I'm not a fan of the phrase "in common use" as it relates to firearms. It limits us in ways that the Founding Fathers never intended for us to be limited. However, there are times when it's really handy, like defending commonly owned firearms like the AR-15.
Even if "in common use" is limiting, the most popular rifle in America meets that standard...unless you write for The New Republic.
Then, of course, the term means something else entirely. Then, "in common use" means whatever the hell he wants it to mean.
Gun-rights advocates, however, hope to constitutionalize AR-15s by emphasizing their popularity. “The controlling question here is whether a given type of arm is ‘in common use today,’” the plaintiffs wrote, quoting from Bruen. (Emphasis theirs.) “The inquiry therefore is one that accounts for the American people’s judgment regarding what sorts of arms are appropriate for typical, lawful possession according to contemporary social and technological conditions.”
What counts as “typical”? What are “contemporary social and technological conditions”? How do the American people exercise their “judgment”? The plaintiffs fall back on opinion surveys and market data. The AR-15, they note, “is the most popular rifle in America.” Exact ownership numbers are difficult to determine, so researchers and pollsters typically extrapolate figures by polling gun owners. A major survey earlier this month, for example, estimated that around 30 percent of gun owners own an AR-15 or similar rifle. That would equal about 26.4 million owners in a country of 340 million people, the survey estimated.
Read another way, assault weapons do seem fairly unusual. Fewer than one-third of gun owners own one. They are not the principal weapon for personal self-defense outside the home and they are of dubious utility inside the home, as well. (A handgun is much easier to store and wield against a home intruder, for example.) It is telling that a different poll cited by the plaintiffs noted that 74 percent of assault weapon owners purchased one “in case law and order break down,” which is far afield from common or everyday use.
Except that "in common use" was always about lawful uses, not just self-defense or "in case law and order break down," which has happened a lot more over the last decade than anyone should be comfortable with.
But lawful uses extend beyond that. They include target shooting, three-gun competitions, long-distance shooting, and even hunting.
The problem here is that the writer, Matt Ford, has found the most convoluted way to come up with saying that the AR-15 isn't particularly common, despite its popularity. Yes, we're talking about industry numbers, but who else would know better than they do how many they sold? It's not just four dudes buying millions of rifles.
And if there were, I'd want to be one of those dudes, just for the record.
No, it's millions upon millions of people. 26.4 million AR-15s in gun-owning hands is 10 million more than the 16 million Ford F-Series pickups, which are the most common vehicles on the road today. No one blinks at saying those are common. In fact, they're often quick to blame them for climate change.
How much more common does something have to be to become common?
There's no other way to read anything here. Their principal purposes are irrelevant, and when nearly one in 12 households have such a gun, they are on par with the number who has swimming pools and so-called smart refrigerators.
Honestly, this is the most disgusting case of mental gymnastics I've seen in a while. I could make an entire day's worth of posts just ripping Ford apart for this screed, especially because he doesn't know what he's saying about anything else.
Luckily for him, I have better things to do.
