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NSSF: AR-15/AK numbers top 16 million
The trade group for the firearms industry says that AR-15-style rifles and their competitors are among the most common in the country.
Figures researched by the National Shooting Sports Foundation show that just over 16 million semi-auto rifles such as AR-15s and AKs have been produced or imported into the country since 1990. Combing through figures from federal regulators and verifying the break out against companies who make selected semi-auto rifles with detachable magazines, termed modern sporting rifles by the industry, the group says guns like the AR and AK are white hot with consumers.
“Modern sporting rifles remain the most commonly purchased rifle by Americans today,” Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF senior vice president, told Guns.com.
Keane explained the guns are popular in large part due to the inherent modularity of such platforms, which provide the ability to customize them to fit the individual owner and the wide variety of needs they can fulfill. “They are offered a wide variety of calibers and the design of the firearm allows beginners to quickly master safe and accurate marksmanship skills,” he said. “Modern sporting rifles are the choice for millions of Americans for hunting, recreational target shooting and self-defense.”
Subject to a federal ban on “assault weapons” that ran from 1994 through 2004, the NSSF found that the number of MSRs dipped to a low of just 70,000 produced and imported in 1996, but has been climbing ever since. By 1998, even while the ban was in effect, the figure doubled to 145,000. By 2003, the last year of the ban, the numbers of guns broached 380,000. Five years later, with the election of President Obama, numbers hit 633,000. Then, in 2009, a solid 1 million. In 2013, following the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut and a wave of gun control legislation both proposed and enacted: 2.3 million.
In 2014, upholding Maryland’s strict new gun control laws, U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake ruled that AR-15 style rifles and others “fall outside Second Amendment protection as dangerous and unusual arms.” Blake went on to explain her reasoning that the then-estimated 8.2 million AR-15 and AK-47 based semi-automatic rifles known imported to or produced in the country between 1990 and 2012 represent “no more than 3 percent of the current civilian gun stock.” Even this, she maintained, was highly concentrated in an even smaller “1 percent” of the U.S. population.
In 2016, Blake’s ruling was reversed by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who held that the same figure of guns, coupled with an estimated 75 million magazines “are so common that they are standard” with Chief Judge William Byrd Traxler, Jr. going on to say, “In sum, semi-automatic rifles and LCMs [large capacity magazines] are commonly used for lawful purposes, and therefore come within the coverage of the Second Amendment.”
Nonetheless, Traxler’s ruling was later overturned by a rare en banc panel of the entire court which stood behind the ban in a 10-4 ruling that the Supreme Court declined to review further.
The same year that Maryland’s ban was upheld, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., grilled Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch on if AR-15s were in common use, or could be restricted as unusual, in line with the 2008 Heller case.
More at ...
NSSF: AR-15/AK numbers top 16 million
The trade group for the firearms industry says that AR-15-style rifles and their competitors are among the most common in the country.
Figures researched by the National Shooting Sports Foundation show that just over 16 million semi-auto rifles such as AR-15s and AKs have been produced or imported into the country since 1990. Combing through figures from federal regulators and verifying the break out against companies who make selected semi-auto rifles with detachable magazines, termed modern sporting rifles by the industry, the group says guns like the AR and AK are white hot with consumers.
“Modern sporting rifles remain the most commonly purchased rifle by Americans today,” Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF senior vice president, told Guns.com.
Keane explained the guns are popular in large part due to the inherent modularity of such platforms, which provide the ability to customize them to fit the individual owner and the wide variety of needs they can fulfill. “They are offered a wide variety of calibers and the design of the firearm allows beginners to quickly master safe and accurate marksmanship skills,” he said. “Modern sporting rifles are the choice for millions of Americans for hunting, recreational target shooting and self-defense.”
Subject to a federal ban on “assault weapons” that ran from 1994 through 2004, the NSSF found that the number of MSRs dipped to a low of just 70,000 produced and imported in 1996, but has been climbing ever since. By 1998, even while the ban was in effect, the figure doubled to 145,000. By 2003, the last year of the ban, the numbers of guns broached 380,000. Five years later, with the election of President Obama, numbers hit 633,000. Then, in 2009, a solid 1 million. In 2013, following the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut and a wave of gun control legislation both proposed and enacted: 2.3 million.
In 2014, upholding Maryland’s strict new gun control laws, U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake ruled that AR-15 style rifles and others “fall outside Second Amendment protection as dangerous and unusual arms.” Blake went on to explain her reasoning that the then-estimated 8.2 million AR-15 and AK-47 based semi-automatic rifles known imported to or produced in the country between 1990 and 2012 represent “no more than 3 percent of the current civilian gun stock.” Even this, she maintained, was highly concentrated in an even smaller “1 percent” of the U.S. population.
In 2016, Blake’s ruling was reversed by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who held that the same figure of guns, coupled with an estimated 75 million magazines “are so common that they are standard” with Chief Judge William Byrd Traxler, Jr. going on to say, “In sum, semi-automatic rifles and LCMs [large capacity magazines] are commonly used for lawful purposes, and therefore come within the coverage of the Second Amendment.”
Nonetheless, Traxler’s ruling was later overturned by a rare en banc panel of the entire court which stood behind the ban in a 10-4 ruling that the Supreme Court declined to review further.
The same year that Maryland’s ban was upheld, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., grilled Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch on if AR-15s were in common use, or could be restricted as unusual, in line with the 2008 Heller case.
More at ...
NSSF: AR-15/AK numbers top 16 million
