Over the last few months I have conducted a low-key experiment, using the comment section of our local newspaper, The New Mexican. I have been reading comments posted whenever an article appears on hot-button topics like climate change and political reform, and inserting myself to counter and critique what I think are bad arguments or poor use of facts. My goals are, first, not to cede the public square to the loudest voices; second, to see if reasonable comments, citing sources and data, have any effect on the discussion; three, to test my own views and see if I can learn from people I disagree with.
One of the most frequent topics has been guns. The New Mexico legislature just ended its annual short session, and the Governor introduced a number of gun-control bills that received extensive press coverage. Any article about gun legislation is sure to produce an avalanche of angry responses, mostly from the libertarian right but also from some progressives. Engaging in this over the last few months has made me think more about our gun problem and what needs to be done.
One of the most frequent, and most emotional, issues is anything having to do with the AR-15 and similar assault rifles (I will use ‘AR-15’ here as shorthand for all assault rifles). A huge amount of discussion—probably more than it deserves— is devoted to back and forth on these weapons. Here in New Mexico, Governor Lujan Grisham has at various times proposed regulations to raise the age for purchasing AR-15s to 21, or to ban them altogether. New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich has backed a federal law to limit the size of magazines on assault rifles and other semi-automatic weapons. All of these received extensive comments both pro and con—mostly con.
I want to offer some of the conclusions I have come to from engaging in these debates, as well as from an excellent recent book, American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15, by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Ellinson. I have included page references to American Gun in the text.
Threat of Political Violence
My first and most important conclusion is that the AR-15 is central to the political threat posed by Donald Trump. As will be explained in more detail, this is because of the huge number of AR-15s now in circulation, and their close association with right-wing, conspiratorial, anti-government perspectives.
The United States has for decades had to deal with militia groups, mostly on the right, that have stockpiled AR-15s and other firearms and trained members for defensive and offensive scenarios. Contemporary groups such as the Boogaloo Boys, 3-Percenters, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and many others plan to counter supposed government oppression, or initiate a race war, or confront progressive demonstrators, or prep for the collapse of the country, or defend traditional Christian values, or stop the flow of immigrants, among a range of goals. Many of these groups target former members of the military or law enforcement for recruitment because of their training and access to weapons.
Until recently these armed groups, though concerning, did not present a serious threat to the country’s stability and political order. They lacked a common strategy, had no single leader, and often disagreed and fought among themselves.
But Trump’s rise has changed the nature of the threat. Now these disparate groups have for the first time a leader who unites them and gives them marching orders. The January 6 attack on the Capital followed Trump’s call to the Proud Boys to “stand by” and enlisted multiple anti-government militias, conspiracy-theorists, ideologues, racists, anti-Semites, Christian fundamentalists, and other parts of the extreme right under one banner. According to the ACLED (The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project) “There has been a major realignment of militia movements in the US from anti-federal government writ large to mostly supporting one candidate, thereby generally positioning the militia movement alongside a political party.” The FBI has recently said that white nationalist extremists constitute our most dangerous domestic terrorist threat.
While the majority of AR-15 owners are law-abiding and responsible citizens, the sheer number of weapons ensures that a significant number are in the hands of dangerous actors. The AR-15 has been marketed for decades to appeal to people suspicious of government who often identify with the military and are primed to resort to violence. Many hold extreme anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and racist views. AR-15 owners are often hardline supporters of gun rights who demonize any politician or activist who supports even the smallest restrictions on firearms as enemies who are conspiring to take their guns away (328). These are the type of people most likely to join right-wing militias.
Of particular concern is that this demographic overlaps with the approximately 30% of the American population that believes Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election, and would likely favor the use of intimidation or force if directed by Trump. We have already seen the violent results of Trump’s refusal to accept the results in 2020, and there is every reason to think he and his supporters are planning a much wider and more aggressive response in 2024. In this response the AR-15 has the potential to play a central and very dangerous role.
Misleading Arguments
My second point is that most of the arguments invoked by gun rights supporters against AR-15 restrictions are false or misleading. Three of these arguments came up frequently in the comments posted in the New Mexican.
AR-15s Not Significant in Killings. Probably the most common claim is that AR-15s are used in only a small fraction of murders. Therefore restrictions that focus on this weapon are not really designed to stop shootings but are pretexts to take away gun rights by liberals who just have an irrational bias against assault rifles.
It is certainly true that the vast majority of the approximately 19,000 firearms murders in the US in 2023 were committed with handguns. In 2022 only 541 murders were categorized as committed by ‘rifles,’ which includes the AR-15 but also other long-guns. Almost 8000 were from handguns, with thousands more not categorized, but mostly handguns.
However, one reason it’s a good talking point to say the AR-15 is only responsible for a small fraction of murders is not that AR-15 related deaths are so few, it’s that the number of murders in the US is so large. When 19000 people are being killed each year, 500 or so deaths doesn’t look like much. But in most countries comparable to the US—high income, industrialized democracies—500 deaths isn’t so small. For instance, in 2021, the total number of firearm related murders in the UK was 28. Total. The United States is a huge global outlier in the number of people murdered with firearms.
AR-15s are not generally used in the run of the mill street shootings, robberies-gone-wrong, domestic quarrels, and gang violence that account for most gun-related murders. You can’t easily conceal an AR-15 or tuck it in the back of your pants. But it is the weapon of choice for many mass murderers, for fairly straightforward reasons. The Buffalo shooter, who killed 8 African-Americans in a Buffalo supermarket in 2022, (to avoid giving them any publicity, I will not use the names of mass murderers) tells us the two main reasons: “ [He] believed that using an AR-15 would enable him to kill more people—and get more attention. ‘The AR-15 and its variants are very deadly when used properly. Which is the reason why I picked one,’ he wrote. ‘Plus, the media loves to hate on the AR-15, which may increase media coverage and public outlash.’ (395)
As a military weapon designed to rapidly engage multiple targets at close range, with maximum lethality, the AR-15 is perfectly designed for mass murder. Perpetrators are not trying to conceal the weapon—they want it seen, to instill fear. And many mass killers are wrapped up in living up to a certain image: “ [the Aurora, Colorado shooter who killed 12 and injured 70 at a movie theater in 2012] was drawn to the AR-15 in part because it looked scary, said Craig Appel, an Aurora homicide detective who interviewed [him]. “That warrior mentality, that was his big issue,” Appel recalled. “He wanted to look like a badass.” (297)
In addition, the AR-15 intimidates law enforcement. In the 2022 Uvalde school shooting, where first responders waited almost an hour before directly engaging the shooter, the main reason was fear of the AR-15s firepower. Officers had their own AR-15s but this did not make them willing to engage. According to the Texas Tribune: “Once they saw a torrent of bullets tear through a classroom wall and metal door, the first police officers in the hallway of Robb Elementary School concluded they were outgunned. And that they could die. The gunman had an AR-15, a rifle design used by U.S. soldiers in every conflict since Vietnam. Its bullets flew toward the officers at three times the speed of sound and could have pierced their body armor like a hole punch through paper. They grazed two officers in the head, and the group retreated.”
Many mass murderers are copycats, trying to live up to the example of previous killers. The more those killers use AR-15s, the more new killers are likely to do the same (362). In recent years the percentage of mass killings (with four or more people killed) that involve AR-15s has risen sharply. Over the past ten years almost half of mass shooters have used an AR-15, according to the Violence Project. (400)
The effect of mass shootings on public life and the lives of those affected is far greater than the numbers would suggest by themselves. These are acts of terrorism, designed by their perpetrators to inflict not just physical damage, but to damage and shock entire communities and the nation as a whole. Hate-based attacks such as those targeting the LGBTQ community (Pulse Nightclub 2016, Colorado Springs 2022), African-Americans (Buffalo 2022, Jacksonville 2023), immigrants (El Paso Walmart 2019), or Jews (Pittsburgh 2018) reverberate nationally and even globally, as evidenced by the copycat shooting in New Zealand in 2019 that targeted two mosques. Schoolchildren in every part of the US can now expect to take part in drills to deal with an active shooter. Schools, churches, nightclubs, concert venues, parades—virtually any public place—must now plan for, and devote resources to try and prevent, a violent assault by someone armed with an AR-15.
Nothing special about the AR-15. A second common argument is that the AR-15 is no different than other guns, and people choose to own an AR-15 for the same reasons people own guns in general, for hunting or sport shooting or home defense. Therefore singling it out for special restrictions is unfair and unlikely to be effective.
This claim is disingenuous. Americans now own somewhere between 20 and 30 million AR-15s, so certainly some people have them for these reasons. But it is obvious that the huge rise in AR-15 sales in the past 20 years is because of its symbolic properties. As summarized in American Gun, in the period after Sandy Hook, “The image of the AR-15 had become a political and cultural symbol infused with meaning far beyond the gun debate. People put its image on T-shirts, banners, bumper stickers, and coffee mugs. To scorn it meant you were a Democrat and a liberal who backed stricter gun-control laws. To embrace it meant you were pro-gun, conservative, likely pro-Trump. It became a tribal emblem, immediately signaling where you stood on the American political spectrum.” (373)
The AR-15 is not designed for hunting or self-defense or target practice, though of course it can be used for all these things. It was designed from the beginning for military use, for short to medium range rapid fire against multiple human targets. It uses high muzzle velocity, two to three times the velocity of a typical handgun, with light-weight, low-calibre ammunition to minimize recoil—important for rapid aiming and shooting.
The AR-15 was carefully built to produce tremendous damage to human tissue, much greater than from a normal rifle or handgun. The inventor of the AR-15, Eugene Stoner, experimented to find the combination of velocity and bullet size that caused the most destruction. American Gun describes the conclusions of Beat Kneubuehl, a Swiss ballistics scientist who authored the definitive work on the subject: “By increasing the velocity of the tiny bullet, Stoner gave it more injury potential. When the bullet hit the human body it slowed down and released its energy. ‘The energy that the projectile loses through deceleration (loss of velocity) is converted into work, i.e., into damage to the tissue,’ Kneubuehl said. The bullets of the AR-15 maximized this effect because they went unstable so quickly. They had less energy than larger rifle rounds but they transferred more of their energy to the human body. A bullet fired from an AR-15 flew nose first through the air. But when it hit the human body it became unstable. Once unstable, the bullet tore through the body like a tornado, spiraling and tipping as it obliterated organs, blood vessels, and bones.” (78)
This is why, when trying to describe what had happened to the bodies of the children at Sandy Hook, a policeman involved told a grieving parent “They were in a fucking blender.”
This sort of destruction is not what you want for hunting. It’s not what you need for self-defense in your home. It’s what you want on the battlefield when you need to kill with as few shots as possible.
The real reason for the immense popularity of the AR-15 was captured succinctly by a gun company executive: “All of a sudden, people are buying guns because they want to own the libs and because people are telling them they can’t have them and because they want to give the world the middle finger,” recalled Ryan Busse, a sales executive at the gunmaker Kimber. “Rationality of the market left the building and this sort of weird emotional, political drive took over.” (329)
Unsurprisingly, this loss of rationality did not happen spontaneously; it was deliberately fostered by American gun manufacturers and by gun rights organizations heavily funded by industry. In the mid-90s the firearms industry was facing a declining market. Hunting was becoming less popular and fewer Americans lived in the rural and small town settings that allowed for regular gun use. A federal ban on the AR-15 that began in 1994, coupled with general disdain for the weapon in traditional firearms circles—AR-15 enthusiasts were nicknamed “couch commandos”—a drop in crime, and successful lawsuits against gun companies and gunstores, all led to a drop in gun sales.
This turned around, however, in the 2000s: “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sunset of the federal assault-weapons ban, and the passage of legislation to protect gunmakers from litigation all combined to create a perfect environment for mainstream gunmakers to make, market, and sell large quantities of AR-15s. Sales executives realized that the gun’s appeal was widening beyond military veterans. Bill Silver, head of commercial sales at Sig Sauer, recalled that the tough-looking military-style weapon had what he called the “wannabe factor.” “People want to be a special forces guy,” he explained. (268)
Politicians during this period became more and more intimidated by the political clout of the well-funded gun lobby. In 1994 Congress was sufficiently motivated to pass a bipartisan ban on semi-automatic assault rifles, but the NRA and other opponents helped to defeat many of its supporters in the 1994 election cycle. The ban was poorly written and counterproductive, doing little to actually take guns off the market and providing gun rights supporters with an issue to mobilize around. AR-15 sales increased. Instead of strengthening the bill to make it more effective, Congress, frightened by the pro-gun lobby’s ability to turn out single-issue voters, refused to renew it in 2004.
In 2005 the Bush Administration gave the gun industry a tremendous victory with the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms act, which protected firearms manufacturers and gunstores from most legal liability for the use of their product. In 2004, for instance, Bushmaster and the guilty gunstore had paid a $2.5 million settlement to the families of people killed by the “DC sniper”, using a Bushmaster AR-15. Now the gun industry no longer faced the threat of lawsuits that had forced the tobacco industry and other producers of dangerous products to pay billions in damages and modify their sales practices. (264)
In 2008 gun rights advocates received another major boost from the Supreme Court’s Heller decision, which interpreted the Second Amendment as granting an absolute right to individual gun ownership. This decision was the culmination of a lengthy legal campaign, funded by the NRA, to shift the understanding of the Second Amendment. While Heller did not entirely prevent governments from restricting certain types of weapons, it put gun-control advocates on the defensive and was a tremendous symbolic victory for the forces already vested in promoting the AR-15.
The marketing campaigns for unrestricted gun rights became more strident and more explicitly militaristic, often deploying the confrontational slogan “Come and Take It” (Molon Labe, a Greek saying attributed to King Leonidas at Thermopylae). This was designed to appeal to buyers but also to intimidate politicians, who had to worry for their personal safety and the safety of their families from the reaction of angry and well-armed citizens.
Gun manufacturers loved the AR-15 because the profit margins were much higher than for most other firearms. The gun was designed to be cheap and easily mass manufactured. It was made from pre-stamped metal parts with a plastic stock. And it was highly customizable, which added to profits as customers bought stocks, grips, flashlights and other attachments.
AR-15 sales went into high gear once big money arrived from Wall Street. The rising potential in the 2000s attracted Cerberus Capital, which consolidated several manufacturers into the Freedom Group. By 2007 the Freedom Group was selling half the AR-15s in the country. With the protection afforded by the 2005 Act, it adopted aggressive marketing practices designed to appeal to new types of consumers. Bushmaster, one of the Freedom Group’s companies, launched an advertising campaign that linked the AR-15 to masculinity, with copy that said “In a world of rapidly depleting testosterone, The Bushmaster Man Card declares and confirms that you are a Man’s Man, the last of a dying breed, with all the rights and privileges duly afforded.” (285)
The Freedom Group cut prices and began selling AR-15s in Walmarts and other mass market outlets. It also placed AR-15s prominently into video games, trying to develop brand allegiance among young men who spent more time on their screens than at real shooting ranges.
The combination of financial and marketing muscle, coupled with the cultural and political identity fostered by the NRA and other gun rights organizations, caused AR-15 sales to skyrocket. In the mid 2000s the compounded annual growth rate for traditional rifles and long-guns was 5%; for the AR-15, it was 36%. As of 2022 at least 20 million AR-15s, and probably many more, were in the hands of private citizens in the United States.
The AR-15 is needed to defend individual rights. A third argument often used in favor of the AR-15 in fact confirms that it is different from other guns. This is that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to enable private citizens to protect themselves from government oppression, or perhaps to overthrow an oppressive state. Individuals need to own weapons that are on par with those in the hands of the military and law enforcement.
This purpose is seen as so compelling that it justifies whatever harm comes to society from having these weapons widely available. It is the “price of freedom”, as Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly opined after hundreds of people were gunned down by AR-15s in Las Vegas in 2017.
This argument is more honest and closer to the real reasons for AR-15 ownership than the others. But it is also deeply misguided. It distorts the Second Amendment, which aimed at strengthening state militias, not individual vigilantes. It is wildly unrealistic in an era when the United States has a powerful permanent military armed with tanks, heavy artillery, fighter aircraft and cruise missiles.
Most importantly, it ignores the risk that a heavily armed citizenry imbued with a belief in its own righteousness can just as easily be mobilized by demagogues and cranks as by genuine patriots. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was convened in part because of Shay’s Rebellion, an anti-tax uprising in Western Massachusetts that the weak central government of the time was unable to put down. Americans concluded that a stronger government was needed to prevent similar threats.
In an American psyche whose DNA is often constructed around suspicion of central authority, small grievances easily morph into conspiracy theories. In one back and forth in the New Mexican, one angry writer’s frustration with a state agency led quickly to charges of dictatorship, and a call to citizens to keep their guns and buy more. Instead of relying on the peaceful processes of organizing and persuading and voting, the temptation is always there to short-circuit democracy and reach for your holster instead.
A picture worth a thousand words from January 6 shows insurrectionists waving a Confederate flag with an AR-15 in the middle and Trump signs in the foreground. Nothing more needs to be said.
