Awkward: NYT Cites NSSF Data Showing ‘Assault Weapons’ Meet Heller Test, are Commonly Owned

You know those “assault weapons” that are banned in 10 usual suspect states? We’re talking, of course, about semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 and AK47 variants. The very rifles that the gun control industry works so hard to label as “weapons of war” and convince Mr. and Mrs. America that they’re somehow uniquely deadly and only owned by northern Idaho militia members and wanna-be school shooters.

The funny thing about those rifles is that they’re owned by a lot of people. According to data from the NSSF, more than 32 million of them are in gun safes all over the country. You might even say that this is a type of gun that’s commonly owned in America. And common ownership is the standard established in Heller that firearms need to meet to be protected under the Second Amendment.

The thing is, the gun control industry scoffs at the NSSF’s numbers. They claim the industry trade association is just a mouthpiece for gun makers (duh) and that however many “assault weapons” are owned by Americans, most are in the hands of just a few gun nuts and ammosexuals.

But a piece in the anti-gun left’s favorite media outlet, the New York Times, cites the NSSF’s data that the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex loves to claim is pro-gun garbage.

The NYT article notes the virtual collapse of the market for AK variant rifles here in the US of A over the last few years. They attribute the dearth of demand for AKs in America to a few factors . . .

The collapse of the AK market shows how the buying habits of the country’s large community of firearms enthusiasts can be shaped by geopolitical forces. The causes of the firearm’s disappearance include tariffs, sanctions, rising ammunition prices related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the soaring popularity of the AR-15.

And then to illustrate the size of the market for semi-auto rifles, NYT scribe Thomas Gibbons-Neff writes this:

The most recent data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation shows that more than 30 million “modern sporting rifles,” an umbrella term that includes both the AK and AR-15, have been in circulation in the United States since 1990.

There is no specific figure that provides the exact breakdown of the types of rifles, but industry experts point to the price of an AR-15 and its ammunition, compared with the far more expensive AK and its ammunition, as reasons for the rifle’s decline in U.S. markets. Cheap ammunition prices were once a huge driver of demand for the AK.

All true enough. But what’s at least noteworthy here is that the Times’ allegedly high standards for editing and fact-checking deemed the NSSF’s data as sufficiently reliable to be used as an indicator of how many ARs and AKs Americans own.

In other words, these guns, as a class, are, by any measure, commonly owned. As the NSSF likes to point out, Americans own more ARs and AKs than they do Ford F-150 pickups. And being commonly owned — just ask the New York Times — that means they’re protected under the Second Amendment…a point that the DOJ will surely make in its lawsuit against the city of Denver’s “assault weapons” ban.

So if you’re a gun-grabber who’s beavering away trying to disarm law-abiding Americans, this latest from the Gray Lady is just another example — if you needed one — of how you’re on the losing side of the argument and the wrong side of history. Bummer.