It has been described in many ways: “America’s Rifle” and a very strong icon in America’s gun culture. To many gun owners, it is the greatest pinnacle of versatility and power. For gun-control advocates, the gun supports their argument on frequent use in mass shootings.
The AR-15 was the weapon of choice for the guns used in several high-profile mass shootings: The massacres in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York.
This was the model employed in a spate of killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012; the concert in Las Vegas in 2017; and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018.
It first came into being in the 1950s as an Armalite civilian rifle. The common misconception about the AR-15 is that “AR” stands for either “assault rifle” or “automatic rifle,” but that is an acronym for Armalite Rifle.
In 1959, the design was sold to Colt, which later made a military version called the M-16 for the Vietnam War. Early problems with jamming gave way to improvements in its design, securing it through military history.
Colt also produced a semi-automatic version of the M-16, to sell to police and civilians, which carried the AR-15 name in the post-Vietnam period.
Semi-automatic weapons, such as the AR-15, fire one round per each pull of the trigger but automatically advance a new round into the firing chamber to prepare for the next shot. They are a tightly controlled and much more expensive product in the United States: fully automatic weapons, that is to say, those firing continuously until the trigger is released.
Collo’s patent had expired in the 1970s, and the company’s monopolistic control of the market at the time made it possible for other manufacturers to produce AR-15-style rifles. Today, close to 500 firms manufacture AR-15s or related paraphernalia.
Of some 434 million firearms in civilian hands across the U.S., nearly 20 million are AR-15-style rifles, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
The AR-15 was made easy to use. The lightweight, adjustable stock and undynamic recoil make this gun user-friendly even for poor shooters. The military look of this rifle is the civilian version of the M-16 hence making it popular with veterans and civilians alike.
According to Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, many of the returning soldiers wanted to have an AR-15 because they used M-16s in the service.
Nicknamed the “LEGO of guns,” the AR-15 allows do-it-yourself gun enthusiasts who build and customize firearms to do exactly that.
That flexibility, combined with the 2004 expiration of the federal ban on semi-automatic assault weapons, helped fuel the rifle’s success. The ’94 ban had also hamstrung sales by limiting some model types of firearms and some high-capacity magazines.
Nevertheless, with the post-9/11 fervor for patriotism and first-person shooter video games such as Call of Duty, this nation had won the hearts of its people in a much more effective way.
The AR-15 is often mentioned in the context of mass shootings. Researchers at the University of Alabama and Worcester State University found that semi-automatic rifles are becoming more closely linked to such shootings.
Between 1966 and 2009, a majority of mass shooters used a semi-automatic rifle approximately 34 percent of the time. During the subsequent decade, the figure climbed to 56 percent. Such rifles often mean higher casualty counts when compared to other guns.
But though AR-15s have become the most notorious symbol of mass shootings, they account for a small percentage of the overall toll of gun deaths in the United States.
Among the 45,222 deaths associated with guns in 2020, more than half were suicides; and 43 percent were homicides. Nearly 60 percent of the 13,650 gun deaths classified as homicides involved handguns, according to the F.B.I.; rifles accounted for only 3 percent.
Regulation of the AR-15 is very contentious. Federal measures have had some limited success, but most states have implemented their restrictions.
Often based on specific models or military-type features, so-called assault-type weapons are banned in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, D.C. They also limit magazine capacities; similar measures have been implemented in Colorado and Vermont.
The national conversation about gun regulation is shifting. What Reeher sees is a trend from the focus on types of weapons to the type of people who should not be allowed to acquire them.