The AR-15. It’s versatile, lightweight,
and highly customizable. It’s also very user friendly, relatively affordable, and
extremely popular among gun enthusiasts, especially in the United States. So much so that
there’s a joke that “AR” stands for “America’s Rifle.” But of course that’s not where it comes
from, and it doesn’t mean “assault rifle” either. Rather, “AR” stands for ArmaLite, the company that
produces the iconic weapon. But how did the AR-15 go from just another rifle to one of the most
popular guns ever produced in the United States? The tale begins in the 1950s.
The United States is about a decade removed from its pivotal role in helping
the Allies to achieve victory during World War II and it has established itself as the most
powerful nation on the planet. However, there’s a challenger to its throne – the Soviet Union. From
crucial compatriots to the U.S. and its allies in World War II, the Soviet Union quickly evolved
into one of the greatest threats to the American way of life. That threat was born from ideology –
Josef Stalin’s interpretation of communism stacked against the democratic and capitalistic concepts
that formed the backbone of the United States. That ideological clash led to the Cold War, a
period of bitter opposition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that began almost as
soon as World War II ended and ran for most of the 20th century. And it was against this
backdrop that a soft-spoken and self-taught inventor named Eugene Stoner began work on
what would become both the most beloved and most hated gun in American history.
Born in Gossport, Indiana in 1922, Stoner’s early career took him to Vega Aircraft
Company, where he worked installing armaments. That early taste of working with weaponry
would serve him well later in his career, but he first had to deal with the fact that he
w as of fighting age when World War II rolled around. Stoner did not shy away or wait to be
drafted. Rather, he enrolled in the U.S. Marine Corps, becoming an aviation ordnance specialist
serving in the South Pacific and Northern China. Upon the war’s end, Stoner would spend the
next nine years working in a Whitaker-owned machine shop. It wasn’t until 1954 that he
made a career decision that would change the course of American rifles forever:
He began working at ArmaLite. Back then, a division of Fairchild
Engine and Airplane Corporation, ArmaLite, likely hired Stoner because of his
extensive experience working with aircraft. Yet, that’s not where his focus lay. Stoner began
working on several of the forerunners to the rifle that would become so important to American
history, building an array of prototypes, many of which never reached full production runs.
His AR-3, AR-4, AR-11, and AR-12 designs would all meet this fate, consigned to the dustbin of
history, though also serving as crucial stepping stones toward the creation of the AR-15.
However, he saw success with other rifles before the AR-15 was released.
The AR-5 is an excellent example. Weighing just 2.5 pounds, this bolt
action rifle fired .22 Hornet rounds, which were fed into it using a five-round
detachable box. For a brief time, it served the needs of the U.S. Air Force, which was on
the lookout for a compact and lightweight rifle that was also accurate that it could place
into the survival kits of XB-70 crewmembers. ArmaLite – and Stoner – designed
the AR-5 to meet that need. Impressed by the rifle, the U.S. Air Force
quickly adopted it in 1956, rebranding it as the MA-1 to pack it into the survival kits of all
XB-70 crewmembers. Stoner had his first success, though it would be short-lived. The
cancellation of the XB-70 fleet soon after the rifle’s adoption meant that the Air
Force never ordered any beyond the initial 12 test models it packed into kits, with the rifle
being taken out of active service in 1959. Still, Stoner had proof that the
military could accept his designs. More success would come with the AR-10.
Iterating on his previous designs, the AR-10 became an early jewel in the ArmaLite
crown. A tactical rifle with a 16-inch barrel, it was chambered to accept 7.62 x 51mm NATO
rounds yet was still light and compact enough to be easily carried on the battlefield. At
just 8.5 pounds, it was easily transportable, and the 25-round magazine included with the rifle
gave anyone who used it plenty of firepower. It should have been a shoo-in
for U.S. Army adoption. And indeed, the Army tested the weapon extensively
at its Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1956. It was exceptionally well received, not least because of
its size and collapsibility. Yet, the U.S. Army went down another route. Rather than accepting
the AR-10 as its new standard rifle, it selected the T44 – which became the M14 – likely due to the
later arrival of the AR-10 in the testing cycle. That may have been the end of
the story for any other rifle. However, ArmaLite was able to license the
AR-10 to a Dutch company named Artillerie Inrichtingen until 1960. The rifle was also
purchased by several countries’ militaries, including Portugal, Sudan, Italy, and Cuba,
for limited use. ArmaLite had a winner, but it still didn’t have a firearm
that it could manufacture on a massive scale for the U.S. military.
That would change soon enough. The U.S. Army had initially chosen the M14 to
be its replacement for the famous M1 Garand. On paper, it seemed to fit the bill. Like
the AR-10, it fired 7.62 x 51mm NATO rounds, with its 20-round magazine being just a
few rounds short of that offered in the AR-10. It was also intended for dual use as a
standard and automatic rifle – a soldier could switch it to fully automatic at any point to
rattle off quickfire rounds against the enemy. But by 1960, the M14 was
already falling out of favor. It simply wasn’t the ideal
rifle for the Vietnam War. At 44.3 inches, it was a far longer rifle than
many in that war required, especially as much of a soldier’s time was spent patrolling jungle
territory. It was also heavy – weighing in at 12.12 pounds with equipment – and its impressive
2,600-foot range wasn’t able to compensate for its massive recoil. That recoil also made it difficult
to use in full-auto mode, with one writer for Gray’s Sporting Journal noting that an ex-military
colleague of his, who had trained with the M14, claimed that firing in full-auto with the rifle
was the “shooting equivalent to bull riding.” Others went further.
In a 1965 issue of Gun Digest, John Lachuk accused the M14 of being a money-grubbing
rifle that symbolized everything that was wrong with America’s supposed military-industrial
complex of the time. He called it a “monumental mechanical failure for U.S. Army Ordnance,” and
predicted it would have the shortest shelf life of any rifle in the country’s history.
He was only partially right. Though the M14 soon fell out of favor for
active deployment, it would gain a second lease on life as a training rifle.
But by now, you’re probably asking yourself a question:
What does any of this have to do with the AR-15? Or, for that matter, the AR-10
that the U.S. Army rejected in favor of the M14? Well aware of the M14’s relative failure in
Vietnam, the U.S. Army approached ArmaLite with a proposition. It wanted a version of the
AR-10 that had impressed so much during testing, only with a handful of adjustments. The new rifle
should fire a .223 Remington cartridge. Stoner got to work, following new firearm parameters that
the U.S. Continental Army Command, or CONARC, had delivered to manufacturers in 1957. Several
months after beginning development, Stoner was ready to provide a live-fire demonstration of a
rifle that was initially still a modified AR-10 but would go on to become the AR-15.
Stoner’s prototype was impressive. The rifle had both semi-automatic and fully
automatic settings—which would make it extremely useful in Vietnam—and shot rounds that traveled at
supersonic speeds over the first 500 yards. Stoner has also modified the cartridge, taking the .223
Remington that CONARC required and tweaking it to the point where it was capable of penetrating
solid steel up to a maximum range of 500 yards. Stoner’s live testing was so encouraging that the
U.S. Army, under the guidance of Commanding Army General Willard G. Wyman, ordered 80,000 units of
the rifle – all chambered in .223 – to replace the M14 as quickly as possible. ArmaLite had the
rifle it needed, choosing to sell the AR-15’s design to Colt in 1959. Four years later, the
U.S. military chose Colt to manufacture enough AR-15s – which it has rebranded as the M16 – to
make it standard-issue for soldiers in Vietnam. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing for
the AR-15 in its first full deployment. The Army’s M16 versions of the rifles became
notorious for jamming, with Nieman Reports noting that changes made to the rifle as ordered by a
Pentagon committee were the most likely cause. Those changes led to the M16 being incompatible
with certain types of ammo used by U.S. troops in Vietnam, with Poynter arguing that many
soldiers died in the country simply because their guns wouldn’t fire.
There were other problems. In their book “Misfire: The Tragic Failure of the
M16 in Vietnam,” Bob Orkand and Lyman Duryea point out that the M16 was rushed through production
by the military. Colt managed to keep up, as well as implement the changes to ArmaLite’s
AR-15 design that the Pentagon requested, but the sheer scale of manufacturing likely led
to the production of more defective models of the rifle than would otherwise have occurred.
Soldiers on the ground in Vietnam were also misinformed about the rifle. Many received
little to no training on how to maintain their new AR-15 variants, meaning degrading
parts and issues that could cause misfires went unrecognized. Some didn’t even bother to
try and maintain their weapons – they’d been told that the M16 was a “self-cleaning” weapon.
The alterations the Pentagon requested before shipping the AR-15 as the M16 also wreaked
havoc on the rifle’s chamber. A lack of chrome plating was unwise in a harsh and humid jungle
environment, with many of the initial batches of M16s sent into Vietnam having chambers that
eventually corroded due to the conditions. Then, there was the ammunition issue mentioned earlier.
Orkand and Duryea point out that the ammunition accompanying the versions of the AR-15 sent
to Vietnam was incompatible with the rifle. Hence the many jamming and misfiring issues.
One officer called the M16 “about as effective as a muzzleloader.”
Congress intervened. It investigated the rifle and ordered
incremental modifications to both the AR-15 and the ammunition it used, finally getting
it to a state where soldiers could rely upon it to perform as expected. More training was also
provided to troops, but the M16’s reputation had already been damaged—many on the ground in Vietnam
wouldn’t trust the rifle for the rest of the war. At best, these early days of the AR-15
could be considered a mixed success. Yes, it had experienced issues once it was adopted
and renamed the M16 for military use. However, those failures were not of Stoner or ArmaLite’s
making. Repeated changes made to the rifle by the Pentagon—combined with the rapid production
schedule—contributed to the M16’s downfall. Yet, despite this auspicious start, the AR-15 would
gain a new lease of life once Vietnam ended. The reason why comes down to Colt.
Once the Vietnam War ended, Colt could have quietly retired the M16, licking its wounds
while working on a new rifle. It didn’t do that. Instead, it expanded the production of the rifle
by creating a semi-automatic version that was rebranded to the original AR-15 name.
That version would be made available to both law enforcement and civilians.
In truth, these commercially available models had already started to be developed while
the Vietnam War was in progress, with the company releasing the Colt AR-15 in 1964. But it’s around
this point that the tale of the AR-15 starts to split down different paths.
We’ll start with Stoner. After the success of the AR-15, Stoner turned
his attention to his next rifle iteration – the AR-16. A gas-operated selective-fire rifle, it
was designed to be sold to emerging nations that had minimal industrial bases. However,
it failed. The early 1960s saw a brief marketing push for the gun, but the lack of
buyers meant that the AR-16 never got beyond a couple of limited production runs. It would go
on to form the basis of the far more successful AR-18, but that’s a story for another video.
As for Stoner, he left ArmaLite in 1961 and landed at Colt, which was the licensed manufacturer of
the AR-15. He didn’t spend long at the company, moving on to Cadillac Gage soon after, which
is where he further built his reputation as an innovator in the rifle space with the development
of the Stoner 63 Weapons System. An early modular weapons system, it could be configured to serve
several functions, including an automatic rifle, light or medium machine gun, or a
solenoid-fired fixed machine gun. That brings us back to the AR-15 being
made available for public consumption. Colt’s decision to develop a semi-automatic
version of the rifle would have far-reaching consequences, especially once 1977 rolled
around and their patent on the AR-15 ran out. By that point, they’d established the rifle
as a popular seller. Though the M16 variant of the rifle experienced mixed fortunes during its time
in Vietnam, Poynter notes that many soldiers who returned from that conflict bought AR-15s for
themselves due to their similarity to the M16. The rifle was also helped by having a somewhat
unique look for the time. Though the public-facing version was marketed as a hunting rifle, it
was still designed to look like a military rifle. Again, that boosted its popularity, even
among those who hadn’t served in the military, as did its lightweight and the fact that it’s
an extremely customizable rifle. Poynter says that some call the AR-15 the “LEGO of guns”
due to how easy it is to modify the AR-15 with accessories or even tinker with custom-made
parts – a big selling point for gun enthusiasts. Colt benefitted from all of
this popularity until 1977. Then, the AR-15-style rifles
started entering the market. Though Colt retained the trademark on the AR-15
brand, the lapsing of the patent on the rifle in 1977 opened the door for other manufacturers
to make rifles that were AR-15s in all but name. There are dozens of examples. The AAC Honey
Badger, Barrett REC7, Heckler & Koch HK416, and Norinco CQ are all AR-style rifles
that piggyback on the design of the original. These new rifles flooded the market
so quickly that many weren’t even referred to by the names that their manufacturers gave them.
They were – and still are – simply called AR-15s, even though they’re technically not.
That opening up of the manufacturing of the AR-15 likely boosted its
popularity more than any other factor, though it wouldn’t be plain sailing for the rifle
in the public domain from the late 1970s onward. Controversy would soon engulf the rifle.
In September 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Public Safety and Recreational
Firearms Use Protection Act—often referred to as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban—into law. The
bill altered the federal criminal code so that it became illegal to manufacture, transfer, or
possess a semiautomatic assault weapon. It also received widespread support, passing through the
Senate with a vote of 95 to 4 in November 1993. The act named 12 guns specifically,
with the AR-15 being one of them. For the next ten years, the AR-15, in
its original commercially available version, was kept off the market.
But it didn’t disappear entirely. Part of that was down to a loophole
in the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Though the bill banned 12 specific rifles and
several features built into guns, it couldn’t possibly stop all of the modifications that could
be made to weapons. It also wasn’t a blanket ban on semi-automatic weapons, meaning these types
of guns didn’t exit the public consciousness entirely. However, and more specifically to
the AR-15, the most important loophole was that it only applied to weapons, features, and
large capacity magazines on weapons developed after the bill became law.
Any AR-15 or AR-15-style rifle produced before 1994 was still fair game.
It’s also important to note that the ban didn’t apply to all AR-15-style rifles. While
the original was pushed out of the picture, several similar rifles were still manufactured
under the proviso that they had fewer than two military-like features and a magazine capacity
of less than 10. The AR-15 didn’t disappear entirely. But it became the poster child for
the ban, leading to a stigma being attached to the rifle for many years to come.
Another issue with the law was that it had a 10-year sunset period built
into it. Once 2004 rolled around, Congress would need to reauthorize the ban to
keep the law in power. It chose not to do so, once again making the AR-15 available for sale to the
public after a decade of not being manufactured. According to Poynter, the U.S. underwent
a cultural shift between 1994 and 2004, which likely led to the ban not being renewed. The
country was still reeling from the impact of 9/11, and wars were ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Patriotism, along with support for the military, were at all-time highs, which favored those who
wished to repeal the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Some, such as Syracuse University professor
Grant Reeher, also point to video games as being pivotal in the AR-15’s return to
the market. He notes that the Call of Duty franchise started becoming popular at
around the same time as the ban was lifted, claiming: “You’ve got this whole new set
of people that are playing these games and really getting into these rifles. And then they
decide, you know what, I want the real thing.” How accurate that claim may be is up for debate.
However, 2005 served as a clarion call for the return of the AR-15 to the public domain.
It was in that year that the Protection of Lawful Commerce Arms Act was passed, which
essentially shields gun manufacturers from any civil action that results from the unlawful
misuse of any of their products. In other words, AR-15 manufacturers could no longer be sued
if somebody committed a crime with one of their products, which opened the door for
marketing and manufacturing of the AR-15 at a higher level than ever before.
Sales of the AR-15 skyrocketed, with Ryan Busse – a policy advisor
for the Giffords gun control advocacy group – noting how quick the turnaround was.
“By the time Obama was leading in the polls in 2007, the AR-15 was starting to
become the poster child, both of industry growth, but also what we see now, which
is right-wing politics wrapped in and around the firearms industry and firearms ownership.”
The AR-15 had ascended to become “America’s Rifle,” a name apparently given to
it by the National Rifle Association. The AR-15’s popularity has only
boomed since the ban was lifted. Between 1994 and 2004—the time when the sale of
AR-15s was banned—the rifle accounted for no more than 3.7% of all guns built in the United States.
A near-constant uptick in sales has occurred since then. From 2005 to 2020, the AR-15 and similar
style rifles have gone from accounting for 4.6% of all firearms production in the U.S. to
a staggering 23.4%—a remarkable feat for a rifle that was so vilified throughout the 1990s.
Still, the AR-15 is not free from controversy, even if it’s no longer subject to a federal ban.
The lack of a federal ban doesn’t stop states from implementing their own laws to ban the AR-15 or
similar assault weapons. U.S. Concealed Carry notes that 11 states have such bans in place:
California, New York, Washington, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington D.C., Illinois,
Maryland, Hawaii, and Mass. Others, such as Minnesota and Virginia, have strict training
and background checks in place for potential gun owners to pass before they can own the AR-15.
Where does all of this leave us with the AR-15? The rifle’s journey has certainly been an
interesting one. Its origins as an innovative rifle developed by Eugene Stoner led to its
widespread adoption – under the M16 name – in the U.S. military. It’s still part of the military
today, having served as the standard issue rifle for almost six decades. Granted, the M16 is
reaching the end of its lifespan. The Marine Corps has already replaced it with the M27 IAR,
with the SIG Spear set to supplant the M16 for the U.S. Army in the coming years. Still, no other
rifle can boast the sheer staying power of the M16, at least not in the American military.
the AR-15 has a more mixed reputation on the civilian and Commercial side to some it's
America's rifle a symbol of the country's enginuity and a firearm anybody should be proud
to own to others it's a symbol of everything that's wrong with gun culture in the US
One thing is for certain – the AR-15 is a remarkable feat of engineering that has endured
thanks to its ease of use and versatility. Stoner crafted something special in the 1960s,
with even modern rifles often struggling to match the effectiveness of the AR-15.
But what do you think? Is the AR-15 unfairly maligned in some quarters or overly celebrated in
others? Why do you think the rifle has managed to become so popular and sustain its popularity
even with repeated efforts to ban it? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Now check out “Most Insane Weapons the US Military is Actually Using
Today.” Or watch this video instead!