![]() In advertisements for these guns, there's a common message: Get in touch with your inner GI Joe. "AR-style modern sporting rifles are a major contributor to the success of the American firearms industry, no question," says Mike Bazinet of the NSSF. After semi-automatic pistols, military-style rifles represent the next hottest-selling category of guns. Data that the NSSF provided to NPR show imports and production of these weapons almost quadrupled in the past 10 years. The main gun industry group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, tells NPR these weapons represent almost 20 percent of the entire industry's revenue. Military-style rifles have now ballooned into a nearly billion-dollar business. Television shows like Miami Vice made military-style firearms look sexy. And then pop culture helped the market along. How did warfare enter the civilian market? AR-15 rifles were sold to the public as early as the 1960s, but Diaz says their popularity really took off in the 1980s, after Chinese manufacturers began exporting the AR's Russian counterpart - the AK-47 - to the U.S. Instruments Of Warfare In The Civilian Market ![]() It has the capability that the military wanted for warfare." "So you can call it whatever you want - tactical rifle, black rifle, assault rifle, modern sporting rifle. "Those design features in a civilian market have horrific consequences," says Tom Diaz, a gun control advocate who has long followed the commercialization of military firearms. And that's what the military wanted out of this gun - the ability to kill even without good aim, a weapon with high-capacity ammunition magazines that could spray bullets within close to medium range. Everyone was shot more than once - as many as 11 times. Twenty-six people were killed, including 20 first-graders. The AR-15 was the gun used by Adam Lanza when he opened fire in Newtown, Conn., last December. Potato Head of firearms," Collins says, "because you can interchange so many different things to make it customized to you, to be able to make it comfortable when you shoot."īut this Mr. "This is the man's Barbie doll - you know, the Mr. He started collecting military-style guns when he turned 18, and he just built an AR-15 for his 19-year-old son last Christmas. Glascock was 3 years old when he started shooting a. The AR-15 is semiautomatic, which means you need to squeeze the trigger for each bullet. The fully automatic version of this gun - the M-16 - was introduced by the U.S. "It's our, if you will, symbol around the world, this gun." It's been our military firearm," Glascock says. Next to Collins at the shooting range at Clark Brothers Gun Shop in Warrenton, Va., is Jason Glascock, who says if more Americans knew what it was like to shoot these weapons, they would see these guns can actually be good, clean fun. I'm just a normal person who enjoys shooting."Īnd for Collins, target practicing with an AR-15 is a hobby. "I defended this country all over the world. "I spent 27 years in the military," he says. ![]() And that's not me," says Mike Collins, who owns more than a dozen military-style rifles with his wife.Ĭollins wants you to understand something: He is a rational, intelligent, regular guy. "You know, they picture you as some kind of militant freak. And then there are the special labels reserved for people who love their assault rifles. Gun rights people are accused of being paranoid rednecks who think the government is out to get them. Gun control advocates are slammed as elitist, urban liberals who want to take everyone's guns away. There's a lot of name-calling in the gun control debate. 'They Picture You As Some Kind Of Militant Freak' Military-style assault rifles now form a nearly $1 billion industry supported by gun owners who spend thousands of dollars collecting these firearms.Īnd while the gun-rights lobby keeps invoking the right of "self-defense" to defend Americans' right to buy these guns, home protection is low on the list of reasons gun enthusiasts keep buying military-style weapons. Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid insist that gun control legislation is not dead - they say they're strategizing on how to bring the issue back to the Senate floor.Įven if it does return, one proposal unlikely to survive is an assault weapons ban. Veetek Witkowski holds a newly assembled AR-15 rifle at the Stag Arms company in New Britain, Conn., in April. ![]()
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