GOP Debate - Round 2

It's evident that an important part of the general definition is that it's automatic. A civilian AR-15 is not the same as the military version just because they look the same.

 

I don't own a single gun that was designed for use by the military. I do own an AR that was designed for use by law enforcement.

 

But they look the same and it's scary!

 

What AR?

 

le 6920

 

The AR-15 was designed for the military, was it not?

 

Wait, what do you mean by AR?

 

The version owned by civilians was not.

Hummer makes vehicles for our military. Does that make the H3 a military vehicle?

 

No. The M16 was designed for the military. As was the M4.

The AR-15 was not designed for the military. It was designed for the law enforcement and civilian market.

 

Armalite Rifle, off the first designation. Why? What do you mean by AR?

 

My crown vic is a cop car. It just lacks the light bar, and the seals, and the radar gun. And the rear cage. The spot light. The brush bar.

But it's the same car, dammit! I'm practically a detective.

 

My gun nut friend has one. Nice.

 

Hey.

 

I'd rather get that reasoning and a **** you that's why you can't have them.

 

Wanna make a bet?

 

Absolutely.

At the time of manufacture, there wasn't the huge distinction between military weapons and civilian use weapons as there is today. They weren't contracted by any military organization or government to design a weapon. They simply designed a weapon, and then tried to sell it. If the market had been as it was today, they would have sold it to civilians. The market isn't what it is today, so they sought to sell it elsewhere. But at the time of design, not being under contract for manufacture, and without the stigma of similar weapons existing in culture, they simply sold it to the whomever would buy a lot of them.

The weapon required a redesign, as noted above, before it was even adopted for use by our military. That new weapon was designed specifically for military applications, and it received the M designation, which designates it as a military weapon. The earlier prototypes were actually the XM177, which you would know today as the CAR-15.

Before then, Armalite worked on prototype AR-10, which, as you read, was the precursor to the AR-15. Armalite was a predominately survival rifle company. But they got a really clever engineer by the name of Eugene Stoner, which you may remember from the SEAL era Stoner 63, one of the first modular rifles ever created. But they were under no obligation to sell to the military. Nor were they necessarily designing the rifles for the military. They were simply building rifles and looking for the highest bidder.

The fact that the military bought it, does not mean the rifle was designed for military use. However, after adopted, the M16 became the weapon designed for military use. And, as per military guidelines, mil-spec parts were necessary. From that point on, you had branched rifles. Your prototypes, non-mil spec rifles, and mil-spec rifles.

And now you have today. Where the M16 and M4 rifles are specifically crafted for use by the military. And you have the AR designation, which is sold for civilian and law enforcement consumption. And the branch happened after military contract.

Because that's how engineering sans contract works. You're just building something and hoping to sell it. And you want to sell it to who will pay the most, because that's how business works.

The first owner of an AR rifle was not military. It was designed for and by a civilian company. Who then entered it into a competition hoping that the person with the largest pocketbook (the US gov) would make them ultra rich.

 

Seems to be the best approach at this point.

 

https://armalite.com/about-us/history/

Take it up with armalite and every narrative I have looked at of the development of the AR-15. Saying it wasn't designed for the military is about as ridiculous as claiming a rifle was designed for law enforcement because it has "LE" in the specific model name.

 

It was not designed for the military. Apply rational thought. Why would Armalite have sold to Colt, if it were designed for the military? Why would Colt have then sold to various other governments, right after, well before the US military ever purchased a single rifle?

You don't think that an arms company in the 1950s would have sold to whomever they thought would give them the most money? They absolutely would have. But the "toy gun" AR line had more military application than it had civilian application, and even then, it took a lot of convincing to adopt that firearm . Nobody in the civilian world wanted one. Cops were still carrying revolvers, and weren't militarized.

You are looking at it from current events, and retroactively applying a thought process, rather than looking at the climate at the time of development. They were a survival arms company, and if the market had been ripe for them to release that weapon to the public, they would have, rather than marketing to the military.

The military designed weapon was the M16. Not the AR-15. This is also not the first time a company has currently or retroactively played up their DoD importance. Look into the history of the Luminox watches. Never officially, or unofficially a Navy SEAL watch. But they'll sure claim it is, because a SEAL marketed it for them.

There was a competition to replace the M1 grande. As there is to replace every piece of gear. The military throws out a list of specs they want, or things they want, and companies compete to provide the best, longest lasting piece of gear they can. That's the AR platform.

Armalite experimented with any number of wildcat cartridges and weapons platforms. That's what you do as a weapons engineering company. The final product, the M16, was adopted for use, and became the weapon specifically designed for the military, because at that point, they started adding input. Meaning, their design was being influenced by the military. Prior to that, it was not.

And there are major differences between military and civilian. The barrels are shorter, in order to attach a bayonet. You can attach a bayonet on a civlian/LE AR, but because of the distance from the bayonet lug and the end of the barrel, it hangs very oddly. In order to be allowed the shorter, military use length barrel, you are required to go through a lot of extra paperwork and tax stamps (which is what you want) in order to get the barrel length.

The action is different. Military lowers are selective fire for single, burst or full auto. The first M16s were full auto, not burst. There was a mandate by the military, to remove full auto from most rifles, and put in burst, because troops were blowing through their ammo. This is another design feature that is lacking from civilian and most law enforcement ARs. No burst. No full auto.

The AR is not designed for military use. It lacks too many necessary features for combat use. That's why there is a fully separate manufacturing process.

From Colt's website on the LE 6920:

It's brother, is an important point. They are branched rifles, developed through different means, by different design, by different departments in Colt. They probably don't even use the same plates for stamping the receivers out.

This is an image of the magazine well on the LE 6920:



You will notice that the serial number is stamped with the prefix LE. This is to distinguish it as the LE branch. You will notice the name: "Law enforcement carbine." It is a designed for law enforcement carbine. And not just because it has "LE" in the model name.

 

Additionally, a lot of LEs wanted the longer barrel, not the shorter barrel on the M4. Because it was going to be a more rural use rifle, they felt the longer barrel would provide better accuracy. They didn't want selective fire, because of the connotation of law enforcement carrying burst or automatic weapons.

This was law enforcement input into the rifle, that resulted in it being a designed for LE use weapon. It was not designed for military use, because the M4 already exits, and there is no need to have a longer barreled rifle with a short forearm in the military, when the M16A2 and A4 exist as longer barrel rifles (they use a longer forearm which places the bayonet lug closer to the end of the barrel, for bayonet use).