Does anyone have numbers on how many civilian ARs might be in the hands of private US citizens?
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Does anyone have numbers on how many civilian ARs might be in the hands of private US citizens?
Squillions to the Nth degree (x7).
I was flicking through channels last night and saw that Anthony Bourdain show on CNN. He was in NM shooting an AR in the desert with some locals. He was talking about shooting, AR's in general and mentioned that estimates put it at around 4 million AR's owned in the US. I actually thought that might be a low estimate.
I think it was the physicist, Richard Feynman who liked to do estimations about various things. In the spirit of this I will estimate the number of ARs in civy hands.
1. Thinking of groups of people I can estimate a group of 175 people - neighbors, fellow workers, kin, etc. Of these 175 people I know 3 who own ARs (including me). My conversion factor is then, 0.017 AR/person.
2. There are about 300,000,000 people in the US.
300,000,000people X 0.017AR/person = 5,000,000ARs
Ar's are pretty mainstream with a significant recognition factor. Even though the availability is opening up I feel there will be a steady growth in the near future. . Thank you Wally World for bringing them to towns large and small.
I was just talking to a buddy the other day and he thought it was incredible I owned two. BUT, with that said. He was interested in picking one up himself. So I'm thinking ownership is on the rise.
Kinda close and an interesting method :)
That doesn't surprise me at all if the bulk of his fans are anything like a couple of people I know that like him.
Raises an interesting question: how many AR-15 and it's variants have been sold in the US in 2013 would you guess? Or are there actual industry figures that get released?