This guy, and I'm almost certain it's a guy, has more issues than Sports Illustrated.
Well it’s been a few days at least since the latest mass shooting so I thought I’d get this out there before the next one.
I saw it in the employee parking lot at work. I’m sure you’ve seen one too. A massive pickup truck, suspension raised to where you’d need a ladder to get in, festooned with gun stickers on the rear window.
It seems a black guy can get shot for having an air freshener “blocking his view” but Cleetus here probably can’t see out the rear window of this rig.
The first thing I think of when I see this is - this is probably not a person I want to interact with.
The second thing is: If it were me, I wouldn’t advertise to would-be thieves that I have expensive toys in my house. Despite your shoot-the-burglar fantasies Bubba, they’re a lot more likely to break in when you’re not home and steal your guns. When you tell me “the bad guys will always find a way to get guns” well that’s one of the ways they do it.
But I’m not really here to talk about truck-boy. I’m here to talk about his favorite toy, the AR-15.
First a little history.
How did we get Assault Rifles?
Back in World War 2 there were two main types of infantry weapons: rifles and submachine guns.
A typical WWII infantry rifle was something like the Mauser 98K, Mosin-Nagant or Lee Enfield. These were usually bolt-action weapons that fired a powerful round in roughly .30 caliber. They were fairly accurate and could reasonably engage targets at around 500 meters. They could shoot a lot further than that, but typically the sights were limiting factor. Sniper versions with scopes were even more accurate.
These had a pretty good recoil. The first (and last) time Mrs. Kong fired my Mosin-Nagant she ended up on her behind.
Typically these held somewhere between 5 and 10 rounds and were reloaded through the top using a metal “stripper clip”. Effective rate of fire was somewhere around 15 rounds per minute.
The US was the exception with the semi automatic M-1 Garand. Otherwise most WWII rifles would have looked right at home on a WWI battlefield.
Mauser 98K. The original design goes back to 1898.
So in summary: accurate, powerful, but slow rate of fire and limited ammo capacity.
The opposite end of the spectrum was a submachine gun. Something like the American Thompson or the Soviet PPSh-41. These fired relatively weak pistol ammunition like the .45 ACP or 9mm but they made up for it in volume. A PPSh-41 had a 71 round drum magazine and had an insanely fast rate-of-fire of 900 rounds per minute.
A Soviet infantryman firing a PPSh-41.
Submachine guns were great for close-in work like clearing a building but were easily outranged by rifles on the open battlefield. Also a rifle bullet will go through a lot of things that will stop a pistol bullet.
In summary: easy to “spray and pray” but relatively weak and short ranged.
Towards the end of the war those clever Germans came up with a way to combine the two.
The StG-44 “Sturmgewehr” literally coined the term “Assault Rifle”. This was arguably the daddy of all modern assault rifles.
It is sometimes referred to as an MP-44 which stood for “Machine Pistol”. Legend has it that Hitler had some outdated ideas of what a rifle should be based on his time in WWI, so they gave it the Machine Pistol designation to get it past him.
The Soviet AK-47 was inspired by this rifle but is not a copy of it.
So what makes something an “Assault Rifle”? Generally it fires a medium powered round and has the ability to fire fully automatically. This is usually referred to as “select fire” because it can be switched to semi-automatic (one round per trigger pull).
The Sturmgewehr gave you the best of both worlds. Most of the range and power of a full size rifle combined with lead spewing ability of a submachine gun.
I’ll skip past the M-1, M-14, Eugene Stoner and Armalite to the Vietnam era when the M-16 became the primary infantry weapon of the US armed forces. Just note that the “AR” in AR-15 stands for Armalite.
Warning! Not safe for work!
Vietnam era M-16.
The M-16 fires the 5.56 NATO round, which in the civilian world is the .223 Remington. There are some differences between the two but essentially they’re equivalent.
Chad here is holding a 5.56 in his left hand and the larger, more powerful .308 in his right.
As rifle bullets go it’s not nearly as powerful as something like the .30-06 fired by the WWII era M-1 Garand or the .308 fired by the M-14.
I’ve fired an M-1 and it kicks pretty hard. I’ve also fired the civilian version of the M-14 and it has quite a kick as well. Military M-14’s had full auto capability but I’m told they were a real handful under full auto.
Not so with the M-16. I’ve fired one in the Air Force on full auto and it’s fairly controllable if you use a 3-4 round burst (which is the preferred method).
So the M-16 gives up some range and hitting power for greater firepower at close/medium range which is more realistic in most combat scenarios. Most WWII riflemen weren’t taking shots at 1000 meters.
But here’s the thing, it’s powerful enough. It’s like the joke about the Cessna 152 going just fast enough to kill you. A .223 round is more than capable of killing you or messing you up pretty badly.
When someone starts splitting hairs about the “stopping power” of a certain round, just ask them if they’d be willing to go downrange and catch one. I for one wouldn’t want to get shot with even a .22 rimfire if I was already in the ER laying on the operating table.
The same goes for its Soviet counterpart the 7.62x39. If you don’t believe me, there’s a nice wall in Washington DC with a bunch of names on it killed by that damn thing. Colonel Kalashnikov in later years said he wished he’d invented something useful like a lawnmower instead.
I stopped going to the range after a 10-12 year old kid in the next lane pointed an AK at me.
Blam!
Blam!
Click!
“Hey dad! This thing’s jammed!” as he swung the muzzle right at me.
I packed up my gear, walked out and never went back.
Other than combat I’ve had weapons pointed at me four times in my life. Each time was by a so-called “responsible gun owner”.
Mikhail Kalashnikov and his deadly invention. We can argue all day which one is “better”. The AK is more reliable but the M-16 is more accurate.
The civilian version of the military M-16 is the now ubiquitous AR-15. These things are like bellybuttons, everybody’s got one. The originals were made by Colt but now there are a bunch of AR-15 clones out there made by various companies.
I will use the term “AR-15” generically to describe any AR-15 style rifle regardless of manufacturer. Basically I’m talking about a gas-operated, semi-automatic rifle, usually (but not always) chambered in .223 Remington with the ability to use high-capacity quick-change magazines.
In other words, an assault rifle.
OK, I know, technically a civilian AR-15 is not an assault rifle because it can’t be fired fully automatically. That being said, here is an old issue of Guns & Ammo magazine back when these things first became common on the civilian market.
Here’s something maybe you didn’t know. The military’s latest version of the M-16 can only fire single shot or 3-round burst. It can’t go full “rock and roll” like in the old days. So the line between civilian and military has become even more blurred.
Here is where someone jumps in with “But Kong! Semi-automatic rifles have been around since the Winchester 1903! It’s hundred year old technology!”
To which I say “Great! If a Winchester 1903 is just as good then you can have a Winchester 1903.”
Narrator’s voice: It isn’t.
A Winchester 1903 held 10 rounds of rather weak .22 ammunition in a tube magazine that had to be reloaded one at a time. It was as close to an AR-15 as a Model T is to a Ferrari F430.
He’s available ladies!
“But a lever action rifle can fire just as quickly!”
NO…...IT……CAN’T
First, a lever action rifle only holds so many rounds in a tube under the barrel. The larger (and more powerful) the cartridge, the less you can hold. My Winchester 1886 holds 8 rounds of .45-70.
It’s hard to compare apples to apples here, but a common lever action round that’s comparable in power to the .223 would probably be the .30-30 Winchester. It’s been around for a very long time. My grandfather used to hunt deer with one.
A Winchester Model 94 can hold eight of these. If want more ammo capacity in a lever action you’re probably down to pistol cartridges like the .357 or .44 magnum.
Then there’s rate of fire. OK, if you’re really good, I’m talking John Wayne’s stunt double circa 1970 good, you might get eight quick shots off with your Winchester 94 as fast as a semi auto.
I wouldn’t even try this with one of mine, because it would beat the crap out of the action. And I sure as hell wouldn’t try it with my .45-70 Winchester because it would beat the crap out of me.
But then what? Lever action rifles are loaded one at a time through a port on the side. Your sustained rate of fire is nowhere near what you can do with a modern rifle. There’s a reason we issue M-16s to the infantry and not Winchesters.
Winchester Model 1886. Nice rifle but it won’t spray lead like a semi-auto will.
This is what I think makes the AR-15 style rifle particularly dangerous. It hits the “sweet spot” in a lot of categories.
- High rate of fire
- High magazine capacity
- High accuracy
- Reasonably powerful round
- Low recoil
- Fast reloading speed
- Ease of use
So while not a true Sturmgewehr, it can still put a lot of lead downrange in a very short time with a fair amount of accuracy. If you had 30-round magazines and were decent at reloading I’d guess 60 rounds per minute easily.
From the US Marine Corps Rifle Marksmanship Manual MCRP 3-01A
“But Kong! A lot more people are killed by handguns!”
Yep, they got me there. Spree killers make the splashy headlines but most of your day-to-day shootings are with handguns. To which I would say: Let’s see your plan to deal with handguns.
Narrator’s voice: They don’t have one.
So I’ll grant them the handgun point, but when the militia types show up at the statehouse what are they carrying? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.
Just a group of “sportsmen” being totally non-threatening with their “sporting rifles”.
They love to accessorize these things like Barbie dolls. They even come in pink.
Every weapon I see in these pictures looks like a variation on an AR-15. It’s hard to tell because they make so many accessories for these things.
Irony truly is dead.
Well, he seems nice.
“But Kong! These are just totally non-threatening sporting rifles. People use them for hunting!”
Yep, you can hunt with an AR-15 and a lot of people do. You can hunt with a lot of things, however. I don’t recall my grandfather complaining that his bolt action .30-06 wasn’t bringing home enough deer.
“But Kong! We need our AR-15s to fight government tyranny!”
Here’s where it gets weird.
It’s just a harmless sporting rifle but it’s powerful enough to take on the US military. It’s Schrödinger’s Gun! It’s not a “weapon of war” but you want to go to war with it.
Am I supposed to be afraid of it or aren’t I?
At least pick one and stick with it.
I’d say recent events show that the people arming themselves against “government tyranny” would be first in line to hunt down “undesirables” for a tyrannical government. Undesirables meaning pretty much anyone who isn’t them.
But let’s suppose that me and my buddies from the shooting range were going to take on, oh let’s say the 1st Marine Division. I’d suggest asking any Iraqi survivors of Fallujah how unorganized militias with small arms fare against modern combined arms. That’s assuming you could find an Iraqi survivor of Fallujah.
Which brings me to this thing:
It means “come and take them”.
At the Battle of Thermopylae, the attacking Persians told Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans to put down their weapons. Leonidas reportedly responded “come and take them”.
Narrator’s voice: they did
The three hundred, plus the rest of the Greek army you never hear about, held the Persian army off for a whole three days before they were slaughtered and Athens was burned. Come and take them indeed.
So where am I going with this? Heh, sometimes I wonder myself. My main point is that an AR-15 is not your father’s semi automatic rifle. While it’s not technically a weapon of war or a true assault rifle, it’s a crap-ton of firepower in an easy to use, all too easy to get, package. You’d be hard pressed to find a better mass killing tool available to the general public.
What’s the answer? I never said I had one. We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.
Personally I think if we can legally regulate 600 rounds per minute we can regulate 60 rounds per minute but six Federalist Society hacks on the court would probably say otherwise.
So these things are legal and probably will stay that way barring some change to the courts.
Stay safe out there.
