Here’s the Times‘ take. It’s long and reads a lot like this.
On one level, marketing military-style weapons to civilians is not so different from pitching professional sports equipment to high-school athletes. Garry James, the senior field editor at Guns & Ammo, says a military pedigree inspires consumer confidence in a gun’s reliability.
“Credibility of performance is what appeals to the firearms enthusiast,” Mr. James wrote in an e-mail.
Yet marketing combat-derived weapons to civilians is a risky business, particularly now. The industry itself has promoted the guns by using battle imagery and words like “assault” and “combat.” Bushmaster Firearms, a leading maker of AR-15-style guns, and whose rifles have been used in several mass shootings, features the Bushmaster ACR, short for adaptive combat rifle, on its Web site. “Forces of opposition, bow down,” part of the site says. All the same, gun makers say customers buy these weapons with peaceable intentions.
The AR-15 isn’t the first military-style weapon to gain a consumer following. After World War II, some people bought surplus German service rifles made by Mauser and repurposed them for hunting and competitive shooting. But the selling of the AR-15 represents the first mass marketing of a military-style semiautomatic rifle made by a number of different gun makers. Its success has led to an increasing militarization of the entire consumer firearms market, says Tom Diaz, a gun industry researcher and gun control advocate.
My take: Because they’re cool. Duh.
Having one will ensure that you’re ready for the zombie apocalypse.
They also make a great fashion accessory.
Let me translate this whine. “They are making guns even more popular! Waaaahhh!”
The complaint is all based on the idea that having, or even wanting, a gun is bad. “You bad, bad rightwingnutjobs and your guns!” They cannot come right out and say that no one should have private guns, so they have to demonize certain types of guns, and so, by proxy, shame you away from having any guns. Pure propaganda.
Ask the whiner what he really thinks about gun ownership. He hates the very idea. Only the government should have guns. Everything else they say is all smoke and mirrors.
If “military style” is so all-fired terrible, how come hippies and hipsters have been dressing in war surplus for the last forty years or so?
That’s Red Army surplus. That’s different.
Back during the hippie era, a great many of the anti-Vietnam War and anti-draft protesters were wearing American surplus; field jackets, pea coats, trench coats, khaki pants, Marine jackets, Air Force stuff, Eisenhower jackets and old British battledress jackets—lots of stuff.
I still see loads of Williamsburg hipsters, cut from the same mold as 40 years ago, wearing American military surplus. Yes, there’s an admixture of old Eastern Bloc castoffs and odds and ends from the West German military, but it’s outnumbered by the American stuff.
Here is a simpler explanation. We are on the third generation of soldiers and marines who used the military select fire versions of the AR platform and just as WWII veteran gun enthusiasts snapped up M-1 Garands and M-1 Carbines when they became available today’s ex-GIs want a rifle that is like the one used while in the military.
Gun control advocates say we shouldn’t allow citizens to have military style semiautomatic rifles and clain that they are ok with bolt action “hunting” rifles. Funny thing is the military got into autoloading rifles thirty years after the technology was introduced by Winchester with their 1903, 1905, and 1907 series autoloading hunting rifles. It is the Winchester model 70 and Remington model 700, the two most popular bolt action rifles that are derived from military tecnology. They direct descendents of Mauser 98K and 1903 Springfield military rifles.
This is my weapon/This is my gun/This is for fighting/This is for fun.
Maybe the wimps are just worried that somebody will use their gun on their woman.
This is the first “mass marketing of military semi-automatics..”? Wrong. The current military rifle used by the armed forces has always been popular with competitive shooters. Before the M16, there were the M-1 and the M-14 (also marketed in a civilian version as the M-1A).
Also, beginning in the early sixties, it has been the first time in history that significant numbers of citizens have been able to afford top of the line military rifles, or knock-offs.
Of course the 2d Amendment covers having such competitive weapons for defense, of the person and the Constitution.
Count on the NY Times to get it wrong- but Politically Correct (“the greater truth..”).
With some notable exceptions, the military tends to use weapons that work well and hold up. Those weapons that have stood the test of time and are of a higher quality than Saturday night specials, prove to be better investments. Let the leftist loonies buy their Yugos.
General hold, I should think. You can stop it in about ten more minutes, since I have somewhere else to be.
Oh, and kiss off.