So should anyone else with a sense of decency and morality.
“Our father, Eugene Stoner, designed the AR-15 and subsequent M-16 as a military weapon to give our soldiers an advantage over the AK-47,”
Stoner’s family members, who chose to remain individually anonymous, told NBC that the inventor never owned the weapon as an “avid sportsman, hunter and skeet shooter.”
whistling
So gun sales for the Ar-15 have spiked since the shootings in Orlando. What a fucking nightmare this is.
The Dems should make sure that someone from this family is part of the testifying, should hearings ever be held.
My understanding…and correct me if I’m wrong, because I’m just going by memory of something read a while ago…is that the AR-15 was the weapon debated against the M-16 as the new and improved soldiers’ weapon during Vietnam. Despite its reported propensity to jam, the M-16 was chosen and something something political reasons for that. They did, however, conduct field tests with the AR-15, primarily by handing them to South Vietnamese soldiers. Wounds were being reported as pretty damn awful, dismemberments, gaping holes, etc. It was bad enough that the pictures were kept classified until the 80’s.
The dead have no regrets. Those are the province of the living. So I suppose my question is this: where was this fucker’s horror then?
Where’s ours now?
There are no gun laws that will rid us of the psycopaths murdering people. The horse is out of the barn. Current tallies estimate about 300 million firearms in public possession and circulation in the nation. People can be screened, watched, followed, have limits put on the right to buy. None of that will stop determined nutjobs from their task at hand.
When we wanted highly polluting cars off the road sooner than we were willing to wait for them to be retired we had “Cash for Clunkers” and bought them off the highways. When treatment for AIDS finally allowed viral counts so low those afflicted were essentially safe to live among us and lead a normal life there were still many in later stages that were yet to die. Many ills require multiple generations to fade. And they fade because whatever they are goes away. Old cars. Sick people. Bad products. Dangerous drugs. New ones just don’t keep being made and reintroduced back into society. Not so with guns. We want to treat the symptom, not the cause. No Congress, ever, is going to enact laws whereby millions of assault rifle returns are mandated, to be melted down. Nor will their manufacture be limited to the degree a significant falloff in those present results. The 300 million guns out there will be out there in 100 years. Disturbed and violent people will be able to procure them almost whenever they choose, given the motivation and money to do so. We’re pissing in the wind.
“Gun control advocates”
Gun SAFETY advocates
FIFY
And may you learn quickly.
“Our father, Eugene Stoner, designed the AR-15 and subsequent M-16 as a military weapon to give our soldiers…”
So once again our enemies abroad are using our own weaknesses against us. As they used our airliners and easy access to cockpits and weapons on planes to fly them into tall buildings, they now are using our lax gun laws and easy access to personal weapons of mass destruction to slaughter us… And a decidedly un-American GOP Congress does nothing.
Is Congress on the side of the terrorists? Is the NRA on the side of the terrorists? Money and profits over the best interests of the American people?
An in-law, in a gun-crazy Western state, just told the spouse they just added another AR-15 to their 30+ gun collection this past Monday. The stated reason for the purchase: They wanted it and they could afford to buy it.
It’s normal in gunnuttistan. Such horrific and efficient slaughter leads gun nuts to conclude that the only rational reaction by the hated government will be to ban such weapons. The NRA at this point barely has to nudge the response. A run on assault weapons, high capacity magazines and cases of ammunition happens like clockwork. Gun manufacturers benefit both before and after mass killings. The NRA makes sure the government response is prayer and thoughts and nothing else. The self licking ice cream cone gets another scoop, and death goes on.
A small point. The AR-15 design was originally made by ArmaLite in late 1950s. The design was sold to Colt and after some modifications it because the M-16. They never competed against each other.
And I’m scaring myself that I actually remember that. Blame in on too much time watching TLC and the Discovery Channel before they because the brain cell killing shit holes they are today.
And it certainly had nothing to do with fear that the Hillary is going to revoke the 2nd Amendment and take everyone’s guns away, Right? The AR-15 is the top seller in America this week after all. I can’t imagine why that would be.
So they called it America’s Rifle? So you mean the gun nuts changed the reference for AR, but if we change it to Assault Rifle we are just ignorant?
The gun nuts say that the AR isn’t an Assault Rifle because a military assault rifle is capable of fully automatic fire.
Never mind that even in semi automatic mode the rifle is capable of killing extremly rapidly. Oh, that doesn’t matter because Charles Whitman shot 50 people from the Texas clock tower. Never mind that he took 90 minutes to do so and killed 14, while MCX guy shot 100 people and killed 50 in minutes, if not seconds.
I got a new meaning for ‘AR’, it’s now Asshole Rifle.
From the Atlantic Monthly":
"A better example of an inventor with regrets is Albert Einstein, who played almost no role in the development of the atomic bomb but whose discoveries led to it. In his biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson dramatically tells the moment when the scientist first understood the possibility of the bomb:
Sitting at a bare wooden table on the screen porch of the sparsely furnished cottage [on Long Island], [Leo] Szilard explained the process of how an explosive chain reaction could be produced in uranium layered with graphite by the neutrons released from nuclear fission. “I never though of that!” Einstein interjected. He asked a few questions, went over the process for fifteen minutes, and then quickly grasped the implications."
You made me go Googling, but I found it…
"In July 1960, General Curtis LeMay was impressed by a demonstration of the ArmaLite AR-15. In the summer of 1961, General LeMay was promoted to United States Air Force, Chief of Staff, and requested 80,000 AR-15s. However, General Maxwell D. Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised President John F. Kennedy that having two different calibers within the military system at the same time would be problematic and the request was rejected.[44] In October 1961, William Godel, a senior man at the Advanced Research Projects Agency, sent 10 AR-15s to South Vietnam. The reception was enthusiastic, and in 1962, another 1,000 AR-15s were sent.[45] United States Army Special Forces personnel filed battlefield reports lavishly praising the AR-15 and the stopping-power of the 5.56 mm cartridge, and pressed for its adoption.[35]
The damage caused by the 5.56 mm bullet was originally believed to be caused by “tumbling” due to the slow 1 in 14-inch (360 mm) rifling twist rate.[35][44] However, any pointed lead core bullet will “tumble” after penetration in flesh, because the center of gravity is towards the rear of the bullet. The large wounds observed by soldiers in Vietnam were actually caused by bullet fragmentation, which was created by a combination of the bullet’s velocity and construction.[46] These wounds were so devastating, that the photographs remained classified into the 1980s.[47]
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara now had two conflicting views: the ARPA report favoring the AR-15 and the Army’s position favoring the M14.[35] Even President Kennedy expressed concern, so McNamara ordered Secretary of the Army Cyrus Vance to test the M14, the AR-15 and the AK-47. The Army reported that only the M14 was suitable for service, but Vance wondered about the impartiality of those conducting the tests. He ordered the Army Inspector General to investigate the testing methods used; the Inspector General confirmed that the testers were biased towards the M14.
In January 1963, Secretary McNamara received reports that M14 production was insufficient to meet the needs of the armed forces and ordered a halt to M14 production.[35] At the time, the AR-15 was the only rifle that could fulfill a requirement of a “universal” infantry weapon for issue to all services. McNamara ordered its adoption, despite receiving reports of several deficiencies, most notably the lack of a chrome-plated chamber.[48]
After modifications (most notably, the charging handle was re-located from under the carrying handle like AR-10 to the rear of the receiver),[9] the new redesigned rifle was renamed the Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16.[8][1] Inexplicably, the modification to the new M16 did not include a chrome-plated barrel. Meanwhile, the Army relented and recommended the adoption of the M16 for jungle warfare operations. However, the Army insisted on the inclusion of a forward assist to help push the bolt into battery in the event that a cartridge failed to seat into the chamber. The Air Force, Colt and Eugene Stoner believed that the addition of a forward assist was an unjustified expense. As a result, the design was split into two variants: the Air Force’s M16 without the forward assist, and the XM16E1 with the forward assist for the other service branches.
In November 1963, McNamara approved the U.S. Army’s order of 85,000 XM16E1s;[35][49] and to appease General LeMay, the Air Force was granted an order for another 19,000 M16s.[50][51] In March 1964, M16 rifle went into production and the Army accepted delivery of the first batch of 2129 rifles later that year, and an additional 57,240 rifles the following year.[1]"
I think that’s what I had read before.
I imagine that thought might have crossed their mind but that they were telling a supposedly loved gay brother about the purchase of a gun type that had just slaughtered 49 people at a gay club…that thought didn’t seem to have…
You’re correct then. Lesson of the day: never trust a memory from thirty years ago.
Haha, yeah…I think it only stuck with me because last time I read that I was using it to crap on some CNN story on their “Political Ticker” back before they shut down their comment sections.
Self awareness and critical thinking skills are not something held in high value by Republicans and gun nuts. I have too many in my extended family that fall into both of those categories.