I’m speaking specifically about how many Americans have the legal ability to buy these weapons. The cost involved is why I added the “if they have the money” line.

There’s also the cost.

Hi-Point: The hole-puncher for the common folk.

Or auction house AK variants. Or strike old school fear into fascism with a Mosin Nagant or an M1 Garand (ping!).

Lol memes aside (and not judging!) there’s hardware to fill the need at all price points. It’s the ammo that’s hard to keep up with! Also, safety (and skill) training could be a lot more universally accessible and applied.

The time to gain familiarity and proficiency is also a severely limiting factor, and of course the working class have less and less of it.

I think our general attitude and understanding about firearms (in the U.S/“West”) has been intentionally poisoned into some bizarre right-wing fetish thing specifically to make sure level-headed, educated, reasonable people who weren’t ultra-capitalists wouldn’t be the group statistically holding a stupidly unholy amount of them.

I guess my point is: Capitalism will sell you whatever you like. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a vetting process for its preferred audience. It simply adjusts the culture to make the very idea revolting to those it would prefer not selling to, and amplifying the signal to stupidly comical degrees to its target audience.