re: #117 Targetpractice

Which is rather the point, that the morons who think that “AR stands for Armalite Rifle” makes a convincing argument because it makes them look “educated” about firearms are the same ones who think heavy snow means that the climate isn’t changing. Or even think that “climate change” means that the weather changed due to the seasons.

The long and short of it was the AR-15 (and it’s big brother AR-10) were designed by Eugene Stoner and marketed to the US Army as military weapons. Not hunting rifles, or plinking rifles, or “home defense rifles.” All that shit came up when Colt’s patents expired in ‘77 and other companies started selling their own clones on the civilian market. It’s about as “useful” to the discussion of what “AR” means as whining that it can’t be called an assault rifle because of the strict definition that says that it must have selective fire.

Magazine covers of rifle periodicals in the Eighties which used the term “assault rifle” to describe AR-15s and similar rifles.

ar15.com

In the Eighties, gun nut magazines and catalouges specifically referred to that style of rifle as an assault rifle.

Gun nuts changing the term now are engaging in revisionist history.