EXCLUSIVE: National Rifle Association donations soar to $96.4M, up 11.5%, after Newtown...

[benEzra]

35. Thoughts...

Here are some thoughts. I may have mentioned this before, but so that you know where I'm coming from, I've owned one since around 2005 and shoot competitively (USPSA) with mine, so those are my own biases up front. I'm responding to your points a little out of order because I don't want to get bogged down in firearm minutiae right away.

"People new to gun control often start out thinking a) we should ban all guns, and b) we should at least ban assault weapons. When they study the reasons why this would be either impossible or undesirable, most change their focus to what can be more reasonably be done to reduce gun violence.

I would like to believe that is the case, but unfortunately it seems that AR bans and over-10-round magazine bans are still near the top of the gun control lobby's hit list. The leaders of that movement have been fighting for rifle and magazine bans for 25 years now, and have just about sacrificed their entire movement at times in order to maintain that shibboleth.

Occasionally they stop talking about such bans...for a while...but reintroduce them any time they think they can get some traction. They have spent a quarter of a century demonizing people like me, literally since I was eighteen years old (I'm 44 now), and have been discussing this same issue here on DU for the last eleven years. And if anything, banning over-10-round magazines and protruding rifle handgrips is more an article of faith among gun control advocates than it was ten or twenty or thirty years ago, despite the fact that rifle homicide has declined by half or two thirds or whatever as the AR-15 became Americans' #1 rifle.

Tens of millions of people like me own "assault weapons", 40-50 million Americans together own perhaps a billion over-10-round magazines, and "assault weapons" are involved in only ~1% of U.S. homicides annually. Yet if I were to head over to the gun control DU group and suggest that "assault weapon" and magazine bans are counterproductive and should be discouraged/repealed, I would be insta-banned from the group for daring to blaspheme one of the basic tenets of the gun-control faith.

A certain ex-mayor of New York and Wall Street billionaire is still trying very hard to get them banned, and he even managed to buy a magazine ban in pro-gun Colorado, much to the detriment of Gov. Hickenlooper and Colorado Dems. At least five states still ban them, including two which only banned them last year, lobbied heavily by Wall Street money posing as grassroots activism. The BATFE is making noises about banning various flavors of .223/5.56mm ammunition. So while I'd like to believe that my rights here in NC are safe on the AWB and mag-ban front, I'm not exactly reassured yet.

"Why are they the most popular civilian rifles in the United States? I contend they are the most popular because they look like military weaponry and that appeals to a lot of insecure males."

If that were the case, then why are the most popular AR variants those that look the *least* like M16's or M4's? Why do most female competitive shooters overwhelmingly shoot AR's, as opposed to more traditional-looking rifles? I would suggest that AR-15's are popular on their merits, not from some sense of perceived badassery.

And this particular "insecure male" carries a Smith and Wesson Lady Smith on a North Carolina CCW license, just so ya know.

Back to AR's...mine is an Illinois-made Rock River Arms model with a Wilson 16" match grade heavy profile barrel, civilian midlength gas system, adjustable stock, Hogue grip, Bravo Company extended charging handle, and 2-6x scope, and when sitting in the safe at home it wears a civilian Surefire LED light. In its current configuration, it is less "military" than a Remington 700 deer rifle or a Winchester Model 70, and I have no interest in making it look more like an military M4.

In my opinion, AR's are popular because they are reliable, extremely accurate, modular and easily customized, they don't kick much (most are .22 caliber), they are inexpensive to shoot, and are easily adjustable for different size shooters or different shooting positions. They can be set up for anything from slowfire precision benchrest shooting to more dynamic IPSC/USPSA/3-gun competition to home defense and small game hunting *without* needing the services of a gunsmith. They are to the rifle world what the M1911 Colt pistol was to competition shooting in the 1960s through the 1980s, or what the IBM PC was to the computer market in the early days of personal computers---perhaps the first true open-specification, open-source rifle, user-configurable rifle.

AR sales jumped in 1994-1995 as a protest against the hated 1994 non-ban, but they really took off in the late 1990s/early 2000s when flattops (allowing you to put any optic you want on it) became available, and those quickly came to dominate the market due to their practicality and accuracy. You don't see too many military-style fixed-carry-handle, goverment-profile-barrel AR's ("M4geries&quot on the market anymore. SOPMOD-style quad rails were used for a while for foregrips and lights, but then the civilian market evolved away toward smooth-sided free float tubes with less unnecessary rail. And so on. Overall, not so different than the evolution of the Mauser [link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gewehr_98|98] and [link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karabiner_98k|98K] (both designed to kill human beings at extreme range) into the Winchester Model 70 deer rifle, except that unlike the Mauser/Winchester, the civilian AR doesn't actually work like its military cousin.

"Isn't it true that the handgrip of these 'most popular civilian rifles' were designed to make it easier to carry and use in combat, not hunting?"

No, vertical handgrips are vertical because that is what works best for human wrist anatomy when firing from the shoulder. Don't take my word for it; pick up a soda can and hold it out a foot in front of you at shoulder level. Is it easier to hold vertical, or horizontal? Now put it down at your waist; is it easier to hold it vertical, or horizontal? Seriously, try it. That's why most high-end target rifles use either separate pistol grips, thumbhole stocks, or extreme Monte Carlo style stocks to give the same grip position/angle as a pistol grip.


McMillan Alias Target ($10,000)


Anschutz European target and Olympic Biathlon rifles


Eberlestock Precision Rifles

Old-fashioned straight stocks were straight because they were made of natural wood, which would split along the grain under recoil unless fairly linear, not because straight is always better.

The other reason for a separate handgrip from the stock is to allow the receiver (basic frame) of the rifle to extend backward past the shooter's hand, allowing for a better weight distribution. The AR puts the recoil spring and recoil buffer in the buttstock, instead of in the forearm under/atop the barrel like most centerfire rifles do. This allows a simpler and lighter bolt carrier design and puts less weight out front, but also means that normal AR's can't use stocks that fold. FWIW, you can get an AR with a traditional straight stock if it floats your boat, and they work just like any other AR except for the more awkward ergonomics of a straight stock.

"Have hunters adopted the military style handgrips for hunting?"

Replace "hunters" and "hunting" with "target shooters" and "target shooting", and the answer is certainly yes; target shooters have been using vertical handgrips for many years, see above. Of the small minority of gun owners who hunt, some use protruding handgrips also, but their ergonomic advantages are somewhat outweighed by the need of a hunting rifle to pack as much lethality as possible into a very light and slim package, and protruding grips add weight, bulk, and snags over a light fixed-stock rifle. So pistol grips are mostly used in long-range varmint hunting and whatnot, which are more similar to target shooting, rather than deer hunting. But since the vast majority of gun owners are nonhunters, those considerations are moot for most of us, which is also why most AR shooters are content with the small, relatively low-powered .223 round.

"Isn't it true that the ads for these rifles frequently use military scenarios in their advertising?"

That depends on the company. Remember, over 40 companies (50? 60? 100?) make AR's, some of whom (Colt, FN, maybe Daniel Defense, maybe Noveske, maybe LM&T) also make components for military rifles/carbines, and most of whom (JP Precision, DPMS, Bushmaster, Ruger, Smith & Wesson, etc.) don't. I don't believe Rock River Arms (the maker of mine) currently makes anything for DoD, but they have certainly touted their law enforcement sales in some ads. What sold me on mine, though, was that the company guaranteed an accuracy of 1.5 arcminutes or less with match ammunition (which it delivers), and a good reputation among competitive shooters. Do some companies overplay the military pedigree to boost sales? Sure, though I tend to view that as less Walter Mitty and more playing to the "if it works under those harsh conditions, it'll work for you" meme like Breitling does. But advertising isn't what sells AR's; seeing them on the range, and handling them in person, does. They really are great little rifles.

FWIW, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but pretty much all civilian rifles are civilian derivatives of military designs. After the Civil War, hunters and homesteaders ditched their muzzleloaders in favor of military-style lever-actions through the rest of the 19th century, then military-style bolt-actions (based largely on the German Mauser infantry rifle, see above) came to ascendancy in the early to mid twentieth century. The AR-15 hit the civilian market in IIRC 1962 or 1963 (John Kennedy owned one), so it's had plenty of time to evolve into the dominant civilian rifle of its time, and has.