The AR-15 Is the Weapon of Choice for Mass Shooters. That’s Not By Chance.
Greg Sargent at The Washington Post has an interesting interview today with the former firearms executive Ryan Busse, who talks about the way the AR-15 conquered American culture over the last 18 years and became the most ubiquitous rifle in the United States. Between 1994 and 2004, the AR-15 and other so-called “assault rifles” (which typically means semi-automatic, center firing rifles with detachable magazines) were banned in the U.S. But when that ban expired in 2004 and was not renewed, the gun industry leveraged the newfound fascination with the military that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan had created and the broader culture war between conservatives and liberals to make the AR-15 an iconic symbol for gun owners. (The fact that the AR-15 became a generic gun, manufactured by hundreds of different gun makers, helped.) Owning an AR-15 became, for many, a statement of where you stood and what you stood for. And millions of Americans decided it was a statement that was worth spending thousands of dollars to make.
But while parsing the iconography of the AR-15 is valuable, it’s also important to not downplay the simple reality of the gun, which is that it’s very effective at killing people — which is the reason it (or weapons much like it) has been the gun of choice for mass shooters for many years. The AR-15…
