Gun Grabbers, AR-15, and Unintended Consequences

I see here where gun ownership is down in America. No, seriously. That’s from the New York Times, so you know it must be true. It explains all the empty racks and shelves in gun stores. Nobody wants to buy guns, so gun stores just aren’t bothering to stock up.

Actually I suspect the NYT isn’t being as accurate as usual. But I do confess that when I first started reading that the AR-15 has become the most popular gun in America, I thought maybe that was just hype, too. Oh, our side is perfectly capable of hype. But what surprised me, when I started actually trying to find figures to back up either claim, is that nobody really seems to know how many demonized AR-15s are out there. The sales figures available have never been broken down by model.

The NYT claim is clear bullshit. It’s based on a poll, and when the poll concludes that there are “some of the most surprising drops in the South and the Western mountain states, where guns are deeply embedded in the culture,” you know somebody hasn’t been telling the pollsters the truth. Talk about not passing the smell test.

Slate.com, hardly a gun rights booster, notes with despair that

from 1986 to 2007, at least 1,626,525 AR-15-style semi-automatic rifles were produced and not exported from the United States. Overstreet suggested that you could use trends in NICS background checks to project future sales of AR-15-style rifles. As of Nov. 30, 2012, the total number of NICS background checks increased by 50.4 percent since the end of 2007. If the number of AR-15 rifles increased similarly, then that means there are at least 2,446,294 AR-15 rifles currently available in the United States.

Of course Colt started selling the semi-auto AR-15 in 1963, and so you’ve got another 23 years’ worth of ARs out there somewhere. That’s a helluva lot of ARs. With the possible exception of Gabby Gifford’s husband, I don’t think anybody bought them with the intention of handing them in when they’re banned.

But we’re not there yet. In fact those 2.5 million ARs may not even be the majority. The Slate article goes on, in tear-stained prose:

That “at least” is an important caveat. These data only include firearms manufactured in the United States. In his declaration, Overstreet notes that, since 1986, “U.S.-made firearms have accounted for roughly three-fourths of all new firearms available on the commercial market in the United States.” So if you increase the above number to account for foreign-made, AR-15-style rifles, you get 3,261,725 total rifles.

More caveats: Overstreet derived his numbers by examining the sales figures of companies that only produced AR-15-style rifles. He didn’t include sales data from America’s three largest gunmakers—Remington, Smith & Wesson, and Sturm-Ruger—because these three produce multiple lines of rifles, and he couldn’t break down the data.

I don’t know about Remington and Ruger, but S&W got into the market late but big-time. (damn fine rifles, too. My neighbor’s got one.) So basically, nobody knows how many ARs there are but it’s definitely a helluva lot. Despite the effort from the semi-fudds to label them “modern sporting rifles,” I don’t actually know anyone who hunts with them. Okay, my neighbor pots rabbits with his, but in his case that’s a form of combat. They keep getting into his horse troughs or he’d leave them alone. It’s overkill for a cottontail, but there’s that night vision scope…

I can’t help believing that the popularity of AR-15s is driven by the need for self-defense, and an incoherent but rational and growing concern about the future rather than any wide-spread desire to hunt with them. Of course the current run on them isn’t mysterious at all; it’s driven by the gun-grabbers. And that’s the most delicious bit of irony I can imagine: Dianne Feinstein and friends have brought about the very thing they most fear, a seriously armed America.

Curiously, our little corner of the Gulch doesn’t contain a single AR-15. I owned one once but it was many years ago when they all had Colt logos. Wish I still had it, but I could say the same for a whole lot of guns I once owned. Ian, of course, has a penchant for oddball military rifles so you never know what he’ll show up with. Landlady loves her Garand…

…and I’m very fond of my M1A. But if anybody (besides Ian) is seen carrying a long gun it’s likely to be a carbine, and the carbine is likely to be some AK variant.

I dunno why, exactly. It’s just the way things worked out. I’m unaware of any actual prejudice against ARs.