From military weapon to cultural symbol: how the AR-15 has defined the US gun debate

AR-15 is a gender identity in some parts.

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.

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.

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 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.

The original article contains 1,212 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 84%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

AK feels much nicer to use, NGL.

An AR-15 is only a cultural symbol for those who need it as a metal phallus symbol to compensate for certain ... inadequacies.

pssst. The AR-15 has been used officially adopted by a total of no military anywhere on the planet.

*about 1,000 Ar15 was purchased between 1957 and 1961, and tested, by the US military. I now realize this can fit the description of "used" if you wanted to be very liberal with the definition of "used," I suppose. So fine, "this problem was addressed in 1961."

Now, stop pretending that ar15s sold since 1961 are the same as M16s, better?