I am an owner of an AR-15 pattern rifle. That statement, taken in isolation, would not sound extraordinary, given the fact that as of 2022, nearly twenty million such firearms were in circulation in the United States. How many owners that constitutes is not clear, since some collectors have multiple examples, though presumably there is not only one other owner who possesses every unique unit beyond the one that I own—put the total owners at between five and ten million as a rough guess.
What precisely each of us owns also needs some explanation. Strictly speaking, an AR-15 is an ArmaLite Model 15 trademark for a design that was licensed to Colt’s Manufacturing Company in 1959. Anything else—mine is a Diamondback DB15—is a clone that has been made after the patent expired, in the manner of M1911 pistols or Thermos containers, two other cases of genericized trademarks that have become common nouns in popular usage.
My AR-15 clone is undoubtedly a rifle—it was manufactured with a barrel length of sixteen inches and intended to be fired from the shoulder—not an AR pistol, a type of firearm that has taken on its own separate level of notoriety beyond that associated with evil black rifles in recent years, but as with the technicalities of trademark, let us not quibble here.
But as careful readers will have noted, there is something unexpected in my ownership. As I have suggested previously, my natural inclinations are toward old guns. Tactical attachment rails, tactical optics, tactical charging handles, and tactical beards all have their uses, it is to be supposed, but I am inevitably pulled in by the gravitation of wood furniture, blued steel (or case-hardened for the win), and OG design. In a gun battle, I would accept the utility of a semiautomatic rifle fed by detachable magazines, yet a large part of my psyche would yearn for my SMLE—at the same time as another voice inside me would call into question that fad of metallic cartridges.
So, then, why am I a member of the many, the disparaged, the AR-15 owners?
The simple answer is that I decided in 2016 that if I were ever going to own such a firearm, I had better get on with it. At the time, Hillary Clinton was expected to win not just the popular vote but the presidency, and while I was nowhere nearly as certain of that as her party’s faithful, I nevertheless recognized that unlike Barack Obama, she was someone who would put work into making the sale of new so-called assault weapons illegal, along with taking any of a number of other actions against possession as might have occurred to her administration. If I were ever to have one, the time was then.
Gun control advocates will say that I was paranoid, which I take to be an admission of their inadequacy in getting bans enacted in all but a few states, and in the event, the country elected a bumbling psychopath of a fascist instead of a micromanaging egotist, and we have ended up with a Supreme Court that makes Joe Biden’s dreams of a ban pure fantasy, but I still have my AR-15.
It is worth noting that the joke about Obama—substitute in current elected officials who support gun control—being the leading gun salesman of the century is supported by evidence. Prior to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, there were some 8.5 million AR-style rifles in private hands, and when the supply of such firearms is threatened, demand flies upward. Sales of firearms generally dropped after Trump’s election, but the COVID-19 pandemic and nomination of Biden-Harris by the Democrats resulted in a new surge in purchases.
All of this is seen as reactionary and selfish by gun control advocates who seem to have the impression that if only they will sneer enough at us, we will voluntarily turn in our guns to them. One should not have to be a capitalist or a professor of economics to understand that when a lot of people want something, telling them that they may not have it is often counterproductive. Whatever label some may want to assign to me, I do sympathize with the view that if there is a move to ban a thing, we all ought to buy more of it. This has its limits—gas-guzzling automobiles, for example, are one of the drivers of global warming, and we will have to switch to alternatives to save human civilization—but with regard to semiautomatic firearms, the vast majority of us owners do nothing wrong with our guns, and our refusal to accept bans on types of them is a good reminder to politicians of where the proper boundaries lie in matters of power between the people and the state. A government that can take no for an answer when it tries to involve itself in our private lives is a government that is less likely to turn tyrannical.
And as I have discovered, the AR design has its virtues. The original .223/5.56 cartridge that is still commonly used is itself soft on recoil, and the gas system (be it indeed direct impingement or not, I do not wish to debate here) tames the rearward thrust even more. I also own an AR-10 style rifle made by the same company—not a paid endorsement—and have found its recoil with .308/7.62 rounds to be similarly light when compared with .303 British or 7.62x54R bolt-action guns, cartridges of equivalent power. And as I said, if I ever have to use my ARs for something other than a day at the range, having a self-loading rifle with a magazine that holds dozens of rounds is the kind of advantage to which the term, tactical, may be appropriately applied.
Thus I own ARs, and I may acquire more in the future. According to the background checks that have been run on me for jobs, for purchases, and for licenses, I have so far been a trustworthy person, and that is all that we can ever guarantee about anyone. I will be keeping these guns, and no disparagements from advocates of gun control can change that.
Kind of a similar story. I shot my brother's example and it was fun. He is a deep blue Democrat in North Carolina who has one for shits and grins, not for a political statement or because he is worried about maurading hordes or a Beto-Clinton-Feinstein style "Ok, Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them in....".
I enjoy shooting long range at steel targets and hope actual self-defensive use is never on the horizon for That Goddamn Thing of the Devil With One and Only One Reason For Its Existence (pardon the sarcasm). But as I told someone the other day, it is legal, I think it is an interesting example of a military rifle, and I wanted one in the same way I would like to own a Garand and a vintage 1903 Springfield if I wanted to spend the bucks. Given Uncle Sam knows my background pretty well and trusts me, I suppose owning that rifle shouldn't be a concern except for politically-motivated reasons.
But if there was a self defense situation, it would be a pretty good choice. The pistol is good, but the rifle stops the threat with authority.
Parting shot. I do have serious concerns that some of my fellow citizens think nothing of blowing each other away for no good reason. It is a social contagion that needs to stop. The AR platform is the perfect mass shooter machine in the hands of a madman (not a medical diagnosis, just my term for someone who sees value in shooting up Black people at a Topps Market, gays in a gay bar, etc) and I don't deny that the AR or other high cap guns in the hands of such madmen worry me to the point of thinking about some form of shall-issue regulation. We can fight that out over a beer as I am not fond of getting nasty about it and these discussions, at least on social media, typically end up rolling around in the mud. Not that I think Greg would roll in the mud with me but other readers?