From military weapon to cultural symbol: how the AR-15 has defined the US gun debate
From military weapon to cultural symbol: how the AR-15 has defined the US gun debate
Authors of the book American Gun talk about the long history of the country’s most popular firearm and the role it plays in politics
Sure, but the rifle in question is not, and has never been a military weapon. The premise is that this is a "weapon of war", as the redcoats like to describe it.
Besides, the "assault-style features" are purely cosmetic and have no bearing on the functionality of the rifle.
I'm assuming you know who Eugene Stoner is. If you do, you would also be aware that he designed the AR10 in a competition to be a replacement for the M1 Garand. You'd also be aware that the South Vietnamese liked it so much that they asked him to design a smaller version, which resulted in another team at Armalite scaling the AR10 down in addition to Stoner himself designing a new cartridge based on the Remington 222 (IIRC). Smaller weapon was a lot easier for the smaller stature of the Vietnamese to handle and also caught the attention of Curtis LeMay for use as survival equipment for his pilots.
If you don't know any of that, perhaps you should educate yourself. A great place to start would be the Library of Congress interviews with Eugene Stoner, where he lays out the exact history I described above, which are on YouTube.
Stoner's AR-15 and the AR-15 of today are pretty different. Now it's a genericized term for a firearms platform.
Think of it like a PC. It's about parts being mostly compatible. Lots of parts are interchangeable, though not everything matches. For instance the ammunition dictate the barrel and bolt size, and the buffer tube determines which stocks can be used, etc.
The common feature on pretty much all of them is the lower receiver, which is different than it was for Stoner and for military guns.
AR-15 receivers don't accommodate a part that's required for full-auto or burst fire, and modding them to accept the part is a super duper ultra felony - even if you don't put the part in.
Oh - and the weapon from Armalite used for pilot survival is a COMPLETELY different firearm. It's the AR-5, and was a 22 hornet takedown rifle that is not useful for combat at all. You can buy one today in .22lr called the AR-7 or "Henry Survival Rifle."
The "AR" designation just means they were designed by the Armalite Rifle company - the AR-17 was actually a shotgun designed for bird hunting.
Sure, but the rifle in question is not, and has never been a military weapon. The premise is that this is a “weapon of war”, as the redcoats like to describe it.
Yes, thank you for this demonstration of pedantism.
If they're just cosmetic and have no bearing on the functionality, does that make whoever uses them a lamewad cosplayer?
I wanna say Mall Shooter (like Mall Ninja), but...
AR-15 is a gender identity in some parts.
From the piece,
How did the AR-15 go from being mainly used on battlefields to one of the most popular firearms among civilians in the US?
This question is based on a false premise. Neither the Colt AR-15, nor the ArmaLite AR-15 have ever been used "on battlefields".
You still see leaders in the Democratic party talking about, “we need another assault weapons ban,” when, as we show in our book, the first one really didn’t work. And secondly, there’s more than 20m in civilian hands right now – what’s a ban going to do at this point?
Support for those movements has been very episodic, whereas gun rights groups are laser-focused on one thing. So people have to start to talk beyond this binary of guns are bad or guns are good. We need to start thinking about surgical ways to make us all safer, because that’s the bottom line.
The man speaks truth. Gun bans aren't going to make anyone, except for police and criminals, safer.
This question is based on a false premise. Neither the Colt AR-15, nor the ArmaLite AR-15 have ever been used “on battlefields”.
I think it's based on "AR-15" being both a trademark describing specific products and a design pattern for a family of firearms where most components interchange between different manufacturers and models.
The US military M16 rifle and M4 carbine Are AR-15-pattern firearms, and military sales represented the bulk of early sales.
This question is based on a false premise. Neither the Colt AR-15, nor the ArmaLite AR-15 have ever been used “on battlefields”.
Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure you and everyone else understood the gist of the argument.Gun bans aren’t going to make anyone, except for police and criminals, safer.
Funny how the rest of the First World disagrees, and somehow they have far, far fewer mass shootings. But why allow facts get in the way of a cherished rhetoric?
@baldprophet:
Gun bans aren’t going to make anyone, except for police and criminals, safer.
And then @spaceghoti:
Funny how the rest of the First World disagrees, and somehow they have far, far fewer mass shootings.
This is how 2A debates always fucking go, amd have done for decades. Progress will never be made so long as both sides keep ignoring the real goalposts and keep talking past each other instead of listening.
I'll do my best to break this down for both of you chucklefucks:
Baldprophet, it's immaterial if gun bans will make anyone safer or not. The 2A is an Amendment, not a law, which is why gun bans are unconstitutional and an Amendment is required instead. Nothing in the 2A is predicated on safety.
Spaceghoti, it's immaterial how many mass shootings we have. The 2A is an Amendment, not a law, which is why gun bans are unconstitutional and an Amendment is required instead. Nothing in the 2A is predicated on the number of mass shootings we have.
Spaceghoti, you get a second blurb, because Baldprophet brought up the irrelevant safety issue, and then you moved the goalpost. Unless safety and mass shootings are synonymous, which is not something you established in your post, your response to Baldprophet is a non sequitur and utterly irrelevant even to their irrelevant nonsense.
You write:
Neither the Colt AR-15, nor the ArmaLite AR-15 have ever been used “on battlefields”.
However, Wikipedia disagrees, citing use of the AR-15 by South Vietnam:
In October 1961, William Godel, a senior man at the Advanced Research Projects Agency, sent 10 AR-15s to South Vietnam. The reception was enthusiastic, and in 1962, another 1,000 AR-15s were sent.
That is accurate, but it glosses over the designation change. It is noted in the same article:
Colt continued to use the AR-15 trademark for its line of semi-automatic-only rifles marketed to civilian and law-enforcement customers, known as Colt AR-15. The Armalite AR-15 is the parent of a variety of Colt AR-15 and M16 rifle variants.
The version of the AR-15 that was sent overseas in 1961 was fully automatic. The trademark was retained for semi-automatic rifles and there are functional differences in the rifles mentioned.
Yes, it was titled as an AR-15, but it was not a civilian version. The difference is fully automatic vs. semi-automatic here, names aside.
Ah, interesting. I didn't know that a small number of them were actually tested in Vietnam.
How did the AR-15 go from being mainly used on battlefields to one of the most popular firearms among civilians in the US?
This incorrect statement that you pointed out is really, really important. I would say its blatant falsehood, written so plainly in an editorial, is the cornerstone of why gun control laws are not being taken seriously by everyone. Talking heads that rehearse talking points without credibility.
Let's be clear: everyone wants gun safety and responsible laws. What safety and laws mean varies between different people and different political spectrums, however, if responsible people obtain guns more of the time, and gun ownership is reduced in groups that shouldn't own them, then everyone wins. This would mean that there would be less legal hesitance for people to own a gun who want them, and less gun violence, which is ultimately the point.
If inaccurate rhetorics are repeated by politicians and the media (like how AR-15s are used "in the battlefield"), then gun owners and parties that align more with gun ownership will very quickly and appropriately dismiss these concerns, because they are inaccurate. Not only does it not make progress, but it discredits those looking to increase gun safety, because they very blatantly don't have their facts straight.
What would you suggest as an alternative to a ban, since letting people shoot up schools, churches, and bowling alleys isn't tenable.
I believe that "gun free zones" should only exist with the presence of robust security systems. Having an easily-entered school with little, if any physical security designated as a "gun free zone" makes it a target for the fringe minority of people who have a desire to commit mass murder.
I also think that more meaningful social improvements need to be made, including addressing housing affordability, wealth equality, access to affordable health care, and addressing the decades-long mental health crisis.
I won't ever be supportive of a ban on guns for the same reason the United States refuses to sign on to certain arms treaties (such as the ones against cluster munitions and land mines): I refuse to go along with anything that would limit my ability to defend myself. The government won't guarantee my safety, so why should I give up the most effective tool for preventing myself from being a victim of violence?
Loves me a good gun pedantry thread. As if the kids aren't just as dead from "not an assault rifle."
Threads like this are why we'll always have this problem. God bless America.
As if the kids aren't just as dead from "not an assault rifle."
Totally agree. I think the focus on a particular type of firearm is a distraction.
Because many of the things people cite as a reason to ban "assault weapons" are shared by many other firearms.
Many other rifle rounds are at least as powerful as the 5.56 NATO (in terms of delivered energy). Plenty of firearms can be loaded with 30 round magazines (even Glock pistols). And it's moot anyway because magazine changes are quick and easy. Pistol grips exist on some firearms (and all, you know, pistols) not that a rifle grip isn't entirely functional also. Nearly all modern firearms designs are semi-automatic. One shot per trigger pull, no action needed to chamber a round (versus lever action, bolt action, pump action, etc). Automatic weapons have been tightly controlled since the 1968 federal firearms act.
So let's all be honest with ourselves whatever side of this discussion we are on. It isn't really about the AR-15 or "assault rifles". If you want to ban or further restrict access to that style of weapon because of its capabilities in the hands of a nutjob, and you want to make an effective policy, you are really going to need to ban or restrict access to all firearms. Some already know this. The ones arguing against a particular type, I think, don't.
And since there are so many firearms already owned by Americans, the only way for the policy to be truly effective is getting guns out of people's hands, nationwide, via a combination of buy-back or confiscation.
There are still arguments for or against. Whatever. But let's not argue as if assault rifles are magic. They're more or less as deadly as any firearm.
An AR-15 is only a cultural symbol for those who need it as a metal phallus symbol to compensate for certain ... inadequacies.
Funny you should say that. FTA:
Earlier this year, several Republican lawmakers were seen sporting a new accessory: lapel pins shaped like an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
Andrew Clyde, a Republican congressman from Georgia who also owns a gun store, later said he had handed out the pins to his congressional colleagues “to remind people of the second amendment of the constitution and how important it is in preserving our liberties”.
Never got why folks liked the ar15 besides maybe being easy to modify and being magazine based. Personally I wish it was a semi auto variant of the B.A.R. that caught on would also make a damned impressive hunting rifle to boot.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Andrew Clyde, a Republican congressman from Georgia who also owns a gun store, later said he had handed out the pins to his congressional colleagues “to remind people of the second amendment of the constitution and how important it is in preserving our liberties”.
(Most recently in Maine, where 18 people were shot and killed at a bowling alley and a bar; authorities found an AR-10, a predecessor to the AR-15, in the suspected gunman’s car.)
The potent symbolism of the AR-15 is what the Wall Street Journal reporters Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson say led them to write their new book, American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15.
Elinson: The history of the AR-15 begins in a detached garage in Los Angeles that belonged to a former marine named Eugene Stoner, a very mild-mannered and shy fellow.
He uses aluminium instead of steel and an efficient, lightweight internal system, using the energy from each shot to expel spent casings and load the next round.
You still see leaders in the Democratic party talking about, “we need another assault weapons ban,” when, as we show in our book, the first one really didn’t work.
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AK feels much nicer to use, NGL.
