The AR-15: The National Icon Of What We Have Become
A slick, seductive, highly profitable high-powered instrument of daily mass murder, mayhem and Wall Street profit
While I have not read The True History of the AR-15 by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, I am familiar with the history of the unique icon of modern American life … the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Reviews of the book have been positive.
The AR-15 is unlike any of the shotguns and deer rifles usually found in the suburban American homes of my youth. The AR-15 is a lightweight military combat rifle with negligible recoil specially designed and engineered to rip, tear, shatter and explode apart the human body. Victims of AR-15 mass shootings are often so mutilated and ripped apart that their scattered remains can only be identified through DNA analysis. Severed hands, feet, limbs, organs and brains need to be scooped up and sent to labs for sampling and analysis to compare with grieving family members.
With a full range of scopes, custom grips, lights, night vision, special duty stocks, large-capacity ammunition clips and other gear, the AR-15 is a super efficient killing tool and weapon of choice for American mass shooters. As such, it is carefully protected by the gun cult and coddled by corporate interests profiting off human sacrifice — even of grade school children — for Wall Street earnings. With an average of more than two mass shootings per day in the nation, the daily death toll is like some perverse, hellish ad campaign. Since sane and humane firearm legislation supported by many gun owners like me will never emerge from our corporate-captured mockery of democracy, AR-15 sales soar and will continue to with the daily body count.
As reported by NBC News: “Every time there is a massacre involving an AR-15-style weapon — such as the May 6 shopping mall shooting in Allen, Texas, that killed eight people — the gun draws a new flood of media coverage and public discussion. The stakes, and rhetoric, escalate — and sales, according to the gun industry, remain brisk.”
The money-making story of the AR-15 is the story of national mayhem and the lethal psychology of a twisted version of American exceptionalism that plays out from kindergarten playrooms to nations on the other side of the globe. It is — in so, so many ways — the embodiment and icon of what we have become and the lethal greed of the late-stage capitalism degrading and killing us off.
— Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink
*****
American Gun Review: Riveting, Bloody History Of The AR-15
“The design was shaped by a simple military adage: “Whoever shoots the most lead wins.” Every detail of how the weapon went from a “counter-insurgency” tool in south-east Asia in the 1960s to the most popular way to kill American schoolchildren in the 21st century is included in this harrowing narrative.’”
….
“One thing which especially impressed the earliest AR-15 users, including South Vietnamese troops, was the way its bullets became unstable inside a human body, tearing through “like a tornado, spiraling and tipping … obliterat[ing] organs, blood vessels and bones”. This of course was the same quality that would make the weapon the ultimate scourge of American schoolchildren five decades later.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/29/american-gun-review-history-ar-15
*****
How The AR-15 Became The Bestselling Rifle In The U.S.
By Terry Gross
Fresh Air / NPR (4/20/23)
Washington Post reporter Todd Frankel explains how the AR-15 was adapted from the M16 military combat automatic rifle, and how it became an icon of gun culture and a favored weapon for mass shooters.
37-minute audio: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/20/1171027638/how-the-ar-15-became-the-bestselling-rifle-in-the-u-s
