America’s Rifle

I’ve been able to shoot an AR-15 a few times, and it was fun every time. I never bought one, in part because I lived in Chicago, which has strict gun laws, but ever since I moved out to the suburbs a few years ago, I’ve been thinking about getting back into shooting as a hobby, and last fall I started researching what kind of AR-15s were available. My plan was to get a fun-to-shoot rifle by this coming summer, when I could comfortably shoot at an outdoor range.^[1]Apparently some ranges allow them indoors, which seems like it would be crazy loud.

Then in January, much to my surprise, Illinois passed an assault weapons ban. Advocates of such bans like to say that guns like my fun-to-shoot AR-15 are weapons of war that are only good for killing people, so they do not belong in civilian hands.

(I can’t resist pointing out the hypocrisy involved in making this claim, given that the Protect Illinois Communities Act (PICA)^[2]I’m referencing Public Act 102-1116, which adds 720 ILCS 5/24-1.9 to the code, like all such bans, does not prohibit police officers from using assault weapons. I mean, if an AR-15 really is a weapon of war, only good for killing, why the heck are we letting the police use them? After all, police are civilians too. And it’s not just on-duty police officers who are allowed to own assault weapons. The law also exempts retired police officers, prison guards, private security guards, Olympic shooting competitors, and anyone shooting at the World Shooting and Recreational Complex in downstate Illinois.)

The laws against “assault weapons”^[3]When gun control advocates first began talking about banning these kinds of guns, they used the term “assault rifle.” But “assault rifle” has a specific prior definition, and none of the guns they wanted to ban were actual assault rifles. Consequently, gun control advocates began to speak in terms of “assault weapons,” which could mean whatever they wanted it to mean. I’m using “assault weapon” here to refer to whatever types of guns … Continue reading are a good example of what happens when the lack of gun knowledge is crossed with a desire to legislate. There are a lot of problems with these laws, but I think the fundamental misconception is thinking that “assault weapons” are some distinct, special kind of gun. To illustrate what I mean, let’s talk more about the AR-15, one of the most common rifles in the United States.

The most important thing to understand is that despite all the talk about it being a “weapon of war” that “doesn’t belong in civilian hands,” the features of an AR-15 are nothing more than what you get when you decide to build a modern rifle. It simply combines many of the most important advances in firearms technology since the invention of gunpowder:

• Rifled barrels — the spiral grooves in a barrel that impart spin to a bullet to make it fly more accurately, and which give the rifle its name.
• Advances in ignition, from the touch hole to matchlock to flintlock to percussion cap.
• Breach loading (instead of pushing everything down the barrel).
• Pre-assembled ammunition cartridges.
• Bolt-action rifles.
• Repeating guns, that allow the shooter — with the flip of a lever — to load the chamber with a cartridge from the magazine.
• Lever-action repeaters, that load the chamber via an easy-to use lever.
• Detachable magazines that can be reloaded separately from the gun.
• Modern metal alloys.
• Metal treatments to protect against corrosion.
• Wooden parts replaced with modern material like polymers and carbon fiber.
• Pistol grips, because they fit the hand better.
• Autoloading technology that uses the energy of firing the cartridge to reload the chamber from the magazine.
• Gas-operated autoloading for operating with higher pressures.
• Barrel shrouds.
• Adjustable stocks and grips.
• Standard rails for attaching accessories.
• Muzzle treatments that reduce flash or compensate for recoil.

Many of the earliest rifles had few of these features, and opponents of “assault weapons” will argue that the founders wrote the 2nd Amendment for those weapons, not modern rifles like the AR-15. But at the time the 2nd Amendment was written, those guns were in fact real weapons of war, used to drive off the British army. Yet they were also the common firearms of the American people. And as rifle technology advanced, the new innovations were adopted into common use by both the military and civilians, not necessarily in that order.

For example, civilians were using rifled barrels long before they came into common military use because hunters needed accuracy more than armies did. And percussion ignition was invented to make bird hunting easier, while militaries were reluctant to replace their flintlock inventories and retrain their troops to use the new technology. During the American Civil War, soldiers used their own money to buy civilian lever-action rifles that were better than their army-issued weapons.

Of all the innovations that go into the AR-15, perhaps the most important innovation is the one I left for last: Modularity.

The AR-15 isn’t just a particular rifle, it’s a platform for building a large variety of rifles. In part because it was adopted by the military and subject to the military contracting process, all of the parts have well-specified dimensions and material qualities. That’s especially important where the specifications describe how the parts fit together, because it allows for some parts to be replaced by newer designs that improve the firearm while still working with the other parts.

Every major component of an AR-15 is available from more than one manufacturer, and you can mix and match them to build a variety of weapons. Some of the major AR-15 manufacturers seem to build all the parts themselves, but a lot of manufactures build a few key parts that give their particular weapons their unique characteristics, and then buy the rest of the parts from other manufacturers. Still other AR-15 vendors don’t make any parts at all — they just pick and choose parts from other manufacturers to achieve the desired characteristics.

This adds up to hundreds of variations on the AR-15 available to consumers, even before considering the many serious AR-15 enthusiasts who build their own highly-customized guns by picking and choosing parts from different manufacturers. There are even gunsmiths and websites that can help you pick the parts or put them together.^[4]I particularly enjoy Meridian Ordnance’s $75 fee to “Entirely rebuild your…home-brew DIY project that has shit the bed“

And once you’ve bought your AR-15, you can add, remove, or replace almost any part with a variety of aftermarket alternatives, changing the sighting system, the stock and grip, the trigger, or the barrel shroud. Want a laser sight? A barrel-mounted flashlight? A bipod? No problem. You can even change the caliber of the bullets by replacing the barrel (and a few related components).

This versatility is one of the main reasons why AR-15s are so popular. The military can get them configured for combat, and they make for great combat weapons. Civilians can get them configured for self-defense, and they make good self-defense weapons. Long-range competitive target shooters can get them configured for long-range shooting, and they are good long-range guns. Competitive speed shooters can get them configured as race guns, and they are excellent race guns. Farmers can get them configured as varmint rifles, and they are excellent varmint rifles. Deer hunters can get them configured for deer hunting, and they are great for hunting deer.

Granted, AR-15’s may not be the ideal perfect gun for any of these things, but they are good enough for most of them. And however you want to use an AR-15, you usually get to choose among several different price levels, depending what trade-offs you want to make. Some enthusiasts just own one or two AR-15s plus enough swappable parts to build whatever they need whenever they need it.

Those who want to ban AR-15’s often characterize them as “weapons of war” which don’t belong in civilian hands. There’s a bit of a logic problem in that statement, because why would a gun’s suitability for civilian use depend on whether it has been adopted by a military organization? Should rifled barrels have been outlawed from civilian use when the military eventually got around to using them? If the U.S. military switched to some non-AR-15 weapons platform, would opponents stop classifying AR-15s as “assault weapons”?

Besides, there are a couple of pretty good arguments that the AR-15 isn’t really a weapon of war. For one thing, there’s one bit of modern rifle technology that isn’t in civilian use: Selective fire. Modern military weapons are almost universally capable of being fired in full-auto mode, where the weapon keeps firing bullets while you hold the trigger. None of the AR-15s sold to civilians can do that.^[5]Some full-auto weapons sold to civilians before 1986 are still in circulation, but no new full-auto weapons can be sold to civilians. So there’s a pretty clear distinction between military and civilian AR-15’s.

We can also look at the numbers: If I’m reading this document on U.S. military force structure correctly, there are about 186,000 soldiers fighting in ground units.^[6]That’s counting 12 Armored Brigade Combat Teams, 7 Stryker Brigade Combat Teams, 14 Infantry Brigade Combat Teams, and 24 Marine Corp Infantry Battalions. Even if every single one of them has been issued an AR-15-based combat weapon (i.e. an M4), that’s less than 1% of the estimated 20 million AR-15’s that are in civilian hands. Every year, Americans buy about 4 million AR-15s, enough to equip the entire armed forces 20 times over.^[7]Some people dispute these numbers. For example, the Illinois Supreme Court brief claims only 6.4 million civilian owners. But even if we accept that number (which seems low given sales figures) and assume every single member of the military, including National Guard and Reserves, is carrying an assault weapon, that still amounts to 2.1 million military users vs. 6.4 million civilian users. Meaning there are at least three times as many civilian users as military users. By the numbers, the AR-15 is overwhelmingly a civilian firearm.

Contrary to the claims of those who oppose civilian ownership of guns like the AR-15, millions of people own them without committing horrific crimes, and they don’t have fantasies of being Rambo. There are plenty of perfectly legitimate, sensible reasons for wanting to own one of these guns. Modern rifles like the AR-15 are versatile, fun, useful, and important.