Background on AR-15, Gun Used in Orlando Killings
The New York Times reports that “the first AR-15s were designed in the 1950s by Eugene M. Stoner, a Marine and inventor, who developed the weapon to military standards and for military service.” Â
“It was an atypical rifle for its time, seemingly futuristic, and made partly with lightweight plastics and aluminum that traditionalists scorned. It fired a small-caliber, high-velocity bullet — the .223 — that was also considered revolutionary. The rifle was capable, via a selector lever, of semiautomatic or automatic fire.” Â
“In the 1960s, under Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, the Pentagon bought vast quantities of the rifle, calling it the M-16, for American ground troops in Vietnam. The M-16’s firepower and reputation for lethality were necessary, in Mr. McNamara’s view, to counter the Kalashnikov assault rifles carried by the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong.” Â
The Washington Post adds: “Chronicled extensively in New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers’s book “The GUN,” the AR-15, and eventually the M-16, was introduced as a replacement to the U.S. military’s M-14, a long high-caliber rifle based on an older World War II design. A small number of AR-15s were first bought by the Air Force in 1962 after a bit of salesmanship by Colt Firearms executives (Colt bought ArmaLite in 1959), that involved a pair of exploding watermelons and a general who disliked the M-14. With the Air Force’s initial purchase, the AR-15 entered the U.S. military’s arms procurement pipeline.” Â
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