According to a survey conducted in December 2021 for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association, the owners of AR- and AK-style rifles tend to stockpile the weapons, owning 3.8 on average. Of the 2,185 owners who responded to the survey, 97 percent said they owned AR-style weapons.
The survey results formed the basis of the NSSF’s “Modern Sporting Rifle Comprehensive Consumer Report,” which only recently became public after it was submitted as an exhibit in a trademark lawsuit between gun makers Fabrique Nationale (FN) and Ruger.1Note: Only the first half of the report was made public in the lawsuit. The report provides new insights about assault weapon owners and the gun industry’s incentives to keep producing and selling these military-style firearms to civilians despite their use in the country’s deadliest mass shootings.
It was the NSSF that coined the term “modern sporting rifle,” or “MSR,” in 2009 in an attempt to rebrand AR-15s, AK-47s, and other assault weapons as being appropriate for “sporting purposes” like hunting and target shooting — instead of weapons of war designed for maximum lethality.
target customers
The “Modern Sporting Rifle” report was produced to help NSSF members, and assault weapon manufacturers and retailers in particular, better understand and sell to their target customers. And according to the report, the AR and AK owners surveyed were overwhelmingly male (96 percent) and white (88 percent), with an average age of 55. These demographics stand in stark contrast to the NSSF’s newly launched “Faces of Firearms” campaign, which promotes “The Firearm Community” as being “Diverse” and “Inclusive.”
However, it is important to note that the survey results do not necessarily represent gun owners more broadly, but a smaller group of people who identified as “MSR” owners and were part of a “partner email distribution list,” such as those kept by firearm retailers. To “incentivize participation,” the respondents were entered into a “random drawing to win one of four $250 Mastercard prepaid gift cards.”
upselling with assault weapons
According to the report, the average number of AR- and AK-style rifles owned has steadily increased since the NSSF’s previous studies, rising from an average of 2.6 in 2010 to 3.8 in 2021. While the sample size is limited, this figure suggests that assault weapons are highly concentrated among a smaller segment of American gun owners, rebutting industry claims that they are “commonly owned.” Taking the NSSF’s own estimate for the number of “MSRs” in circulation at the time2The NSSF estimates that 28.1 million MSRs were produced through 2021, the year of the “MSR” report, minus exports, but as discussed here, this figure is distorted because it does not distinguish between military, police, or civilian rifles and appears to include rifles in the hands of prohibited owners, such as criminals and domestic abusers, and those that have been illegally trafficked. Further, the NSSF states that it arrived at that number using firearm production data from the ATF — which does not separate semi-automatic rifles from non-semi-automatic rifles, and many companies produce both — and “industry estimates,” but the organization has never published the underlying data. and applying it to the survey results, there are, at most, 10.3 million “MSR” owners,3The NSSF study claims that 24% of MSR owners own one MSR, 20.5% own two, 14.3% own three, and 41.2% own “4+.” For the purposes of obtaining a broad estimate of the number of MSR owners, this estimate assumes all owners of 4+ MSRs own exactly four MSRs. The ownership proportions, when applied to a total of 28.1 million MSRs, yield a total of 10.3 million MSR owners. Since it is likely the case that many MSR owners own more than four MSRs, the total number of MSR owners in the United States is likely lower than this estimate. representing just 4 percent of all adults in the U.S.
Additionally, 27 percent of the respondents who own one AR or AK said that they had purchased it in 2020 or 2021, during the pandemic. Nearly 20 percent of the respondents who own five or more ARs or AKs said that they purchased them between 2005 and 2009, shortly after the federal assault weapons ban sunset in 2004. A quarter of the respondents said they were “very likely” to purchase another AR or AK within a year of taking the survey.
The respondents also chose “recreational target shooting” as the “most important” reason for owning ARs and AKs, but ranked hunting and competitive shooting as least important — despite the gun industry’s efforts to market the guns for those very uses. The respondents noted that they purchased their most recent AR or AK rifles because they were accurate, “fun,” and “easy to shoot.”
The survey results also show how profitable ARs and AKs can be for the gun industry. While these rifles cost anywhere from $400 to well over $2,000, according to the NSSF survey, 86 percent of the respondents said that they had accessorized their most recently acquired ARs and AKs with extra magazines, optics and sights, grips, slings, flashlights, and other products, spending an average of $618. Three-quarters of the respondents said they had added accessories to their rifles within a year of purchasing them.
buying silencers
Finally, the report notes that the “accessory that MSR owners most frequently said they planned to buy in the next 12 months is a suppressor/silencer.” Just 8 percent of the respondents said that they owned a silencer in December 2021, but 37 percent said that they planned to purchase one within a year of taking the survey.
According to the Silencer Shop, silencers cost between $225 and $2,000, providing yet another revenue stream for the gun industry.
Federal law imposes strict registration requirements on silencers because of the danger they pose. These devices muffle the sound of gunfire, making it difficult for bystanders to recognize gunshots and determine where they originated. But silencer sales have surged in recent years — thanks in part to the NSSF’s own lobbying efforts to streamline the application and approval process — despite their use in at least two mass shootings and the high-profile assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024. The NSSF has also joined other gun groups in lobbying for bills like the Hearing Protection Act, which would deregulate silencers and make them easier to own.