Fear & Loathing in 5.56mm – Irrational Hatred of the AR15

Ever since Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary on 14 December 2012 and massacred 20 small children and 6 adult staff members, anti-gun politicians, the mainstream media, and hysterical leftists found in the AR15 the scapegoat they so desperately needed. Finally they had something with which to resurrect their dearly departed Assault Weapons Ban (RIP 2004), and they went all out in their attempts to reanimate its putrid corpse. Fortunately for reasonable people everywhere, the proposed Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 was stillborn after being convincingly sunk in the US Senate.

This major setback did not stop the gun-grabbers and their acolytes in the MSM from shoehorning the term “assault weapon” (usually interchanged with “AR15”) into every gun control discussion ever since, especially so after anything resembling a mass shooting occurs, even if an AR15 (or an assault weapon) isn’t even present. Facts clearly don’t matter, and narrative trumps all.

In order for it to be vilified and detested to such an extent that it generates its own foaming-at-the-mouth torch-and-pitchfork mob a la Frankenstein, the AR15 must surely be a child-murdering nuclear death ray from Dimension X? The completely disproportionate attention this solitary firearm design manages to receive in the media and congress must be indicative of its special and high-tech status!

Erm…no. It is in fact a near 60-year-old design harkening from 1958 when Eugene Stoner and the ArmaLite company came up with something to satisfy a request from the US military. It was certainly a revolutionary weapon at the time, but considering that it has been around since before we put a man in space, I think it is safe to say that it isn’t exactly at the cutting edge of technology anymore.

Its lethality is also a matter of debate. Despite what the media and politicians say about the rifle, it does not, in fact, shoot a “high-caliber/high-power” cartridge: it shoots an intermediate cartridge (the one on the left in the photo below), which is rather different to a higher-caliber rifle cartridge (on the right). Now, I am not about to start an argument about the 5.56mm NATO cartridge’s shortcomings and lethality, but I think even passionate observers can plainly see that it most certainly is not a one-shot-guaranteed death ray as portrayed by the talking heads in the MSM.

Also, the AR15 is not an assault rifle. I don’t care what the cross-eyed mouth-breathers from the anti-gun club tell people, but AR does not stand for Assault Rifle: it stands for ArmaLite Rifle, design 15. Yup…it is the manufacturer’s name and model number. As boring and unimaginative as that. Yes, yes…I know: it would have been waaay more fun if the rifle was designated the DL69. The Universe doesn’t have a sense of humour, so sue me. But I digress.

Well Mister Gun-nut: what is an assault rifle then?

An Assault Rifle is defined as a selective-fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. That’s right, folks: it is a selective-fire weapon. If it is not capable of fully-automatic or burst fire, then it is not an assault rifle. Also note that it fires an intermediate cartridge, which is conveniently defined by Wikipedia (I am so sorry) as a ‘firearm cartridge that is less powerful than typical full-power battle rifle cartridges’…as illustrated above.

Since AR15s are not fully-automatic it should be obvious that they are not assault rifles. They were, unfortunately, classified as assault weapons according to the AWB of 1994, but even that is fairly meaningless: a key feature of the Assault Weapons Ban is that it really sucked at defining just what exactly constituted a so-called “Assault Weapon” in the first place. The entire piece of legislation gropes blindly in the dark, like a horny teenager on a first date, for anything noteworthy to grab onto. It talks about folding stocks, flash suppressors, bayonet mounts, grenade launcher mounts, pistol grips, barrel shrouds et cetera. A keen observer may notice something strange about the aforementioned: they all pertain to ergonomic and cosmetic features, and in no way contribute in making the weapon more deadly.

To illustrate this point, take a look at the two rifles above. One is clearly prohibited according to the wording of the AWB of 1994, and the other most certainly is not. This is problematic, because even though the top one is classified as an “Assault Weapon”, they are both exactly the same rifle, firing exactly the same cartridge, and operate in exactly the same manner. The difference between the two are purely external and cosmetic. How on Earth did we get ourselves into this predicament?

Politicians. That’s how.

In the video above you have been subjected to several minutes of politicos talking, with all the self-assured conviction and arrogance displayed by members of the International Club of Dunning-Kruger Sufferers, about things like “high-capacity clips”, “the shoulder thing that goes up”, “high-power rounds”, and other verbal detritus which my brain has fortunately blocked out. Is there any doubt that these people have no clue as to what they are talking about? There is a bacterium on one of Jupiter’s moons who has a better grasp of workings of firearms than they have.

And these are the people whom an entire nation entrusts with making the laws of the land.

Something that is abundantly clear to me is that what people should be truely afraid of is not AR15s and so-called “Assault Weapons”, but rather that the world is inundated with legislators who are making laws pertaining issues that they have absolutely no grasp of what so ever, and are actually completely ignorant about. These are deranged and out of control whack jobs who deliberately mislead their electorate and stir up their emotions in order to pass nonsensical laws that have no grounding in rational fact.

The issue is not really about AR15s and how supposedly deadly and evil they are at all: the issue is about manipulating the public narrative so that politicians can be empowered by their electorate to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.

And that, my friends, is scary shit.

PS. I heard mention of some sort of New York journalist (Kunt…something) who apparently shot an AR15 and got “temporary PTSD” and injuries from it. Allegedly. All that I am willing to say about this is that my wife weighs about 45kg and managed to quite happily empty more magazines through my AR15 in one morning than I could afford to finance. And now she wants to go again…oy vey!