Georgetown Professor's 2026 Gun Survey Refutes Gun Control Activists' Criticisms and Narratives
Source: "Georgetown professor's gun survey finds 2.2 million defensive uses | Fox News." September 4, 2026. www.foxnews.com
The Gist
A Georgetown professor redid his gun ownership survey to fix problems that gun control activists complained about, but the new results actually showed even MORE Americans own 'assault weapons' and use guns for self-defense than his original survey found. The author argues this proves gun control activists were wrong to dismiss the original research, since fixing their complaints just confirmed the same pro-gun conclusions.
Conclusion
The 2026 National Firearms Survey, conducted specifically to address gun control activists' methodological complaints about the 2021 survey, vindicates the original findings and further undermines anti-gun narratives about gun ownership and defensive gun use.
Premises
- Gun control activists heavily criticized the 2021 National Firearms Survey's methodology, particularly regarding how it defined 'assault weapons' ownership and defensive gun use.
- Professor English redesigned the 2026 survey specifically to address these criticisms, using narrower, more precise definitions (e.g., 'currently own' rather than 'ever owned,' and specific pistol-grip AR-15 style rifles).
- Despite these methodological corrections favoring critics' preferred definitions, the 2026 survey found even higher rates of 'assault weapon' and high-capacity magazine ownership (26.4 million and 44.5 million respectively) than the 2021 survey.
- The 2026 survey found defensive gun use estimates increased to 2.2 million annually, higher than the 2021 estimate of 1.67 million, contradicting critics' claims that the original numbers were inflated.
- Public carry rates increased significantly (60% increase in permit holders who carry), coinciding with the expansion of permitless carry laws in states representing over 117 million people since 2021.
- These findings collectively demonstrate that when critics' specific methodological complaints were addressed, the results still supported gun-rights narratives rather than undermining them.
Assumptions
- The 2026 survey's methodology is itself sound and free from significant flaws or biases.
- The critics' original objections were made in good faith and were specific enough to be directly testable through survey redesign.
- Self-reported survey data on gun ownership and defensive gun use is reasonably reliable and not subject to significant social desirability bias or recall issues.
- The comparison between 2021 and 2026 survey results reflects genuine trends rather than sampling differences or other confounding variables.
- Higher rates of gun ownership and defensive use are relevant to broader debates about gun control policy and Second Amendment rights.