, while 7.9% own rifles in both categories.
Altogether, 30% of American gun owners, approximately 26.4 million adults, currently own at least one rifle commonly targeted by so-called “assault weapon” bans. Approximately 22.1 million adults own an AR-15-type rifle specifically.
English estimates that Americans possess approximately 40 million AR-15-type rifles and another 20 million similarly styled semi-automatic rifles.
The petitioners’ brief relies on those findings in both its factual presentation and its constitutional argument. It tells the Court that the latest available data indicate approximately 26 million Americans own at least one covered rifle and approximately 22 million own an AR-15 specifically.
That is important because the petitioners’ case rests heavily on District of Columbia v. Heller and its holding that arms “in common use” for lawful purposes cannot be banned.
Whatever uncertainty may exist at the outer edges of “common use,” there is no serious argument that 26 million owners and approximately 60 million rifles fall outside it.
Defense Is a Leading Reason for Ownership
The survey does more than count rifles. It asks why Americans own them.
Among owners of AR-15-type and similarly styled rifles:
- 77.7% cited home defense.
- 65.1% cited recreational target shooting.
- 50.2% cited hunting.
- 41.1% cited defense outside the home.
- 33.8% cited protection against animal attacks.
- 25.9% cited competitive shooting.
When home defense and defense outside the home are combined, 83% of owners cited a defensive purpose.
The petitioners use that 83% figure to answer the anti-gun claim that these rifles are not commonly possessed for self-defense. The brief also notes that 16.4% of the defensive gun uses documented by English involved rifles.
The Second Amendment does not require Americans to prove to a judge that a particular firearm is the one firearm they absolutely need. Heller expressly rejected the argument that the government may ban handguns so long as citizens remain free to possess long guns.
Cook County and Connecticut are now making the same argument in reverse: Citizens supposedly do not need AR-15s because the government leaves them other firearms.
The answer is the same. Government does not get to select the arms with which the people may exercise a constitutional right.
Petitioners Say Heller Already Decided the Rule
The petitioners argue that resolving Viramontes and Grant requires no new constitutional test. The Court only needs to apply Heller faithfully.
First, AR-15s are unquestionably “arms.” They are bearable firearms used for offense and defense. The Seventh Circuit nevertheless upheld Cook County’s ban after concluding that the plaintiffs had not sufficiently shown the prohibited rifles were protected “arms.”
The brief argues that the Seventh Circuit improperly smuggled historical limitations into the first, plain-text stage of the analysis. Under Heller, all firearms fall within the ordinary meaning of “arms.” Whether the government can justify a restriction is a separate historical question on which the government bears the burden.
The Second Circuit took a different route but arrived at the same anti-Second Amendment result. It assumed the Connecticut-banned rifles were commonly possessed. Then declared that common use was not enough because judges could still consider the rifles “unusually dangerous.”
That position would allow courts to override the choices of millions of Americans whenever judges decide a commonly owned arm is too dangerous.
The petitioners argue that Heller forbids exactly that kind of interest balancing. An arm cannot be both commonly possessed by ordinary citizens for lawful purposes and “dangerous and unusual.” The historical phrase is conjunctive. An arm must be both dangerous and unusual before it falls outside the protection recognized in Heller.
As AmmoLand has explained, the government cannot escape the Second Amendment by labeling a popular rifle unusually dangerous after millions of Americans have lawfully chosen it.
The AR-15 Is the Modern American Rifle
The brief also places the AR-15 in the longer American rifle tradition.
It begins with the Kentucky long rifle used by American marksmen during the Revolution and traces the development of repeating and semi-automatic firearms through the 19th and early 20th centuries. The point is not that an AR-15 must be identical to a firearm available in 1791. Heller and Bruen rejected the idea that the Second Amendment protects only technology known to the Founders.
The relevant historical principle is that Americans have always adopted improvements in firearms technology. Rifling, repeating actions, detachable magazines, reduced recoil, adjustable stocks, pistol grips, and modern sighting systems make firearms more useful to their owners. Cosmetic and ergonomic improvements do not erase constitutional protection.
Cook County and Connecticut target features that generally improve control, fit, accuracy, and safe handling. None makes a semi-automatic rifle fire more than one round per trigger pull.
The new survey provides the factual backbone for the petitioners’ constitutional argument. AR-15s are “arms.” They are owned by tens of millions of Americans. These arms are possessed for defense, hunting, competition, and recreational shooting. They are legal in the overwhelming majority of states.
The question now before the Supreme Court is whether hostile legislatures may ban those rifles anyway.
Under the Constitution’s text, the nation’s history, and the Court’s own precedents, the answer must be no.
About Duncan Johnson:
Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.