[Salon] How the AR-15 became a powerful political, cultural symbol in America - Washington Post

[Todd Pierce <todd.e.pierce@icloud.com>]

The answer to the question in the subject line is simple, and requires only four words: United States Perpetual War. As my one-time USMC DI used to tell us in 1971: War is our business, and business is good! He could have added, he, the USMC, the Military Industrial Complex and the CIA officer created “Conservative Movement,” loved that. War that is, as the Conservatives always mocked the “Liberals” for being “weak” on “war zealousness.” Even right-wing Southern Conservative Democrats (soon to be Republicans, as so many would become) were mocked as “weak,” by their Conservative Republican critics, until they became Republicans (don’t tell me otherwise, I saw it in US political life). And it was a USMC Lt.Col. Intelligence officer who gave my unit a briefing on the Vietnam War in 1971 (at Twentynine Palms, CA) explaining to us how it was the “liberal” weekly news magazine giving us erroneous information on Vietnam so we must read the conservative US News and World Report rather than the more “liberal” Time and Newsweek. 

But 9/11 and Perpetual War, and the promotion of that by such news media sites like the . . . Washington Post, and New York Times, is what made the “Black Rifle” the cultural icon of the militarists (fascists): 

https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/03/black-rifle-coffee-coffee-or-die-magazine/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/magazine/black-rifle-coffee-company.html

"Hafer put it more bluntly in a 2017 interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business: “Progressives hate me, and conservatives love me.” . . . while a giant TV played a slow-motion video of a bullet ripping through a coffee bag and flashed the message “PREMIUM ROASTED COFFEE FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE AMERICA.”

But I bet we will never see the war-promoting media platforms, or the war-promoting politicians, especially Republicans, as I know because I knew so many of them so well, ever admitting culpability for the death-dealing military guns culture we now have killing so many  American children, and adults. My first exposure to the insanity that warfare has the potential to create in individuals came with meeting Vietnam veterans, with two in particular opening up on how they missed Vietnam and being able to kill people. Whether they were “sincere” is not the point; enough with similar feelings were (and I know at least one of the two could have). 

But that’s why we “LOVE AMERICA:” WE LOVE TO KILL PEOPLE,” as war has psychologically conditioned us to, with our military, our CIA, our police, and with our “private militias,” strutting about with their “Black Rifles,” with libertarians amongst the most worshipful of, as I personally know. 

https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/ar-15-america-gun-culture-politics/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f001

How the AR-15 became a powerful political, cultural symbol in America

Ashley Parker

It is revered as a modern-day musket.

It is reviled as a tool for mass killers.

American Icon

A series examining the AR-15, a weapon with a singular hold on a divided nation

Colt acquired the AR-15 patent and trademark from Armalite in 1959. The patent expired, leaving many companies to produce their own weapons, commonly called AR-style rifles. While Colt still holds the trademark, “AR-15” has become a ubiquitous term for a popular style of gas-operated, magazine-fed semiautomatic rifles. For this reason, we refer to the rifle broadly as the AR-15 in this series.

The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a bestseller.

The rugged, powerful weapon was originally designed as a soldiers’ rifle in the late 1950s. “An outstanding weapon with phenomenal lethality,” an internal Pentagon report raved. It soon became standard issue for U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, where the weapon earned a new name: the M16.

But few gunmakers saw a semiautomatic version of the rifle — with its shrouded barrel, pistol grip and jutting ammunition magazine — as a product for ordinary people. It didn’t seem suited for hunting. It seemed like overkill for home defense. Gun executives doubted many buyers would want to spend their money on one.

The industry’s biggest trade shows banished the AR-15 to the back. The National Rifle Association and other industry allies were focused on promoting traditional rifles and handguns. Most gun owners also shunned the AR-15, dismissing it as a “black rifle” that broke from the typical wood-stocked long guns that were popular at the time.

“We’d have NRA members walk by our booth and give us the finger,” said Randy Luth, the founder of gunmaker DPMS, one of the earliest companies to market AR-15s.

Today, the AR-15 is the best-selling rifle in the United States, industry figures indicate. About 1 in 20 U.S. adults — or roughly 16 million people — own at least one AR-15, according to polling data from The Washington Post and Ipsos.

Almost every major gunmaker now produces its own version of the weapon. The modern AR-15 dominates the walls and websites of gun dealers.

The AR-15 is prominent at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, a gun rights event held in Greeley, Pa., in October. (Photos by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The AR-15 has gained a polarizing hold on the American imagination. Its unmistakable silhouette is used as a political statement emblazoned on T-shirts and banners and, among a handful of conservative members of Congress, on silver lapel pins. One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama, introduced a bill in February to declare the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.”

It also has become a stark symbol of the nation’s gun violence epidemic. Ten of the 17 deadliest U.S. mass shootings since 2012 have involved AR-15s.

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