February 11, 2026

GOOD QUESTION: Commonly Owned: Why Do Media Outlets Understate the Number of AR-15s Americans Own?

If you ran a simple Google search of “how many Americans own AR-15s?”, the results would be woefully lacking. The Google AI tool gives an immediate answer of “approximately 16 million to 24.6 million” Americans who own an AR-15 or similarly styled semiautomatic rifle. Google’s high-end estimate is more than 20 percent off from the most current industry estimates.

The top articles referenced and provided as citation are all far out-of-date. The top article provided, from Georgetown University, is a republish of The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard writing about AR-15 popularity — from 2022 — also pegged at 24 million.

The second-highest-placed article — from Stephen Gutowski’s The Reload — is also from 2022 and puts MSR ownership at 24.4 million.

Next is a Washington Post article from 2023, suggesting there are only “20 million AR-15s in circulation.”

NBC News included the figure 24.4 million as well in 2020 in an article titled, “What makes the AR-15 so beloved and so reviled.”

All these publications could use a refresh on their research if they’re going to cover the popularity of the MSR and state legislation being proposed to ban their possession, use and sale.

Maybe the thinking is that it’s easier to get the majority to go along with persecuting an even tinier minority.

Posted at 1:46 pm by Stephen Green

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Knife Horror — Ex-pupil ‘sprayed classmate with substance before knifing two teens in school horror attack.’

A former pupil sprayed a 13-year-old classmate with a substance then stabbed two boys in a school horror attack, police said.

Cops arrested a boy, 13, on suspicion of two attempted murders after he fled the scene at Kingsbury High School in Brent, north west London.

Great moments in hard-hitting tabloid journalism: This London Sun article was written with very short one or two sentence paragraphs, but even so, it takes eight paragraphs before the word “mosque” is mentioned, and over 50 paragraphs before this detail: “Unconfirmed reports suggested the suspect yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ – God is great – as he launched the attack. However, sources stressed that youngsters carrying out such attacks often have a variety of potential motives.”

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE PARTY OF TOLERANCE AND DIVERSITY:

 

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

LIBERAL AMNESIA IS A SUPERPOWER:

We are all familiar with the liberal tap dance whenever we point out that some awful thing, such as chopping the genitals off of children, is happening.

It’s commonly described as a four-step process:

Step 1: It is not happening.

Step 2: Yeah, it’s happening, but it’s not a big deal

Step 3: It’s a good thing, actually,

Step 4: People freaking out about it are the real problem.

But actually, it is a five-step process, culminating with the claim that liberals never supported it in the first place. We are approaching that stage among center-left people regarding alphabet ideology, and we are well into step five in the COVID saga. I know many people now arguing that nobody wanted to keep kids out of school, nobody was forced to take the jab, and that nobody was censored for disagreeing with The Science™.

Never happened.

For some reason, I have run across several posts recently arguing that the “fat acceptance” movement was fringe, with nobody in the mainstream fronting for the idea that people could be “healthy at any size,” or that “fatphobia” was the real problem people suffering from obesity faced.

As Daniel Hannan wrote in 2014, “The greatest cultural victory of the Left has been to disregard the Nazi-Soviet Pact:”

To the modern reader, George Orwell’s depiction of how enmity alternates between Eurasia and Eastasia seems far-fetched; but when he published his great novel in 1948, such things were a recent memory. It suited Western Leftists, during and after the War, to argue that Hitler had been uniquely evil, certainly wickeder than Stalin. It was thus necessary to forget the enthusiasm with which the two tyrants had collaborated.

Back in the early 2000s, a similar pivot could be seen on the left’s 180-degree turn on the removal of Saddam Hussain. (George Clooney starred in a 1999 movie excoriating Bush #41 for failing to oust Saddam from power):

After (P)resident Biden set a $25 million bounty on Maduro’s head and after months of “No Kings” protests, the left once again pivoted on a dime over his ouster, including members of the (p)resident’s own administration: Kamala Harris Humiliates Herself Condemning Capture of Maduro.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

‘GUNPERSON’ IN A ‘DRESS’ BEHIND CANADA’S DEADLIEST SCHOOL SHOOTING IN DECADES, HORRIFIED TUMBLER RIDGE STUDENTS REVEAL:

High school students barricaded classroom doors with tables and chairs for at least two hours while a shooter — described as a “gunperson” in a “dress” — left nine dead and 25 injured during Canada’s deadliest school shooting in nearly 40 years.

Darian Quist, a 12th-grader, was in his mechanics class Tuesday afternoon when Tumbler Ridge Secondary School students in remote northeastern British Columbia were plunged into lockdown.

“For a while, I didn’t think anything was going on,” he told CBC. “I thought it was just like maybe a ‘Secure and hold’ but once everything starts circulating, we kind of realized something was wrong.”

Quist, his classmates and his teacher were all in the classroom — where they stayed for between two and two and a half hours — before being escorted out by cops. He did not hear the shooter go about their rampage.

Here’s the suspected “gunperson:”

Exit questions:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

COLORADO: Vacancy tax gimmick won’t make housing ‘affordable.’

Leave it to government to try to improve quality of life by proposing a law that would actually degrade it. Democrats don’t have a monopoly on this sort of legislation, but their philosophy of scarcity, especially artificial scarcity, makes them especially susceptible to its charms.

Rep. Brianna Titone (D-Arvada) and Rep. Elizabeth Velasco (D-New Castle) are seeking to extract money from out-of-town property owners to subsidize “affordable” housing with House Bill 26-1036. The bill would allow municipalities to tax residential properties that they define as vacant, based on the number of days of physical occupancy by their owners. Short-term rentals would be excluded.

The bill would also allow local governments to band together to form special taxing districts for this purpose, even if they were in different counties, as long as they had shared or contiguous boundaries.

How awful is this bill? Let us count the ways.

First, it’s an assault on property rights. Yes, according to the US Census, a couple of Colorado counties – Summit and Eagle – have a substantial number of vacant dwellings. But this isn’t the Soviet Union during Dr. Zhivago. You can’t simply tell people that their houses are nice, but they could be used for so many more people.

I dunno about that because you can’t tell a Colorado Democrat anything.

Posted at 11:42 am by Stephen Green

K-12 IMPROVEMENT UPDATE: These Three Red States Are the Best Hope in Schooling.

Louisiana ranks No. 1 in the country in recovery from pandemic losses in reading, while Alabama ranks No. 1 in math recovery.

The state with the lowest chronic absenteeism in schools is Alabama, according to a tracker with data from 40 states.

Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.

Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil).

How is this possible when southern states are governed by racist Republicans, and Massachusetts is run by enlightened progressives?

Posted at 10:40 am by Stephen Green

MAKE CONQUISTADORS GREAT AGAIN:

Who am I kidding? Conquistadors were always great.

Posted at 10:24 am by Stephen Green

JAPAN VS BRITAIN: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain.

The contrast between America’s great island allies on opposite ends of the world couldn’t be more drastic.

Japan has just given its commonsense conservative prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, a two-thirds supermajority in the national legislature’s Lower House; her Liberal Democratic Party took the highest proportion of seats of any party since World War II.

It’s an enormous vote of confidence not only in Takaichi’s economic agenda but also for her willingness to get tough with China.

Beijing’s mouthpieces have called Takaichi an “evil witch,” with China’s consul general in Osaka threatening, “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off” in response to Takaichi’s indication Japan would aid Taiwan against an invasion.

Such incendiary language didn’t intimidate Takaichi — nor, it turns out, Japan’s voters.

Yet even as Japan was rallying to its courageous prime minister, China was inflicting humiliation on America’s closest European ally.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 9:38 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Find Someone Who Looks at You the Way Dems Look at Violent Criminals. “As we head towards the all-important midterm elections, the Democrats are putting all of their efforts into being the champions of murderers, rapists, and thieves who are in this country illegally. OK, that’s not fair — they are also doing what they can to help out violent criminals who are U.S. citizens.”

Posted at 9:07 am by Stephen Green