April 1
527 – Byzantine Emperor Justin I names his nephew Justinian I as co-ruler and successor to the throne.
1789 – The first quorum of the U.S. House of Representatives’ 1st Congress meets at Federal Hall in New York City, electing Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its first Speaker.
1833 – 56 delegates of Mexican Texas meet at the Convention of 1833 in San Felipe de Austin to draft a series of petitions to the government in Mexico City for redress of grievances and submitting a state constitution.
1865 – At the Battle of Five Forks, southwest of Petersburg Virginia, Union troops led by Philip Sheridan defeat Confederate troops led by George Pickett, cutting the Army of Northern Virginia’s last supply line.
1924 – Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years imprisonment for his participation in the “Beer Hall Putsch” of November 1923 in Munich, but spends only 9 months behind bars at Landsberg prison.
1945 – The 10th United States Army, consisting of the U.S. Army’s 7th, 27th, 77th and 96th Infantry Divisions and the US Marine Corps’ 1st, 2nd, and 6th Marine Divisions, invade the Japanese island of Okinawa.
A few hours into the invasion, the cruiser USS Vincennes is attacked by Kamikaze aircraft, the Gunner’s Mates Guns aboard shooting down one that crashes less than 50 feet from the stern.
1946 – A 8.6 Mw earthquake strikes the Aleutian Islands, injuring over 165 people, also causing a tsunami reaching the Hawaiian Islands resulting in 173 deaths, mostly in Hilo, Hawaii.
1960 – NASA’s TIROS-1 Television InfraRed Observation Satellite transmits the first television picture to Earth, of the Earth, from space.
1970 – President Nixon signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, revising the warning on cigarette packaging and banning cigarette advertisements on American radio and television.
1976 – Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple Computer, Inc.
1997 – Comet Hale–Bopp is seen passing at perihelion, it’s closest approach to the Sun. No spacecraft is detected in its vicinity.
2001 – An EP-3E U. S. Navy surveillance aircraft collides with a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Shenyang J-8 fighter jet, with the resulting loss of the Chinese pilot. The Navy crew makes an emergency landing in Hainan, China where they are detained for 10 days.
2004 – Google launches its Email service Gmail.
2011 – After protests against the burning of a Quran turn violent, a mob attacks a United Nations compound in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of 13 people, including 8 foreign workers. None of the U.S. troops and their supporting civil service employees deployed there come under threat of attack.
Watch this robotic dog use one of its ‘paws’ to open doors
Oh, great. They can let themselves inside buildings now.
Even with their many advances, quadrupedal robots’ legs are most often still just made for walking. Using individual front paws for moving and non-locomotion tasks like pushing buttons or moving objects, however, usually falls outside the machines’ reach, but a team of researchers appear to be designing them to finally bridge that gap.
Roboticists from Carnegie Mellon University and UC Berkeley have demonstrated the ability to program a quadrupedal robot—in this case, a Unitree Go1 one utilizing an Intel RealSense camera—to use its front limbs not only to walk, but also to help climb walls and interact with simple objects, as needed. The progress, detailed in a paper to be presented next month at the International Conference of Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2023), potentially marks a major step forward for what quadrupedal robots can handle. There’s also some pretty impressive video demonstrations, as well. Check out the handy machine in action below:
To pull off these abilities, researchers broke down their robots’ desired tasks into two broad skill sets—locomotion (movement like walking or climbing walls) and manipulation (using one leg to interact with externalities while balancing on the other three limbs). As IEEE Spectrum explains, the separation is important: Often, these tasks can prove to be in opposition to one another, leading robots to get stuck in computational quandaries. After training how to handle both skill sets within simulations, the team combined it all into a “robust long-term plan” via learning a behavior tree from “one clean expert demonstration,” according to the research paper.
Developing cost-effective robots capable of tackling both movement and interaction with their surroundings is a key hurdle in deploying machines that can easily maneuver through everyday environments. In the research team’s videos, for example, the quadrupedal robot is able to walk up to a door, then press the nearby wheelchair access button to open it. Obviously, it’s much easier to rely on a single robot to manage both requirements, as opposed to using two robots, or altering human-specific environments to suit machines.
Combine these advancements with existing quadrupedal robots’ abilities to traverse diverse terrains such as sand and grass, toss in the trick of scaling walls and ceilings, and you’ve got a pretty handy four-legged friend.
Shots exchanged on I-240 after man rams, disables woman’s car
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A man is facing assault charges after police say he rammed and disabled his ex-girlfriend’s car on the interstate and fired several shots at her.
Randy Johnson, 24, was charged with two counts of aggravated assault following the incident Monday near I-240 and Crump.
Johnson was also treated for a gunshot wound to the hand.
The victim told police she pulled up to her apartment building with a male friend and noticed Johnson, the father of her child, parked in front of her building. She said Johnson saw the man inside her car and became enraged.
The victim said she left the apartment complex, and Johnson started following her. She said he began ramming the back of her Nissan Altima when she got on the interstate while pointing a gun at her. She said Johnson also threatened to kill her.
Police said Johnson rammed the Altima so many times that it broke down. The victim said Johnson got out of his vehicle, broke the rear passenger window of her car, and fired three to four shots inside her car.
Investigators said the friend with the victim returned fire, hitting Johnson in the hand.
The shooting is part of the more than 30 police says that have played out on Memphis interstates so far this year. The violence is familiar to experts too.
BREAKING: Renna v. Bonta (S.D. CA): Judge issues preliminary injunction against California handgun roster's chamber load indicator, magazine disconnect, microstamping, and 3-for-1 removal provisions. This is the 2nd injunction against the roster in 2wks. https://t.co/iprbXy0m6B pic.twitter.com/OKmlXZ0xcI
— Rob Romano (@2Aupdates) March 31, 2023
Burglar shot and killed by resident after breaking into Lake Forest Park home
LAKE FOREST PARK — A resident shot and killed an attempted burglar in north King County on Wednesday afternoon.
According to the Lake Forest Park Police Department, officers responded to the Hillside neighborhood in Lake Forest Park at 1:35 p.m. Police said the burglar forced their way into the home before being shot by the sole resident.
Police arrived within minutes, they said, and attempted “life saving measures” and determined there was no threat to the public.
There was a large presence of police officers and fire crews, police said.
March 31
1146 – During a council convoked by French King Louis VII at Vézelay, France, the Benedictine monk Bernard of Clairvaux preaches a sermon urging a Second Crusade due to the fall of the crusader state of Edessa in southern Turkey, causing the entire assembly to take up the pilgrim cross.
1492 – Queen Isabella of Castile issues the Alhambra Decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish and Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
1685 – Johann Sebastian Bach is born in Eisenach, Thuringia, Duchy of Saxe-Eisenach in modern Germany.
1774 – In response to the ‘Boston Tea Party’, the British parliament passes the Boston Port Act, the first of the Intolerable Acts closing down the port of Boston on June 1st.
1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Japanese Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened.
1899 – During the Phillipine-American War, Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, is captured by American forces.
1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association – NCAA) is established to set rules for college sports in the U.S.
1917 – By the terms of the Treaty of the Danish West Indies, The Virgin Islands are sold to the U.S. for $25 million in gold.
1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the U.S. for the first time.
1930 – The Motion Picture Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film in the U.S.
1931 – A Transcontinental & Western Air Fokker F-10 airliner crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing all 8 passengers and crew aboard, including University of Notre Dame head football coach, Knute Rockne.
1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps, a voluntary public work relief program, is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.
1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
1959 – Fleeing Chinese communist persecution in Tibet, the 14th Dalai Lama crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
1968 – During a televised speech on “Steps to Limit the War in Vietnam” President Lyndon B. Johnson concludes by announcing “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”
1992 – BB-63, USS Missouri, the last active U.S. Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
1995 – Singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez is murdered by her fan club’s president Yolanda Saldívar at a Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi, Texas
1998 – Netscape releases Mozilla source code under an open source license.
Donald Trump has issued a statement about his grand jury indictment. Read it in full here
A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump on charges involving payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter.
The indictment, confirmed Thursday by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, and other people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss sealed criminal charges, is an extraordinary development after years of investigations into his business, political and personal dealings. It is likely to galvanize critics who say Trump lied and cheated his way to the top and embolden supporters who feel the Republican is being unfairly targeted by a Democratic prosecutor.
The district attorney’s investigation centered on money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, whom he feared would go public with claims that they had extramarital sexual encounters with him.
Trump has issued a statement in response to the news of the indictment. It appears in its entirety below:
“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history. From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats – the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this Country – have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement. You remember it just like I do: Russia, Russia, Russia; the Mueller Hoax; Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; Impeachment Hoax 1; Impeachment Hoax 2; the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid; and now this.
“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable – indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference.
“Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done. The Democrats have cheated countless times over the decades, including spying on my campaign, but weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent, who just so happens to be a President of the United States and by far the leading Republican candidate for President, has never happened before. Ever.
“Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was hand-picked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace. Rather than stopping the unprecedented crime wave taking over New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work, ignoring the murders and burglaries and assaults he should be focused on. This is how Bragg spends his time!
“I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden. The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong – will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Quip O’ The Day:
The AI to really be afraid of is the one that deliberately fails the Turing Test.
ChatGPT has passed the Turing test and if you’re freaked out, you’re not alone.
Despite just releasing ChatGPT-4, OpenAI is already working on the fifth iteration of the immensely popular chat application, GPT-5. According to a new report from BGR, we could be seeing those major upgrades as soon as the end of the year.
One milestone, in particular, could be within reach if this turns out to be true: the ability to be indistinguishable from humans in conversation. And it doesn’t help that we’ve essentially been training this AI chatbot with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of conversations a day.
Computer and AI pioneer Alan Turing famously proposed a test for artificial intelligence that if you could speak to a computer and not know that you weren’t speaking to a human, the computer could be said to be artificially intelligent. With OpenAI’s ChatGPT, we’ve certainly crossed that threshold to a large degree (it can still be occassionally wonky, but so can humans), but for everyday use, ChatGPT passes this test.
Considering the meteoric rise and development of ChatGPT technology since its debut in November 2022, the rumors of even greater advances are likely to be true. And while seeing such tech improve so quickly can be exciting, hilarious, and sometimes insightful, there are also plenty of dangers and legal pitfalls that can easily cause harm.
For instance, the amount of malware scams being pushed has steadily increased since the chatbot tech’s introduction, and its rapid integration into applications calls into question privacy and data collection issues, not to mention rampant plagiarism issues. But it’s not just me seeing the issue with ChatGPT being pushed so rapidly and aggressively. Tech leaders and experts in AI have also been sounding the alarm.
AI development needs to be culled
The Future of Life Institute (FLI), an organization that is dedicated to minimizing the risk and misuse of new technologies, has published an open letter calling for AI labs and companies to immediately halt their work on OpenAI systems beyond ChatGPT-4. Notable figures like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk have agreed that progress should be paused in order to ensure that people can enjoy existing systems and that said systems are benefiting everyone.
The letter states: “Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.”
As we’re seeing, the rush for companies to integrate and use this new technology is causing a plethora of issues. These include CNET using it to generate articles that sometimes contained inaccuracies, to credit card information potentially being leaked on ChatGPT. There’s very little being done in the way of protecting privacy, intellectual property rights of smart artists, or preventing personal information stored from leaking.
And until we get some kind of handle on this developing technology and how companies using it do so safely and responsibly, then development should pause until we do.
Democrats’ Knee-Jerk Gun-Control Demands Ignore The Most Basic Facts About Human Nature
The difficult truth is, stopping these shootings is not just a matter of policy — it’s a matter of the heart.
The elementary school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, is a tragedy no community should ever have to endure. As fathers, our hearts break for those innocent children and their parents, as well as the brave and selfless teachers. The heroic police officers, who sprang into action with total disregard for their own safety, saved countless lives. The shooter, whose name should not be made famous by the media, reminds us there is evil in this world, that every moment with our families is precious, and that something in our country must change.
Unfortunately, the radical left has once again rushed to demand new laws and policy changes that would have done nothing to stop this tragedy — or any tragedy.
The renewed call to expand background checks to cover even private gun sales between friends and family members ignores the fact that most mass shooters who bought guns legally — including radical Islamic terrorists — passed background checks anyway. And no law will stop criminals from getting guns illegally by stealing them or acquiring them on the black market, because they’re criminals.
The Nashville tragedy has also reignited calls to implement so-called “red-flag laws” in which American citizens can have their firearms confiscated without due process, even as a result of baseless accusations or innuendo. Research shows such laws have no effect on violent crime, and it’s possible they could actually increase suicide rates by making troubled individuals fear discussing their issues with friends or family members because their ability to defend themselves and their loved ones could be taken away.
All 50 states already have laws on the books — often referred to as “Baker Act” statutes — regulating how to handle individuals who could be a danger to themselves or others and allowing medical professionals to intervene when necessary. In the case of the Nashville shooter — a transgender-identifying 28-year-old reportedly receiving treatment for mental illness — if police had been made aware that the shooter was hiding guns, they said they would have seized them.
As with so many similar tragedies, the cowardly Covenant School shooter chose a soft target, shooting through the school’s locked doors and counting on it taking time for armed law enforcement to respond. In fact, police said the shooter had mentioned another potential target, “but because of threat assessment by the suspect, too much security, they decided not to” attack it.
If you think criminals don’t consider this when planning an attack, then you haven’t read last year’s Buffalo, New York shooter’s manifesto in which he wrote that areas where concealed carrying of a weapon is “outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack” and that “areas with strict gun laws are also great places of attack.”
Yeah, there’s this thing called ‘due process’…….
BLUF
It nevertheless seems clear that the current policy sweeps too broadly by disarming people, potentially including victims of domestic abuse, even when they have no history of violence or threats. That reality certainly seems relevant in assessing the government’s claim that people subject to restraining orders are ipso facto in the same category as “dangerous” individuals who historically have been deemed unfit to own guns.
The Ruling Upholding the Gun Rights of People Subject to Restraining Orders Is Not As Crazy As You Might Think
The 5th Circuit noted that such orders can be issued without any credible evidence of a threat to others.
The Biden administration is asking the Supreme Court to reverse a recent decision in which an appeals court concluded that the federal ban on gun possession by people subject to domestic-violence restraining orders violates the Second Amendment. In a petition filed this month, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar portrays that law as a commonsensical precaution that is “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the constitutional test that the Court established last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. But there are reasons to doubt that the “historical analogues” cited by the government are close enough and ample cause to worry about the threat that the policy it is defending poses to civil liberties.
Under 18 USC 922(g)(8), which Congress enacted in 1994, it is a felony, currently punishable by up to 15 years in prison, for someone to possess firearms when he is “subject to a court order” that restrains him from “harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner” or “engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury.” The provision requires that the order be issued after a hearing of which the respondent received notice. It also says the order must either include a finding that the respondent “represents a credible threat” to the intimate partner’s “physical safety” or explicitly prohibit “the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force” that “would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury.”
The man at the center of this case, a Texas drug dealer named Zackey Rahimi, was convicted of violating Section 922(g)(8) in circumstances that suggest he is exactly the sort of person who should not be trusted with firearms. But his conduct allegedly included a string of violent crimes that would themselves disqualify him from owning guns. The question raised by this case is not whether someone like Rahimi should be allowed to own guns. It is whether the government violates the Second Amendment when it deprives people of the right to armed self-defense based on nothing more than a restraining order that may have been issued without any credible evidence that the respondent poses a danger to others.
When it overturned Rahimi’s conviction in February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit noted that he is “hardly a model citizen,” which is putting it mildly. In December 2019, Prelogar notes, “Rahimi and his girlfriend C.M. had an argument in a parking lot in Arlington, Texas. C.M. tried to leave, but Rahimi grabbed her wrist, knocking her to the ground. He then dragged her back to his car, picked her up, and pushed her inside, causing her to hit her head on the dashboard. Realizing that a bystander had seen him, he retrieved a gun and fired a shot. In the meantime, C.M. escaped the car and fled the scene. Rahimi later called her and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone about the assault.”
Poor NY Times Karen. It’s going to be much farther than she can imagine.
I’m not going to fisk the inaccuracies and outright lies in the article, as they’ll stand out by simple reading.
We’re About to Find Out How Far the Supreme Court Will Go to Arm America
How much further will the Supreme Court go to assist in the arming of America? That has been the question since last June, when the court ruled that New York’s century-old gun licensing law violated the Second Amendment. Sooner than expected, we are likely to find out the answer.
On March 17, the Biden administration asked the justices to overturn an appeals court decision that can charitably be described as nuts, and accurately as pernicious. The decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit invalidated a federal law that for almost 30 years has prohibited gun ownership by people who are subject to restraining orders for domestic violence.
The Fifth Circuit upheld the identical law less than three years ago. But that was before President Donald Trump put a Mississippi state court judge named Cory Wilson on the appeals court. (As a candidate for political office in 2015, Wilson said in a National Rifle Association questionnaire that he opposed both background checks on private gun sales and state licensing requirements for potential gun owners.)
Judge Wilson wrote in a decision handed down in March that the appeals court was forced to repudiate its own precedent by the logic of the Supreme Court’s decision in the New York licensing case. He was joined by another Trump judge, James Ho, and by Edith Jones, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan; Judge Jones has long been one of the most aggressive conservatives on the country’s most conservative appeals court.
Now it is up to the justices to say whether that analysis is correct.
Fifteen years after the Supreme Court’s Heller decision interpreted the Second Amendment to convey an individual right to own a gun, there is no overstating the significance of the choice the court has been asked to make. Heller was limited in scope: It gave Americans a constitutional right to keep handguns at home for self-defense. The court’s decision last June in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen was on the surface also quite limited, striking down a law that required a showing of special need in order to obtain an unrestricted license to carry a concealed gun outside the home. New York was one of only a half-dozen states with such a requirement, as the court put it in the Bruen decision.
Missouri bill to ban federal “red flag” laws, funding killed by Republican senator
JEFFERSON CITY — A Missouri bill that would ban federal funds and programs from being used in the state to enforce “red flag” gunmeasures was killed by a committee Wednesday.
Republican Sen. Bill Eigel of Weldon Spring filed the legislation, Senate Bill 10, in response to a recent plan from the U.S. Department of Justice to distribute dollars to states to administer “red flag” laws and other crisis intervention programs related to gun violence.
But the legislation failed to pass out of committee after a Republican joined Democrats in voting it down, citing a school shooting in Nashville this week that killed three students and three adults.
Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Springfield Republican, joined the two Democrats on the committee to vote against the legislation. Three other Republicans — Sens. Rick Brattin, Rusty Black and Mike Bernskoetter — voted in favor of the bill, but did not reach the majority of votes required. The fourth Republican on the committee, Sen. Mike Cierpiot, did not vote.
“I think it’s a little disheartening, quite frankly, to even be having this sort of conversation given what happened two days in Nashville,” Hough said prior to the vote. “But I’m more than happy to go ahead and have a vote right now.”
Bernskoetter, the chairman of the committee, responded that “I told (Eigle) I would have a vote on it and I’m having a vote on it.”
Eigel has said the legislation “builds on” a 2021 law that nullified federal gun statutes in Missouri, which is currently facing litigation and has been decried by members of law enforcement.
“The federal government, the Biden administration, is trying very hard to try to use federal dollars to be sent into the state of Missouri to incentivize the creation of these red flag databases,” he said at a hearing in February.
In a Twitter post Wednesday after the vote, Eigel alleged that Hough and Cierpiot had “coordinated and vote to derail” the bill, calling it a “dark day for supporters of (the Second Amendment).”
Wednesday’s vote marks the second consecutive session Hough has joined with Democrats in committee to vote down legislation relating to guns. He and another Republican voted with Democrats last year to kill legislation that would have expanded legal immunity for those who shoot and kill someone in self-defense. That bill was dubbed the “Make Murder Legal Act” by an association of county prosecutors.
Take a Seat at the Second Amendment Table!
Want to be respected for your firearms knowledge? There’s no shortcut—just put in the time!
Americans own guns for many reasons: hunting, recreational and competitive shooting, collecting, self-defense and personal protection, among others. But the most complete and thorough answer is, “Because we can!” We all deserve a “seat at the table” when it comes to gun ownership and gun rights.
Historically, men have dominated the market when it comes to firearm ownership, training and even writing about guns. Thus it would stand to reason that men have traditionally occupied the most number of seats at the table. Generally speaking, this is because men have owned more firearms, taken more training, and go to the range more often than women. But wait, do not give up hope! The Second Amendment, written by our framers to guarantee Americans’ ability to protect themselves from tyranny, and from those who seek to do them harm, is for everyone.
Rest assured, the “table” is getting larger—much larger! As we continually report on this site, women make up the fastest growing demographic of gun owners. But because you deserve a seat at the table, does not necessarily mean you are going to get one! It takes more than pulling out the proverbial chair and just sitting down. As with all subject-matter expertise, it takes work to become proficient in any topic. It takes research, dedication, training and practice. Firearms are no different. Unfortunately, we live in a world today where people equate watching YouTube videos with becoming proficient or an “expert” in any topic. There is no shortcut to excelling in any given activity. You have to put in your time.
The – virulently – antigun Washington Post did the poll?
That means the percentage is likely much, much higher.
Poll: One in Twenty Americans Own an AR-15
Tens of millions of Americans own an AR-15.
That’s according to a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll released on Monday. The poll surveyed Americans more broadly to gauge gun ownership and found that 31 percent of adults report owning guns. Of those, the poll found that 20 percent own an AR-15 rifle.
“Taken together, the polls find that 6 percent of Americans own an AR-15, about 1 in 20,” Post reporter Emily Guskin wrote. “The data suggests that with a U.S. population of 260.8 million adults, about 16 million Americans own an AR-15.”
The survey is the latest evidence to confirm the popularity of AR-15s and similar rifles, often dubbed “assault weapons” by critics, among the American gun-owning public. The extent of their ownership could factor heavily in the political debate over their continued legality as multiple blue states mull bans and gun rights groups prepare to contest them.
That finding provides new insight into ownership of the popular rifle, which is valued by gun-rights advocates for its versatility and modularity but reviled by gun-control activists for its use by shooters in a number of high-profile attacks.
The poll’s estimates land in the ballpark of previous estimates. The National Shooting Sports Foundation has previously estimated that there are over 24.4 million AR-15s and similar rifles—which it calls “modern sporting rifles”—in civilian hands as of 2022. The National Firearms Survey, conducted in 2021 by Georgetown professor William English, found that 30.2% of gun owners, about 24.6 million people, indicated owning an AR-15 or similarly styled rifle.
In its landmark Heller decision, the Supreme Court found that the Second Amendment protects arms “in common use” by “law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Whether ownership among tens of millions of Americans is enough to fall into that camp may help determine the constitutionality of AR-15 bans. Although, a federal judge in Delaware ruled on Monday that state’s ban can stand despite the popularity of the rifle.
Self-defense was the most popular reason AR-15 owners in the poll gave for buying the gun. Around one-third listed it as the main reason for ownership, but nearly two-thirds said that it was “a major reason” for purchasing the rifle. Other popular answers given in roughly equal numbers included recreation, target shooting, hunting, and exercising their Second Amendment rights.
The poll found that AR-15 owners were around 20 percent more likely to be male than other gun owners and 30 percent more likely to be male than the U.S. adult population. Only 19 percent of AR-15 owners self-identified as female. AR-15 owners were also more likely than the adult population as a whole, and about equally likely as other gun owners, to be white. Three-quarters of AR-15 owners said they were white, while 11 percent said they were Hispanic, and nine percent said they were black.
AR-15 owners were also more likely to live in a suburban area, have a higher income, identify as politically Independent, and fall between the ages of 40-64 than other gun owners and the population as a whole. They were also significantly more likely to have served in the military, though nearly three-quarters of AR-15 owners said they had not served.
The poll identified a regional divide in AR-15 ownership as well. Nearly half of all AR-15 owners reported living in the South, while roughly one-quarter and one-fifth reported living in the West and Midwest, respectively. Only ten percent of AR-15 owners said they lived in the Northeast.
This Washington Post-Ipsos poll was conducted from September 30-October 11, 2022, among a random national sample of 2,104 gun owners, including 399 AR-15-style rifle owners. The margin of error for the sample of AR-15-style rifle owners is 5.5 points.
They released it now because ban "assault weapons"!!
— 1776 🇺🇸 My Oath Never Expires 🇺🇸 1776 (@Gunalizer) March 30, 2023
Well, fairly predictable………..
The mainstream press and trans-activists are trying to pin the targeted shooting deaths of 6 people, including three nine-year-old children, on Christians, while simultaneously rehabilitating the shooter, a trans man. Fair…?
– Jeff Goldstein
