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The Wall Street Journal is a right leaning source, but this article has a far right point of view.

Quotes

"In the wake of the Orlando terrorist massacre, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats have called for reinstating Bill Clinton’s ban on “assault weapons.”"

"From 1994 to 2002 Congress barred the sale of 18 types of rifles and shotguns that had “military style” attributes. This definition was purely political because the difference between a regular rifle and what Washington calls an assault weapon is mostly cosmetic."

"If her version works as well as her husband’s did, the terrorists will have won."

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Hillary’s assault weapons ban wouldn’t work any better than her husband’s did, the Wall Street Journal writes in an editorial.

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The Washington Post is a left leaning source, but this article has a right leaning bias.

Quotes

"A handful of manufacturers saw a chance to ride a post-9/11 surge in military glorification while also stoking a desire among new gun owners to personalize their weapons with tactical accessories.  'We made it look cool,' Luth said. 'The same reason you buy a Corvette.'"

"Calls by Democratic politicians to renew the ban fell short, with some in their own party voting against it at key moments. Almost no Republican would even entertain the idea."

"This firearm is lawfully owned by millions of Americans — used in shooting competitions, for recreational purposes, hunting and home protection."

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American Icon
The gun that divides a nation

It is revered as a modern-day musket.

It is reviled as a tool for mass killers.

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American Icon

A series examining the AR-15, a weapon with a singular hold on a divided nation

About the terminology

Colt acquired the AR-15 patent and trademark from Armalite in 1959. The patent expired, leaving many companies to produce their own weapons, commonly called AR-style rifles. While Colt still holds the trademark, "AR-15" has become a ubiquitous term for a popular style of gas-operated, magazine-fed semiautomatic rifles. For this reason, we refer to the rifle broadly as the AR-15 in this series.

The AR-15 wasn't supposed to be a bestseller.

The rugged, powerful weapon was originally designed as a soldiers' rifle in the late 1950s. "An outstanding weapon with phenomenal lethality," an internal Pentagon report raved. It soon became standard issue for U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, where the weapon earned a new name: the M16.

But few gunmakers saw a semiautomatic version of the rifle - with its shrouded barrel, pistol grip and jutting ammunition magazine - as a product for ordinary people. It didn't seem suited for hunting. It seemed like overkill for home defense. Gun executives doubted many buyers would want to spend their money on one.

The industry's biggest trade shows banished the AR-15 to the back. The National Rifle Association and other industry allies were focused on promoting traditional rifles and handguns. Most gun owners also shunned the AR-15, dismissing it as a "black rifle" that broke from the typical wood-stocked long guns that were popular at the time.

"We'd have NRA members walk by our booth and give us the finger," said Randy Luth, the founder of gunmaker DPMS, one of the earliest companies to market AR-15s.

Today, the AR-15 is the best-selling rifle in the United States, industry figures indicate. About 1 in 20 U.S. adults - or roughly 16 million people - own at least one AR-15, according to polling data from The Washington Post and Ipsos.

Almost every major gunmaker now produces its own version of the weapon. The modern AR-15 dominates the walls and websites of gun dealers.

The AR-15 is prominent at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, a gun rights event held in Greeley, Pa., in October. (Photos by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The AR-15 has gained a polarizing hold on the American imagination. Its unmistakable silhouette is used as a political statement emblazoned on T-shirts and banners and, among a handful of conservative members of Congress, on silver lapel pins. One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama, introduced a bill in February to declare the AR-15 the "National Gun of America."

It also has become a stark symbol of the nation's gun violence epidemic. Ten of the 17 deadliest U.S. mass shootings since 2012 have involved AR-15s.

Ten of the seventeen deadliest mass killings in the U.S. since 2012 involved AR-15s

Place

Las Vegas

Orlando

Newtown, Conn.

Sutherland Springs, Tex.

El Paso

Uvalde, Tex.

Parkland, Fla.

San Bernardino, Calif.

Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Virginia Beach

Aurora, Colo.

Washington Navy Yard, D.C.

Monterey Park, Calif.

Pittsburgh

Santa Fe, Tex.

Boulder, Colo.

Buffalo

Year

'17

'16

'12

'17

'19

'22

'18

'15

'18

'19

'12

'13

'23

'18

'18

'21

'22

Weapon

AR-15*

MCX rifle

AR-15*

AR-15*

AK-47

AR-15

AR-15

AR-15*

Handgun

Handgun

AR-15*

Shotgun, handgun

Handgun

AR-15*

Shotgun, handgun

AR-15

AR-15

Dead

60

49

27

25**

23

21

17

14

12

12

12

12

11

11

10

10

10

This shooting involved more weapons

than just an AR-15.

Including a pregnant woman

**

Sources: The Associated Press, USA Today, Northeastern

University Mass Killing Database

Ten of the seventeen deadliest mass killings in the U.S. since 2012 involved AR-15s

Place

Las Vegas

Orlando

Newtown, Conn.

Sutherland Springs, Tex.

El Paso

Uvalde, Tex.

Parkland, Fla.

San Bernardino, Calif.

Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Virginia Beach

Aurora, Colo.

Washington Navy Yard, D.C.

Monterey Park, Calif.

Pittsburgh

Santa Fe, Tex.

Boulder, Colo.

Buffalo

Year

2017

2016

2012

2017

2019

2022

2018

2015

2018

2019

2012

2013

2023

2018

2018

2021

2022

Weapon

AR-15*

MCX rifle

AR-15*

AR-15*

AK-47

AR-15

AR-15

AR-15*

Handgun

Handgun

AR-15*

Shotgun, handgun

Handgun

AR-15*

Shotgun, handgun

AR-15

AR-15

Dead

60

49

27

25**

23

21

17

14

12

12

12

12

11

11

10

10

10

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

This shooting involved more weapons than just an AR-15.

Including a pregnant woman

**

Sources: The Associated Press, USA Today, Northeastern University

Mass Killing Database

Ten of the seventeen deadliest mass killings in the U.S. since 2012 involved AR-15s

Place

Las Vegas

Orlando

Newtown, Conn.

Sutherland Springs, Tex.

El Paso

Uvalde, Tex.

Parkland, Fla.

San Bernardino, Calif.

Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Virginia Beach

Aurora, Colo.

Washington Navy Yard, D.C.

Monterey Park, Calif.

Pittsburgh

Santa Fe, Tex.

Boulder, Colo.

Buffalo

Year

2017

2016

2012

2017

2019

2022

2018

2015

2018

2019

2012

2013

2023

2018

2018

2021

2022

Weapon

AR-15*

MCX rifle

AR-15*

AR-15*

AK-47

AR-15

AR-15

AR-15*

Handgun

Handgun

AR-15*

Shotgun, handgun

Handgun

AR-15*

Shotgun, handgun

AR-15

AR-15

Dead

60

49

27

25**

23

21

17

14

12

12

12

12

11

11

10

10

10

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

This shooting involved more weapons than just an AR-15.

Including a pregnant woman

**

Sources: The Associated Press, USA Today, Northeastern University Mass Killing Database

This transformation - from made-for-combat weapon to mass-market behemoth and cultural flash point - is the product of a sustained and intentional effort that has forged an American icon.

A Washington Post investigation found that the AR-15's rise to dominance over the past two decades was sparked by a dramatic reversal in strategy by the country's biggest gun companies to invest in a product that many in the industry saw as anathema to their culture and traditions.

The Post review - based on interviews with 16 current and former industry executives, some of them talking publicly in depth for the first time, along with internal documents and public filings that describe the changes in previously unknown detail - found that the U.S. firearms industry came to embrace the gun's political and cultural significance as a marketing advantage as it grasped for new revenue.

The shift began after the 2004 expiration of a federal assault weapons ban that had blocked the sales of many semiautomatic rifles.A handful of manufacturers saw a chance to ride a post-9/11 surge in military glorification while also stoking a desire among new gun owners to personalize their weapons with tactical accessories.

"We made it look cool," Luth said. "The same reason you buy a Corvette."

Through it all, even after repeated mass killings involving the AR-15 that accounted for some of the nation's darkest moments, efforts in Congress to resurrect an assault weapons ban repeatedly fizzled.

Calls by Democratic politicians to renew the ban fell short, with some in their own party voting against it at key moments. Almost no Republican would even entertain the idea. President Donald Trump briefly considered pushing for a ban, asking aides at one point why anyone needed an AR-15, but backed away after advisers warned he would anger his base as well as theNRA.

"The protection of the AR-15 has become the number one priority for the gun lobby," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a vocal supporter of stronger gun laws. He added: "It makes it harder to push this issue on the table because the gun lobby does so much messaging around it."

Free from congressional scrutiny, the AR-15 has become a consumer product like none other - a barometer of fear and a gauge of political identity, its market success driven by the divisions it sows.

What it's like to experience an AR-15 shooting

Videos by Jon Gerberg

While handguns are involved in the bulk of U.S. gun homicides - responsible for 90 percent of the deaths in cases where details are available, compared to less than 5 percent for rifles, the FBI says - AR-15 sales jump the most with each school shooting and contentious presidential campaign.

They soared in the run-up to the election of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and after the mass killings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 and a high school in Parkland, Fla., in 2018, and again ahead of the turbulent 2020 presidential election.

Today, the industry estimates thatat least 20 million AR-15s are stored and stashed across the country.

More than 13.7 million of those have been manufactured by U.S. gunmakers just since the Newtown massacre in late 2012, with those sales generating roughly $11 billion in revenue, according to a Post analysis of industry estimates through 2020, the most recently available data. In other words, at least two-thirds of these guns have been made in just the past decade.

Supporters of the AR-15 say its popularity reflects its legitimacy as a tool for law-abiding people. "This firearm is lawfully owned by millions of Americans - used in shooting competitions, for recreational purposes, hunting and home protection," said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.

Others say this was not the original idea behind the gun.

Eugene Stoner, a World War II veteran who invented the AR-15 in the late 1950s while working at Armalite, a small engineering firm in Hollywood, had no interest in civilians using his invention, said C. Reed Knight, who owns a Florida gunmaking company and considers Stoner his mentor.

"He looked at this thing as only for the military side of the house," Knight said. Stoner, who died in 1997, thought his invention was past its prime by the mid-1990s, Knight said. He added that Stoner would have been horrified by the idea that "he invented the tool of all this carnage in the schools."

Harry Falber, a former executive at Smith & Wesson, one of the country's best-known firearms brands, saw how Stoner's invention changed the gun industry. The AR-15's success came at a huge price, he said.

"The firearms industry, in the aggregate, is very small," Falber told The Post. "And look at the havoc it wreaks."

A firearm initially unintended for civilians

Early versions of the AR-15 were sent to Vietnam, which proved to be a testing ground for the new rifles. The weapon later became standard issue and designated the M16. (Horst Faas/AP)

Smith & Wesson made its name with handguns, such as Dirty Harry's "Feeling Lucky?" six-shooter.

The company had never mass-produced a rifle in its storied history stretching to 1852.

That began to change in 2005.

It was a tough time for the firearms industry. Gun sales had been flat for several years, according to federal background check data, the best available proxy for the number of firearms sold. Data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows that American gunmakers produced fewer pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns in 2005 than they had five years earlier.

At Smith & Wesson, executives were looking around for new lines of business when, corporate filings show,a company survey detected strong consumer interest in one gun it didn't make: a tactical rifle.

"The long gun market is a terrific opportunity," Michael Golden, then the company's chief executive, told financial analysts in August 2005.

And the power of the Smith & Wesson brand meant "we have got one foot in the door," he said.

Neither Smith & Wesson nor Golden, who is no longer with the company, responded to multiple requests for comment.

The market for tactical rifles, such as the AR-15,was still largely untapped. None of the big gunmakers made one.

The AR-15 - Armalite Rifle Model 15 - was different from other military rifles, which had always used big, heavy rounds.

The M16 drew complaints that it was prone to jamming. But the gun won over military leaders. (Photos by AP)

Designed around the Pentagon's desire for a lightweight weapon to match Soviet rifles such as the AK-47, the AR-15 fired small bullets at very fast speeds. The higher velocity meant the tiny projectiles became unstable when they penetrated a human body, tumbling through flesh to create devastating wounds. But the real innovation was the addition of a small tube to redirect the gas from fired cartridges. This dampened recoil, making it easier to keep steady aim on a target.

The U.S. military started using the rifle during the Vietnam War, with Colt - which had acquired the gun's patent rights from Armalite - winning the contract to produce the M16. The new gun was met by complaints that it was prone to jamming, even mid-firefight, until Colt revamped the design. Despite its mixed success, the new gun won over military leaders.

Colt held exclusive rights to the semiautomatic, civilian version of the AR-15 until 1977, when the patent expired. Then, other gunmakers could make and sell AR-15s of their own.

Most in the gun industry remained wary. For decades, the AR-15 was regarded as an outsider. Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

As the U.S. military was sent to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, gunmakers looked to play off the conflict-zone images of soldiers in tactical gear holding M16 and M4 carbine rifles. The next best thing for civilians was buying an AR-15.

Varmints, soldiers and looming threats, see the ads used to sell the AR-15

"There has never been a better accidental advertising campaign in history," said Doug Painter, a former president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a firearms industry lobbying group.

Smith & Wesson's first AR-15 was unveiled to the public in February 2006 at the industry's marquee annual convention,the Shot Show in Las Vegas. It was called the M&P 15.

While the name indicated the gun was for professionals - "M" for military and "P" for police - the company always had its eyes on the consumer market, according to corporate filings and statements from executives. Golden told financial analysts a few months after the M&P 15's debut that "our intent when we launched the new tactical rifle was to first penetrate the consumer market."

Many gun company executives saw military and police sales as less profitable, due to lower prices and precise specifications, according to documents and interviews. But they were still important because of the "halo effect," as a 2009 document prepared for Smith & Wesson called it,in which buyers would be attracted to what they saw professionals using.

The consumer "does pay attention to that," a Smith & Wesson executive at the time, James Debney, would later explain to financial analysts in 2016.

Images of soldiers using M16s and M4s in Afghanistan and Iraq influenced how gunmakers marketed the AR-15. (Photos by David Guttenfelder/AP)

The M&P 15 was a hit. Smith & Wesson reported revenue from this line of tactical rifles more than quintupled in the gun'sfirst five full years on the market - from $12.8 million to $75.1 million.

Other big gunmakers soon followed Smith & Wesson's lead.

New Hampshire-based Sig Arms, later renamed Sig Sauer, said in late 2006 that it planned to make an AR-15 - soon after the firm had been "about two seconds away from imploding," chief executive Ron Cohen later told Management Today.

The new rifle was credited with helping save the company. Sig Sauer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Wall Street noticed the sales blitz, too.

A private equity firm called Cerberus Capital Management had rolled up several gunmakers into a single conglomerate called Freedom Group. In late 2007, it purchasedAR-15 maker DPMS, which was bringing in nearly $100 million in annual sales, said Luth, its founder.

"They saw the AR-15 as the cash cow, which it was," Luth said.

The change in attitudes toward the AR-15 occurred with "mind-boggling" speed, recalled Ryan Busse, who wrote about his turn from gun industry executive to critic in his 2021 book "Gunfight."

The AR-15 was suddenly being celebrated after years of being widely viewed with suspicion, Busse said. Gunmakers were no longer avoiding the gun that many had once regarded as the kind of weapon that society would disdain.

He recalled the pressure within the industry to either get on board with the AR-15 or keep quiet. In 2007, prominent hunting writer and TV host Jim Zumbo lost his industry jobs after calling for a ban on hunting with AR-15s. His fate became a watchword: Cross the AR-15 and you might get Zumboed. Zumbo did not respond to requests for comment.

"Nobody thought AR-15s were a good idea just a couple years ago," Busse said. "And then you couldn't criticize them without getting fired."

A marketplace and rebrand for the AR-15

Barack Obama at an election night gathering in Chicago in 2008. Sales of AR-15s soared in the run-up to his election. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images )

In 2008, economic crisis and political upheaval bolstered the AR-15's market appeal, according to several industry insiders, as the stock market collapsed under the weight of soured mortgage securities and the country elected its first Black president, a Democrat portrayed by conservatives as an anti-gun radical.

Obama's victory created an opening for pro-gun groups to tease the potential for a new assault weapons ban - a claim that industry executives have credited with energizing AR-15 sales.

In 2008, when growing demand led U.S. gunmakers to increase production of all firearms by 15 percent, AR-15 production rose by 65 percent, according to government and industry figures. These AR-15s were rapidly becoming a larger share of the overall firearms market - reaching 10 percent of all guns made that year for the first time.

Jeff Buchanan, then-chief financial officer at Smith & Wesson, recalled several years later at a business conference that Obama spurred sales "because he was a pronounced liberal" and "people buy because they are afraid of future legislation."

Obama was mockingly crowned 2009's "gun salesman of the year" by the gun-friendly news service Outdoor Wire.

Obama's election in 2008 spurred gun sales, as pro-gun groups teased the potential for a new assault weapons ban. (George Frey/Bloomberg News, LM Otero/AP, Joe Raedle/Getty Images, Eric S. Swist/Houston Chronicle/AP)

That same year, in what many industry insiders saw as a watershed moment, another legendary American gunmaker, Ruger, entered the AR-15 market with its SR-556. The Southport, Conn.-based company had a reputation for high-end firearms. Its corporate motto was "Arms Makers for Responsible Citizens."

Michael Fifer, the gunmaker's CEO at the time, described to financial analysts in 2009 how Ruger brought in roughly $200 from each handgun - but each AR-15-style rifle brought in $1,000.

"That's kind of a 5-to-1 ratio there," Fifer said.

Ruger declined to comment through its general counsel.

AR-15 fans saw Ruger's new rifle as validation of a once-taboo gun.

"There is no better illustration for this change than the Evil Black Rifle itself which has just joined the Ruger product offering," Steve Johnson wrote on his popular Firearm Blog, using a sarcastic name popular with gun owners for AR-15s.

Getting comfortable with the AR-15, industry allies worked to soften the image of the "black rifle."

NSSF executives recalled in interviews with The Post that they bemoaned that the public mistakenly thought the "AR" stood for "assault rifle."

"We should not cede the rhetorical high ground to our political enemies," Larry Keane, the NSSF's general counsel, recalled saying during a 2009 meeting.

They brainstormed ways to rebrand the gun and win over traditional hunters.

"I just said, 'It's a modern sporting rifle,'" recalled Painter, then the NSSF president. "And there the phrase stuck."

The NSSF just needed to persuade others to use the term,which it shortened to "MSR."

Glenn Sapir, then the NSSF's director of editorial services, recalled that executives pressed gunmakers and industry publications to adopt the name. It slowly began popping up in gun magazines and catalogues. Companies used it during earnings calls. Gun owners were given pocket fact cards with the preferred talking points.

A four-page ad from the NSSF's foundation spelled out the campaign.

"Some hunters look askance at AR-style rifles, and that's understandable," read the ad in the November 2009 issue of Outdoor Life magazine. "They don't look like any type of rifle they, their dads or granddads ever carried into the woods. Looks can be deceiving, however, and in the case of AR-platform rifles, they certainly are."

Some AR-15 supporters saw the MSR campaign as a phony attempt to make the black rifle seem less ominous - even though what many loved most about it was the threatening look.

"The true AR enthusiasts, they kind of saw through it," Luth said. "It stuck, but not with the true believers."

How gunmakers craft 'realistic' gaming experiences

An attendee plays "Call of Duty: Black Ops III" during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles in 2015. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg News)

Video games introduced a new generation to the AR-15 through popular first-person shooter games such as "Call of Duty." Players got to simulate using military weapons with down-to-the-bolt realism.

The firearms industry was eager to help out.

In 2010, representatives of two gun manufacturers and a video game maker converged at an outdoor shooting range north of Las Vegas. Employees from two Freedom Group subsidiaries deployed a stockpile of weapons, including AR-15s, while technicians from Infinity Ward, developer of "Call of Duty," carefully recorded the sounds, according to participants. Infinity Ward's parent company, Activision Blizzard, declined to comment.

No detail, even the click of inserting a magazine, was too small to capture, participants said.

"We went through all the guns slowly and methodically, shooting until they got the quality sound they needed," recalled Cory Weisnicht, who was an employee with a Freedom Group company tasked with firing the guns at the Clark County Shooting Complex.

The meeting reflected a move by some gunmakers at the time to strike licensing agreements with gaming firms to feature certain firearms, according to lawyers and experts, along with interviews and documents obtained by The Post.

"We wanted the brand exposure," said a former employee of a Freedom Group subsidiary familiar with the Las Vegas meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal company strategy.

The push for realism in shooting video games was influential for some buyers, retailers said. Many gun owners bought real-world versions of the firearms they used online, said Lucas Botkin, founder of the gun gear outfitter T.Rex Arms. And they could accessorize their guns in the same way.

Botkin recalled how he fixed up his first AR-15.

"I built it out very similarly to what I had in 'Modern Warfare,'" he said, referring to the M4 in a game in the Call of Duty series. "It was my reference point."

First-person shooter games such as "Call of Duty" introduced a new generation to the AR-15. (Jae C. Hong/AP, Paula Bronstein/Getty Images, Stephen Yang/Bloomberg News, Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News)

The AR-15 also was winning over new fans in other ways.

In the Philadelphia suburbs, Bill Shanley saw his first AR-15 up close when one of his adult sons came home with one in 2010. Shanley was in his mid-50s and had been raised around guns. He'd taught his own children how to shoot, too. But he'd never given much thought to the AR-15.

"It never would've occurred to me to get a gun like that," Shanley recalled.

Father and son took the AR-15 to a gun range. Shanley couldn't believe how loud it was, even with ear protection, the sound crashing off the range overhang. But the black rifle had little recoil. It was fun to shoot. Three shots with his old hunting rifle bruised his shoulder. Fifty rounds with the AR-15 felt like a breeze. Shanley was sold. He soon bought his own, a Smith & Wesson M&P 15.

AR-15 owners explain why they have the weapon

Videos by Jon Gerberg

The AR-15 changed Shanley's thinking about these kinds of weapons. Now, he saw them as no different from the traditional firearms owned by his great-grandfather or the shotgun his uncle gave him when he was a teenager. His dad used to keep a shotgun at home for protection. Shanley, a manufacturing sales manager, started keeping an AR-15 in his bedroom.

"The AR is the modern-day musket," he said.

An uneasiness over AR-15 marketing

Former Smith & Wesson marketing executive Harry Falber at his home in Weston, Conn. "A consumer wants to be identified with the product they are using, and a gun is no different," he said. (George Etheredge for The Washington Post)

Harry Falber knew little about the gun world when he joined Smith & Wesson,first as a consultant and then as head of licensing at the gunmaker's headquarters in Springfield, Mass.

But he knew how to sell big consumer brands after years of working on ads at Volvo, Polaroid and Hallmark.

"A consumer wants to be identified with the product they are using, and a gun is no different," said Falber, speaking publicly in detail about his tenure at Smith & Wesson for the first time.

Falber thought Smith & Wesson's line of M&P firearms was "a brilliant marketing name." And he loved Smith & Wesson's strong reputation and long history.

But he said he struggled with how to sell a military weapon to civilians.

"I didn't care what you did with it," he said. "It was still a black gun."

In late 2010,after he had been with the company for about a year, Falber commissioned a study comparing two Smith & Wesson ads that had recently appeared in Guns & Ammo magazine, according to internal documents obtained by The Post.

One showed Falber's vision for selling guns. It featured a silver revolver and a black pistol, side by side against the light backdrop of a range target, under the block type "FINE-TUNED MACHINES."

The other ad showed what looked like a police SWAT team officer, with dark gloves and tactical helmet, pointing an AR-15 at some unseen target in the distance. "THE CHOSEN ONE," it read.

Consumers gave higher scores to the "FINE-TUNED MACHINES" ad, according to the report, which recommended that future ads be tested "to maximize message, positive image, and consumer motivation."

Falber thought he had won the argument. He wanted to stress craftsmanship.

But Smith & Wesson went in the direction of "THE CHOSEN ONE."

"They went full-bore into a dark, dark milieu," Falber said.

In 2010, one Smith & Wesson ad focused on craftsmanship, while another ad had a military and police theme. (Images obtained by The Washington Post)

Smith & Wesson was not alonein adopting messages that made Falber uneasy.

Bushmaster was running ads for its AR-15 with the line "CONSIDER YOUR MAN CARD REISSUED." Daniel Defense posted social media ads showing its AR-15 with a helmeted soldier in a war zone under "USE WHAT THEY USE."

"It was just appealing to the worst levels of what you can conjure up in someone's mind," Falber said. "And we'd been nurturing this."

Daniel Defense declined to comment.

By 2011, the AR-15 and similar firearms enjoyed warm welcomes at the gun industry's biggest events. They were the stars. Half the exhibition space at the annual Shot Show was now occupied by AR-15 gunmakers and tactical-equipment makers - even as the convention itself had doubled in size to 500,000 square feet, said Painter, the former NSSF president.

Every exhibitor clamored to be next to the big rifles because that's where the crowds were.

"The best analogy is the AR rifle was like the kids who wore their baseball hats turned around," Painter said. "It wasn't cool until suddenly it became cool."

Falber displays a Smith & Wesson knife case at his home. (Photos by George Etheredge for The Washington Post)

But Falber wanted out.

"I just couldn't stomach driving up there anymore," he said.

In 2012, he quit Smith & Wesson.

The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary came two months later.

A little after 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 14, 2012, a man used a Bushmaster AR-15 to shoot his way into the school in Newtown. The gunman fired 154 rounds in minutes, striking children who were just 6 and 7 years old multiple times, according to a Connecticut state's attorney's report. Twenty children and six school employees were killed.

Falber lived 20 miles from Newtown. His wife worked in education. He could imagine the scene inside. He was in disbelief. He took no comfort in the fact that the rifle used in the massacre was made by Bushmaster and not Smith & Wesson.

"It ripped me apart," he said.

Mass killings, politics fuel division on AR-15

A school bus carries people to a memorial vigil for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, on Dec. 16, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. (David Goldman/AP)

The deadliest mass killing at a K-12 school in U.S. history focused attention like never before on the destructive power of the AR-15.

With Newtown, the weapon so meticulously marketed as a "sporting rifle" had been used as a killing machine that destroyed the bodies of young victims.

Cerberus, the private equity giant, soon announced plans to sell off Freedom Group - the conglomerate it had assembled as a big bet on the AR-15's success and the owner of the Bushmaster brand. Cerberus declined to comment. One of its companies at the time owned Bushmaster, maker of the weapon used in the shooting, which would eventually defend its firearms advertising as lawful in a lawsuit filed by Newtown families alleging the gunmaker's marketing was aimed at troubled young men.

Dick's Sporting Goods immediately stopped selling AR-15s at its flagship stores during what the company called "this time of national mourning."

Collaboration between gunmakers and the gaming industry also came to a quick end, said Glen Schofield, co-director of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare."

"We all kind of want to leave that era behind us," he said. "Every time there was a mass shooting we got blamed."

Days after the shooting, Obama called for new gun laws, citing public support for banning "military-style assault weapons" and high-capacity magazines. But any notion that the tragedy in Newtown would compel the politically influential NRA to compromise evaporated a week later. Wayne LaPierre, the group's executive vice president, unveiled a school security plan that boiled down to his mantra of "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

After the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, Obama said that the nation must take "meaningful action" to stem such violence. (Jessica Hill/AP, Peter Foley/European Pressphoto Agency, Kristoffer Tripplaar/Sipa/Pool/Bloomberg News)

NRA leaders feared there would be momentum for a ban, and they even huddled with companies and lobbyists to begin plotting strategy, former officials said.

But the focus on banning the AR-15 only made the gun more popularwith firearms enthusiasts, NRA leaders later said.

"People who never planned to buy one went out and got one," said Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist who was on the NRA board. "It was an f-you to the left."

David Keene, who was the NRA's president at the time, said that was the moment gun rights became a top issue for Republicans - with the AR-15 at the center.

"It became a political symbol," said Keene, who also served as the longtime chairman of the American Conservative Union.

The NRA's embrace of the AR-15 was also practical, said Joshua Powell, a former longtime NRA adviser and chief of staff to LaPierre. NRA membership numbers were declining, but AR-15 owners remained loyal. Powell said the organization wanted the rifle to be viewed as "America's gun."

"The heart and soul of the NRA membership was hardcore AR folks," Powell said.

The move to defend the AR-15 was off-putting to some NRA members, such as John Goodwin, who worked as an NRA lobbyist in the late 2000s and now belongs to a gun safety advocacy group called 97Percent. Discussions about the AR-15 sounded nothing like how he talked about the shotgun he used for bird hunting.

"They make it sound like the AR-15 is a religious relic," Goodwin said.

The AR-15's resilience post-Newtown was clear weeks later when the organizer of a major gun event in Harrisburg, Pa., the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show, was forced to cancel amid the backlash from its decision to ban displays of the weapon.

"We're not going to go into business with people saying you can't have this gun or that gun," Tommy Millner, CEO of the outdoor retailing giant Cabela's at the time, recalled saying when he pulled the company's sponsorship.

Any push for a new assault weapons ban seemed destined to fail in Congress. And gun sales were soaring again.

In December 2012, the same month as the Newtown shooting, monthly gun background checks hit what at the time was an all-time high of 2.8 million and stayed elevated for months.

Stores were picked clean of their AR-15 inventory. Prices jumped.

While the government doesn't break out AR-15 sales, the industry group NSSF estimated that companiesproduced at least 3.2 million AR-15s firearms in 2012 and 2013 alone - more than they'd made in the entire previous decade.

When a new assault weapons ban finally came to a vote in the Democratic-led Senate soon after Newtown, it didn't come close to passing - earning just 40 votes.

Just one Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, voted in favor. But even more galling to gun-control advocates was that just 38 of the chamber's 54 Democrats voted in favor.

After Congress failed to act, a handful of states, such as Connecticut, New York and Maryland, moved to pass their own assault weapons bans.

A firearm at the center of rallies, protests and ads

A person armed with a rifle joins demonstrators in 2019 at the Ohio Statehouse to protest gun-control legislation. (Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images)

In March 2013, C.J. Grisham, then an Army master sergeant, decided to sling an AR-15 over his shoulder and take a walk with his son along a dirt road in tiny Temple, Tex. He wasn't breaking the law, but a police officer stopped him.

"Some reason why you have this?" the officer asked,grabbing the rifle.

"'Cause I can," Grisham said.

The officer drew his pistol and pinned Grisham to the hood.

The encounter ended peacefully, but it was caught on video and posted online. Almost overnight, Grisham, who was later convicted of misdemeanor police interference, became the face of a movement.

"It wasn't that I was carrying a rifle," recalled Grisham, a former member of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence. "It was the fact I was carrying that rifle."

Grisham went on to create Open Carry Texas, a group advocating for carrying weapons in public. Open-carry demonstrations had been cropping up in conservative states since the 2008 election, typically with holstered pistols, but Grisham's group pushed a new tactic. Its members made a show of carrying hunting rifles, shotguns and AR-15s as they visited places like Sonic, Chipotle and Home Depot.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Gun rights activists in Cleveland in 2016; Austin in 2016; Arlington, Va., in 2010; and Austin in 2015. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg News, Erich Schlegel/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Drew Anthony Smith/Getty Images)

Even the NRA was uneasy about the brash, public displays. It called the Texas protests "downright weird." But so many gun owners sided with Grisham that the NRA quickly flip-flopped, saying its original opposition had been a mistake.

It became increasingly common to see people openly armed with black rifles at protests and political rallies - their AR-15s gripped in their hands or slung over their shoulders. The practice would take off on the far right, as armed demonstrators would play a prominent role in white-supremacist gatherings such as the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, as well as protests in 2020 against pandemic restrictions and counterdemonstrations against racial justice activists.

The AR-15 seemed to be everywhere. Its cultural profile was rising, not unlike the way the Soviet-made Kalashnikov became a symbol of insurgency and freedom for many around the world.

Companies such as Black Rifle Coffee Co. launched. Youth baseball teams ran AR-15 raffles as fundraisers. Companies offered free AR-15s with a new roof or new car, like banks giving away toasters for new checking accounts.

More political candidates were displaying AR-15s in campaign ads, too - and not just conservatives looking to impress their base. Jason Kander, an Army veteran and Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, put out a 2016 campaign ad that showed him assembling an AR-15 while blindfolded. Kander did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2016, amid rising political tensions with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump vying for the White House, the U.S. gun industryreported that it had crossed an important threshold: It produced more than 2 million AR-15s for the first time, 63 percent more than were manufactured the year before, according to NSSF estimates.

The AR-15 had truly entered the mainstream.

America's angst with the AR-15

Manny and Patricia Oliver lost their son Joaquin, 17, in the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Manny Oliver tended to view guns like an outsider.

Ever since moving to Florida from his native Venezuela years ago, Oliver had noticed how people in his new home tied guns to notions of freedom and patriotism.

"In America, they treat guns like they are their salvation," Oliver said.

He didn't understand it. But like many people, he didn't feel the need to.

By 2018, he and his wife, Patricia, had settled near Parkland, Fla., an affluent suburb outside Fort Lauderdale. Gun violence rarely intruded, except when mass shootings made the news. Oliver recalled talking with his teenage son, Joaquin, about the 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where a gunman with a Sig Sauer MCX semiautomatic rifle killed 49 people. And Joaquin had been rattled by the 2017 Las Vegas shooting - where a gunman used an arsenal that included AR-15s to kill 60 people - because his mom had been there on a business trip just a week earlier.

It seemed so random, Oliver said.

Four months later, on Valentine's Day 2018, a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland armed with a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 and killed 17 people. Joaquin, 17, died after being shot multiple times, according to testimony at the gunman's trial.

The shooting ignited a new kind of anti-gun activism that was intensely personal, such as the student-led March for Our Lives that drew hundreds of thousands of protesters to the National Mall a month later. They were grieving. And they were angry.

The student-led March for Our Lives drew hundreds of thousands of protesters to the National Mall in D.C. in March 2018, the month after the Parkland shooting. (Photos by Salwan Georges and Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

"I refused to think this is a normal thing that happens," Oliver said.

He and his wife founded a gun violence prevention group called Change the Ref and focused on attention-grabbing projects such as renting a billboard outside Smith & Wesson's headquarters in Massachusetts with a picture of their son.

The Parkland shooting also highlighted America's growing unease with the AR-15.

Kroger raised the minimum age to buy guns and ammunition from 18 to 21. Walmart - which had quietly stopped selling AR-15s three years earlier, in 2015 - did the same.

Top NRA officials worked to persuade other retailers, such as Bass Pro Shops, not to pull AR-15s from their shelves, according to Powell, the group's former chief of staff.

"The gun folks will go nuts against you, and it's going to be incredibly bad for business, and it's going to get you a lot of bad press," Powell recalled NRA officials telling Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris. In other cases, Powell warned there would be NRA member boycotts.

Morris backed down, Powell said. "He understood who his customers were."

A representative for Bass Pro Shops said Morris had no "recollection" of the conversation. "Decisions on the products and services we offer have always been based on customer preferences in compliance with all federal, state and local laws," the spokesman said.

Unable to just move on, the shooting forced Oliver and his wife to reinvent their lives.

"We are not searching for happiness," he said. "I don't think we're ever going to be happy."

An uptick in shootings and a stalemate on gun control

President Donald Trump - flanked by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Andy Pollack, the father of a Parkland shooting victim - watches as Scarlett Lewis shows a photo of her slain son during a White House roundtable on school safety in December 2018. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Shortly after Parkland, President Donald Trump repeatedly floated the idea of supporting a new assault weapons ban.

He mentioned it on live television to one of the Senate's most vocal gun-control backers, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and in a private meeting with Parkland families. His comments rattled NRA officials and some of his own advisers.

NRA representatives later warned Trump against taking action. "They came up here and said to him, the base is going to blow you up," according to a former official who sat in during a series of meetings with the NRA. They, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private interactions.

But Trump kept coming back to the idea, according to several former administration officials.

In the summer of 2019, after back-to-back mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso involving an AR-15-style pistol and an AKM-style rifle, Trump told aides that he wanted to ban AR-15s, accordingto people present for the statements.

"I don't know why anyone needs an AR-15," Trump told aides as he flew on Marine One to the White House in August 2019, according to a person who heard his comments.

As one former official put it in describing the real estate developer turned politician, "His reflexes were a New York liberal on guns. He doesn't have knee-jerk conservative reflexes."

But Trump was also petrified of the NRA and others taking him on, former advisers said, and heard from a number of advisers that it would be unpopular. Trump ultimately stopped entertaining the idea of working with Democrats on gun control later that year, when he was caught in a scandal over his now-infamous phone call with Ukraine's president.

"F--- it, I'm not going to work with them on anything. They're f---ing impeaching me," Trump said in one Oval Office meeting, according to a participant.

Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, did not respond to detailed findings in this article but said that "there had been no bigger defender of the Second Amendment than President Trump." He said that Trump had offered other proposals after mass shootings, such as adding security guards to schools and allowing teachers who are licensed to carry a weapon to do so.

Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut and a participant in a White House meeting on a potential ban, described Trump's lack of action as a missed opportunity for an unusually powerful Republican leader. "I said this to Trump in that meeting: I think the Republican Party would have followed him wherever he went, and he ultimately decided to stand with the NRA," Murphy said.

But, Murphy said, the burst of post-Parkland activism transformed gun politics among Democrats. Many in the party, he said, started to see gun control as a cause that could energize their core voters- rather than fearing it as one that would rile up the right.

"For whatever reason those kids finally shamed the Democratic Party into running on this issue," Murphy said.

Several months after the Parkland shooting, one of the Democrats who had voted against an assault weapons ban in 2013 in the wake of Newtown announced he had changed his mind.

Sen. Mark R. Warner, who earned the NRA's support as Virginia's governor in the mid-2000s, represented a state that was now trending more liberal. He would go on to co-sponsor new proposed assault weapons bans in the Senate.

"While I was far from the deciding vote," Warner wrote of the post-Newtown legislation in a 2018 op-ed in The Post, "I have nevertheless wrestled with that 'no' vote ever since." Despite his own role in helping to defeat the ban, Warner described Congress's failure to act as part of a "sad pattern of dysfunction."

The AR-15, however, was about to reach new heights of popularity.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The aftermath of mass killings in Uvalde, Tex., in May; Buffalo the same month; Highland Park, Ill., in July; and Boulder, Colo., in March 2021. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post, Matt Rourke/AP, Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/AP, Rachel Woolf for The Washington Post)

In 2020, a year of pandemic lockdowns, racial justice protests and a bitterly fought presidential campaign, U.S. gunmakers produced about 2.5 million AR-15s, according to the NSSF. That added up to roughly 1 in 4 of all guns that ATF said were manufactured in the United States.

Helped by its line of M&P 15 rifles, Smith & Wesson saw its sales nearly double to a record $1.1 billion, according to financial filings. CEO Mark Smith described it as "the most successful year in the 169-year history of the company."

One Smith & Wesson M&P 15 sold in 2020 ended up in the hands of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who fatally shot two people and wounded a third during that summer's racial justice protests in Kenosha, Wis.

Rittenhouse, later found not guilty based on claims of self-defense, explained during his trial why he chose an AR-15: "I thought it looked cool." Rittenhouse could not be reached for comment.

The AR-15 was also especially alluring to the gunman who killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo in May 2022.

"The AR-15 and its variants are very deadly when used properly," he wrote in a manifesto filled with hateful vitriol. "Which is the reason I picked one."

Ten days later, 19 schoolchildren and two adults were shot to death in Uvalde, Tex., with another AR-15, the Daniel Defense DDM4.

The string of attacks prompted President Biden, who as a senator had strongly supported the 1994 assault weapons ban, to promise a renewed effort to stop the sale of military-style weapons.

"For God's sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept?" Biden said in June.

Then, a gunman with a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 killed seven people at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Ill.

Later that month, executives from five gunmakers were called to Capitol Hill to answer questions about AR-15s. The hearing played out in expected fashion. Democrats decried the gunmakers, the Republicans defended them, and the gun executives deflected.

"A firearm, any firearm, can be used for good or for evil," said Christopher Killoy, chief executive at Ruger.

Smith & Wesson's chief executive refused to show up.

A House Oversight report produced for the hearing spotlighted the money earned by the gun industry, saying that Ruger's gross earnings from AR-15 rifles nearly tripled from 2019 to 2021 to more than $103 million.

Two days later, the Democratic-led House passed a new assault weapons ban on a tight party-line vote of 217-213 - the first time the measure had been voted on in nearly three decades. But the Senate, also run by Democrats, never took action.

Amid the growing scrutiny, Smith & Wesson chief executive Mark Smith put out a statement claiming his company's guns were not responsible for any crimes, but politicians and the media "are the ones to blame for the surge in violence and lawlessness."

Smith's comment was a revealing reminder of just how much the firearms industry had changed - from defender of a gun culture familiar to many Americans to a mass producer and leading champion of AR-15s.

That new legacy permeated this year's Shot Show, held in January in Las Vegas.

At the same event two decades ago, AR-15s were shown only in restricted areas in the back.

This year, Smith & Wesson's sprawling exhibit was surrounded by other gunmakers offering their own AR-15s, such as Mossberg, Black Rain Ordnance and Savage Arms. Smith & Wesson promoted its latest addition to its AR-15 lineup: the M&P Volunteer.

The closed-door trade event was open only to people with industry ties. But photographs and video reviewed by The Post showed racks of matte black Volunteer rifles in different configurations, such as the M&P 15 Volunteer XV Pro, with a suggested retail price of $1,569.

Back home in Connecticut, Falber, the former marketing executive, still admired the "M&P" name. But "Volunteer" felt different to him. He shrugged off the suggestion that it was just a nod to Smith & Wesson's decision to begin moving its headquarters from liberal Massachusetts to conservative Tennessee, whose nickname is the Volunteer State.

Putting that name on such a powerful rifle evoked scenes of armed civilian patrols along the country's southern border and at racial justice protests, Falber said.

Maybe, he said, it will help Smith & Wesson sell the AR-15. "But," he added, "how many more guns can they possibly sell?"

About this story

Reporting by Todd C. Frankel, Shawn Boburg, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Alex Horton. Additional reporting Hannah Allam and Jon Swaine. Videos by Jon Gerberg. Motion graphics by Osman Malik. Illustration by Blake Cale for The Washington Post.

Design and development by Aadit Tambe, Anna Lefkowitz and Rekha Tenjarla. Design editing by Madison Walls. Photo editing by Natalia Jimenez. Video editing by Angela M. Hill. Graphics editing by Chiqui Esteban.

Editing by Peter Wallsten and Wendy Galietta. Additional editing by Jordan Melendrez, Kim Chapman and Tom Justice.

Additional support from Meghan Hoyer, Sarah Murray, Courtney Beesch, Angel Mendoza, Kyley Schultz, Brandon Carter, Ashleigh Wilson Jai-Leen James and Bryan Flaherty.

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How the AR-15 became a powerful political, cultural symbol in America

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American Icon It is revered as a modern-day musket. It is reviled as a tool for mass killers. Warning: This graphic requires JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript for the best experience. American Icon A series examining the AR-15, a weapon with a singular hold on a divided nation About the terminology Colt acquired the AR-15 patent and trademark from Armalite in 1959.

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Newsweek is a neutral source and the article has no bias towards either side.

Quotes

"NBC News noted Biden seemingly referenced a previous federal assault rifle ban, which expired during former President George W. Bush's administration in 2004, as having affected gun deaths."

"President Joe Biden on Monday briefly discussed new gun control options, including a potential ban on assault weapons."

"Biden has pledged to take measures to help prevent such tragedies in the future."

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President Joe Biden on Monday briefly discussed new gun control options, including a potential ban on assault weapons. He said the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which protects the right to keep and bear arms, "was never absolute."

"You couldn't buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed," Biden said. "You couldn't go out and purchase a lot of weaponry."

The president's remarks were made to reporters outside the White House after he had returned from Uvalde, Texas. On Sunday, he and first lady Jill Biden comforted families in the Texas city who lost loved ones in the mass shooting at an elementary school on Tuesday. In that massacre, authorities say 18-year-old Salvador Ramos killed 21 people-including 19 children-using an AR-15 assault rifle. Ramos was killed by law enforcement officers.

Biden has pledged to take measures to help prevent such tragedies in the future.

"It makes no sense to be able to purchase something that can fire up to 300 rounds," Biden said on Monday. "The idea of these high caliber weapons-there's simply no rational basis for it in terms of, about self-protection, hunting-and, remember, the Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute."

The Bidens visited Robb Elementary School, the scene of the deadly shooting, during their visit to Uvalde. The Associated Press reported that Jill Biden left a bouquet of white flowers for a memorial set up outside the school, and the couple later attended Mass at a local church where several victims' families are members.

The AP wrote that as the president was leaving the church, a crowd of around 100 people outside began chanting "Do something." Biden responded, "We will."

On Monday, Biden told reporters he made a point of not discussing any potential legislation with Republican lawmakers during his Texas trip and instead focused on consoling families who had lost loved ones. However, he said changes would need to be addressed to current gun laws.

NBC News noted Biden seemingly referenced a previous federal assault rifle ban, which expired during former President George W. Bush's administration in 2004, as having affected gun deaths.

"I know what happened when we had rational action before," he said, adding the ban "cut down mass murders."

"So, it's just, as I say, I think things have gotten so bad that everybody's getting more rational about it," Biden said. "At least, that's my hope and prayer."
But while gun control is favored by some leglistators on both sides, there are still some who are reluctant to make changes to the gun control laws in place. A number of GOP lawmakers, including Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Dan Crenshaw, both of Texas, and Representatives Mo Brooks and Marjorie Taylor Greene have already spoken out against bringing in stricter gun laws in the wake of the Uvalde shooting. One expert, Joseph Blocher, a professor of law at Duke University whose research interests include constitutional law and the Second Amendment, told Newsweek that he thinks the "real thing" that's going on in the U.S. is a "fear of slippery slopes." "Gun rights advocates have been very successful over the years in suggesting that to give an inch on guns is to give a mile, that if we allow background checks then the next thing will be registration," Blocher said. "And if there's nationwide registration, the next thing will be a nationwide confiscation." "Those arguments play on fears and that makes them very hard to rebut, but it's just nowhere near the proposals that people are putting forward today, all of which operate at the margins about keeping prohibited persons from acquiring guns in the first place, having a background check system or keeping guns out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill with red flag laws," he added. Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment.

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Biden on Second Amendment: When It Was Passed, 'You Couldn't Buy a Cannon'

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President Joe Biden on Monday briefly discussed new gun control options, including a potential ban on assault weapons. He said the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which protects the right to keep and bear arms, "was never absolute." "You couldn't buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed," Biden said.

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BBC News is a neutral source and this article reflects that.

Quotes

"'Why in God's name should an ordinary citizen be able to purchase an assault weapon that holds 30-round magazines, that let mass shooters fire hundreds of bullets in a matter of minutes?' the Democratic president continued."

"In order for any laws to pass, Republicans in the Senate need to back them, which is unlikely because they defend access to guns as a constitutional right for every American."

"So far the only area of possible bipartisan agreement involves red flag laws, which let authorities take guns from people at high risk of harming themselves or others."

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President Joe Biden has said the US should ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines to tackle the "carnage" of gun violence.

Addressing the nation after a spate of mass shootings, Mr Biden said too many places had become "killing fields".

He said if a ban was not possible the age limit for buying such weapons should at least go up from 18 to 21.

But deadlock on the issue between Republicans and Democrats in Congress means progress is seen as unlikely.

In order for any laws to pass, Republicans in the Senate need to back them, which is unlikely because they defend access to guns as a constitutional right for every American.

Even if some are privately sympathetic to stricter gun controls, as one analyst suggested to the BBC, they may also fear the electoral consequences of supporting them.

So far the only area of possible bipartisan agreement involves red flag laws, which let authorities take guns from people at high risk of harming themselves or others.

"This is not about taking away anyone's guns," said Mr Biden. "This isn't about taking away anyone's rights... It's about protecting children."

"Why in God's name should an ordinary citizen be able to purchase an assault weapon that holds 30-round magazines, that let mass shooters fire hundreds of bullets in a matter of minutes?" the Democratic president continued.

Mr Biden touted a 1994 ban on assault-style weapons that he helped pass. It lapsed after 10 years, and debate has raged ever since over whether it was effective in reducing gun violence.

His remarks come in the wake of the deadly shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas last week in which 21 people including 19 children were shot dead.

Buffalo, New York and Tulsa, Oklahoma have also seen mass shootings in recent days.

'I can do whatever I want with my guns'

Private gun ownership is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.

A House of Representatives hearing to debate new gun control proposals earlier in the day showed how hard it might be to make any progress.

Congressman Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, joined the Judiciary Committee hearing from his home via Zoom and displayed several handguns from his personal collection that he said would be banned if the legislation were passed.

A Democrat from Texas interjected to say she hoped the gun was not loaded, to which Mr Steube replied: "I'm at my house. I can do whatever I want with my guns".

The Democratic-led Protecting Our Kids Act combines eight different gun control bills, and includes many of the proposals Mr Biden spoke of on Thursday.

The bill may pass the House next week, but is not expected to clear the Senate, where Republicans hold half the seats in a 100-seat chamber. Most laws require 60 votes to pass.

Matt Bennett from the Democratic think tank Third Way, told the BBC that many Senate Republicans - while privately sympathetic to stricter gun controls - feared losing votes to more right-wing pro-gun candidates more than they feared losing to Democrats.

Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court is deliberating on one of the nation's most restrictive gun laws, in New York, that places tight restrictions on who can carry a gun in public.

If the justices strike down the law, as their comments in a November hearing suggested might happen, state-level bans across the nation on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines could end up being overturned.

New York's state legislature on Thursday passed 10 new gun control measures, including a bill that raises the legal age to purchase a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 233 mass shootings in the US so far this year. It defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, excluding the shooter.

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Biden urges ban on assault-style weapons and gun age limits

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President Joe Biden has said the US should ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines to tackle the "carnage" of gun violence. Addressing the nation after a spate of mass shootings, Mr Biden said too many places had become "killing fields".

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The American Conservative is a far right source and has that point of view in this article.

Quotes

"Chances are, this bill will die in the Senate. There is little chance that this proposal will garner any Republican support, and thankfully there seems to be no serious appetite to end the filibuster."

"But this reasoning does not lead to a drastically different result in a mass-shooter situation: even a mediocre shooter such as myself can drop an empty magazine and load a new one in a second or two."

"The latter is what comes to mind when I think of an “assault weapon” or “weapon of war.” Semi-automatic weapons fire one shot per trigger-pull. This does not seem to be a reasonable definition of the ever-elusive “assault weapon.”"

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On July 29, the House of Representatives passed a bill attempting to federally ban "assault weapons." H.R. 1808 is a 126-page bill, mostly filled with lists of firearms it intends to ban by name. In summary, the proposed law forbids "a person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce" any "semi-automatic assault weapon" and any magazine capable of holding more than 15 rounds of ammunition. The proposed law does not apply to weapons or magazines that were lawfully possessed before the passage of this bill, but does severely restrict the ability to transfer these grandfathered weapons, even if the transfer is a gift.

As a gun owner and the son of a former SWAT captain, I question the practical efficacy of these types of laws. Most conservatives probably are familiar with the basics of how guns work, but a quick review is worthwhile. The focus on banning "semi-automatic assault weapons" is interesting, because a semi-automatic gun is distinct from a fully automatic weapon where one can hold down the trigger and fire several shots. The latter is what comes to mind when I think of an "assault weapon" or "weapon of war." Semi-automatic weapons fire one shot per trigger-pull. This does not seem to be a reasonable definition of the ever-elusive "assault weapon." Common handguns such as 9mm handguns and even revolvers also fire one shot per trigger-pull, and can be fired fairly quickly, but they are not included as "assault weapons."

The effectiveness of banning "high-capacity magazines" is likewise questionable. I believe the rationale is that a mass shooter with 30-round magazines can fire 30 shots without having to reload, so limiting magazine capacity to 15 rounds would limit the shooter's ability to continue firing uninterrupted. But this reasoning does not lead to a drastically different result in a mass-shooter situation: even a mediocre shooter such as myself can drop an empty magazine and load a new one in a second or two.

This is worth explaining to those in favor of bills such as H.R. 1808. If this bill became law and buyers can no longer access an AR-15 or a 30-round magazine, a potential mass shooter could do the same or similar damage with a 9mm handgun and a bunch of 10-15 round magazines. Perhaps these laws are being promoted due to ignorance of the realities of firearms. Or perhaps politicians are primarily interested in scoring political points by passing bills that look like they prevent mass shootings, even if they aren't effective.

Chances are, this bill will die in the Senate. There is little chance that this proposal will garner any Republican support, and thankfully there seems to be no serious appetite to end the filibuster. But even if it is rather unlikely that H.R. 1808 will become law, this bill needs to be addressed for a very important reason: the U.S. House of Representative is attempting to pass a law that, after , is clearly unconstitutional.

As I wrote several weeks ago, the Court in Bruen announced the following rule: "[t]he Second Amendment protects the rights of law-abiding, adult citizens ("the People") to keep and bear arms, particularly weapons in common use. Therefore, any law restricting that right needs to be consistent with the Nation's 'historical tradition of firearm regulation.'" If a law is passed that restricts the right to bear arms, the proponent of that law must demonstrate that similar types of restrictive gun laws were in place at the time the Second Amendment was ratified.

To be fair, it is reasonable to pass test laws in the wake of a monumental Supreme Court decision. After all, Bruen struck down a restrictive law requiring New York residents to demonstrate good cause before being approved for a license to carry firearms. The Bruen holding did not directly address semi-automatic rifles or "high-capacity" magazines, so it makes sense that legislatures would experiment with various gun restrictions post- Bruen to see how the Bruen test will be applied by the courts in various circumstances.

We have good reason to believe, however, that an "assault weapons" ban such as H.R. 1808 is likely to be struck down post- Bruen. The language of Bruen itself, and particularly a little-known decision by the Supreme Court on the last day of its term in June, provide clues as to how H.R. 1808 would fare under the Court's current Second Amendment jurisprudence.

Bruen and the gun casesbefore it-such as and -articulate that the Second Amendment protects possession and carrying of weapons "in common use" for a lawful purpose. Following this logic, progressives dare not touch 9mm handguns, pump shotguns, etc. They only claim to want to ban "weapons of war" from our streets. Despite claims that the AR-15 is substantially similar to military-grade weapons (despite the fact that the AR-15 is semi-automatic while military M4 rifles have burst-fire capabilities), the reality is the AR-15 is a civilian weapon and the most popular rifle in America. Twenty- to 30-round magazines are standard for such firearms. Despite arguments to the contrary, AR-15s are not weapons of war: they are civilian rifles in common use in America for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Therefore, it seems H.R. 1808 contains exactly the type of weapon ban Bruen deemed unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

Supporting this analysis is a little-known case released by the Supreme Court on June 30, 2022 called Bianchi v. Frosh. This was one of many cases the Supreme Court accepted and resolved through a summary process, in which they dispose of a case in a quick, summary fashion. In Bianchi, there was a challenge to a Maryland statute banning "assault weapons," which was very similar to H.R. 1808. The Supreme Court disposed of the case as follows: "Petition GRANTED. Judgment VACATED and case REMANDED for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U. S. ___ (2022)." In the lower courts, the complaint of the plaintiff challenging the law was dismissed. The Supreme Court issued an opinion vacating the lower court opinion and requiring the lower court to hear the case again for further consideration, specifically in light of the Bruen decision. This does not tell us how the lower court will rule on remand, but it does signal that assault weapons bans will not hold up in court post- Bruen.

Bruen and summary dispositions such as Bianchi are good signs that we are looking at a robust restoration of the Second Amendment. Bills such as H.R. 1808 are expected attempts to push back against the Supreme Court, but thankfully the legislature is not allowed to enact laws that contradict the Constitution. We should expect that Congress (and legislatures in blue states) will continue to pass restrictive firearms laws in an attempt to test or thwart the Supreme Court. But we should also expect, in this post- Bruen world, that we will see courts more willing and able to protect our rights under the Second Amendment.

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Another Unconstitutional Gun Grab - The American Conservative

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On July 29, the House of Representatives passed a bill attempting to federally ban "assault weapons." H.R. 1808 is a 126-page bill, mostly filled with lists of firearms it intends to ban by name.

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Fox News is a far right source and this article has that view point.

Quotes

"U.S. Constitution does not specify for the common defense. It also adds that the phrase "the right to keep and bear arms" is one that "shall not be infringed."  The Boston Massacre, in which soldiers shot and killed unarmed civilians in 1770, reinforced in the minds of colonists their desire to be armed against government."

"The states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont all have declarations of rights that precede the U.S. Constitution and mention a "right to bear arms."  But none contain the turn of phrase by Adams about the rights both "to keep" and "to bear" arms."

"Amid today's heated debates about gun laws and the Second Amendment, what many people may not realize is that the phrase "the right to keep and to bear arms" is older than the Bill of Rights. It was penned years before the United States won its independence from England. "

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Amid today's heated debates about gun laws and the Second Amendment, what many people may not realize is that the phrase "the right to keep and to bear arms" is older than the Bill of Rights. It was penned years before the United States won its independence from England.

In 1779, Founding Father and future president John Adams wrote this phrase at his law office in Quincy, Mass., as he drafted the Massachusetts Constitution - the oldest in the world. He did so a decade before the phrase appeared in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Today's tourists can visit the site where Adams drafted the document and authored the powerful words, as part of the Adams National Historical Park.
JOHN ADAMS ENVISIONED A 4TH OF JULY WITH A BANG
Interest in the "right to keep and bear arms" has only grown as the Supreme Court shot down a New York law that had made it difficult for citizens to carry concealed weapons.

The Supreme Court's 6-3 decision this past Thursday, June 23, is widely seen as a victory for the Second Amendment.

While the American Revolution raged

The phrase "the right to keep and to bear arms" is codified in Article XVII of the Massachusetts Constitution, which Adams wrote in his office as a "subcommittee of one," as he called himself.

Massachusetts voters in 1780 approved the document. It went into effect later that year while the American Revolution still raged elsewhere in the colonies.

The U.S. Constitution was not ratified until 1789.

James Madison argued on behalf of an armed citizenry as a bulwark to federal overreach in Federalist No. 46, published in 1788 as debate took place over shape of the new American government.

A national army of 25,000 to 30,000 men "would be opposed by a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands," wrote the statesman often dubbed "Father of the Constitution."

The nation's population was about 4 million people at the time.

The English Bill of Rights of 1689 offered a tepid call for an armed citizenry a century earlier - but only for those who attended the state-approved church.

"The subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law," the document declared in the immediate aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, which overthrew King James II, the last Catholic English monarch.

Saltbox-style colonial home

Adams created modern constitutional government in the office of his simple 17th-century saltbox-style colonial home - better known today as the John Quincy Adams Birthplace.

The plot of land with the two original period homes outside Boston is the only place in America where two presidents were born.

It's where John and Abigail Adams raised their family, including the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams.

John Adams himself was born in another saltbox-style home right next door, a similar structure but unadorned with paint. The plot of land with the two original period homes just outside Boston is the only place in America where two presidents were born.

Among the few artifacts in the John Quincy Adams Birthplace is a copy of the Massachusetts Constitution, containing the phrase "the right to keep and to bear arms" - along with many other foundations of constitutional government.

A bicameral legislature, a system of checks and balances and a bill of rights all appeared in the Massachusetts Constitution a decade before Adams helped secure them in the U.S. Constitution.
MEET THE AMERICAN BAKER AND BUSINESSWOMAN WHO FOUNDED PEPPERIDGE FARMS
The Massachusetts Constitution specifically notes the right of citizens to keep and to bear arms "for the common defense."

The U.S. Constitution does not specify for the common defense. It also adds that the phrase "the right to keep and bear arms" is one that "shall not be infringed."

The Boston Massacre, in which soldiers shot and killed unarmed civilians in 1770, reinforced in the minds of colonists their desire to be armed against government, scholars have argued.
FLAG DAY IS A PATRIOTIC SPECTACLE IN THESE ALL-AMERICAN COMMUNITIES
Adams was certainly familiar with the colonial sentiment. The attorney famously defended the eight British soldiers charged in the massacre.

The states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont all have declarations of rights that precede the U.S. Constitution and mention a "right to bear arms."

But none contain the turn of phrase by Adams about the rights both "to keep" and "to bear" arms. One means to possess; the other means to carry.

"The right to keep and bear arms" is older than the nation itself.

Adams wrote the Massachusetts Constitution two years before the end of the American Revolution and four years before the Treaty of Paris (negotiated by Adams) officially recognized American independence.

Massachusetts, which booted out the British in 1776, was a free, independent, constitutional republic - the first of its kind - while the war raged on elsewhere in the American colonies.
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"The right to keep and bear arms" is older than the nation itself.

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Amid new gun laws, here's the true story behind the 'Right to keep and to bear arms'

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Amid today's heated debates about gun laws and the Second Amendment, what many people may not realize is that the phrase "the right to keep and to bear arms" is older than the Bill of Rights. It was penned years before the United States won its independence from England.

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Vox is usually a left source and this article has a left viewpoint.

Quotes

"But individual studies have found evidence that assault weapons bans are effective. A 2021 study found that had the federal assault weapons ban remained in effect from 2005 through 2019, it would have prevented 30 mass shootings where an assault weapon was obtained legally resulting in the deaths of 339 people."

"Beyond assault weapons bans, there are policies that evidence suggests might be more effective at preventing mass shootings and gun violence overall. For instance, extreme risk protection laws, otherwise known as “red flag” laws, can bar individuals who are believed to pose a danger to themselves or others from possessing firearms."

"That has led President Joe Biden to repeatedly push for a national assault weapons ban, most recently after another recent shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The US has had a national assault weapons ban before. As a senator, Biden helped pass the last national ban in 1994."

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The gunman who killed at least five people and injured eight more in Monday's mass shooting at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, was reportedly armed with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, which is designed to kill efficiently without having to reload frequently and is therefore considered an assault weapon.

Such assault weapons, which are usually used alongside high-capacity magazines, are common in mass shootings: They have been used in over half of the deadliest mass shootings since 1966 and account for 38 percent of the deaths in mass shootings in that period, according to the Violence Project.

That has led President Joe Biden to repeatedly push for a national assault weapons ban, most recently after another recent shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.

The US has had a national assault weapons ban before. As a senator, Biden helped pass the last national ban in 1994; it expired when lawmakers failed to renew it in 2004. Following a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last year, Congress passed its first gun reforms in decades encouraging states to pass red flag laws, implementing enhanced background checks for gun buyers under 21, and closing the "boyfriend loophole" which allowed some people with domestic violence convictions to purchase guns.

But that package didn't include an assault weapons ban. That's despite the fact that most Americans, including 86 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of Republicans, support such a ban, according to a June 2022 survey by Morning Consult. Now that Republicans - who continue to oppose any kind of perceived infringement on gun rights - control the House, the likelihood that Congress could pass such a ban in the near future remains slim.

Why the US doesn't have a national assault weapons ban

National efforts to ban assault weapons have repeatedly failed in recent years. The 1994 ban also included a prohibition on high-capacity magazines, which most Americans would support renewing, according to the Pew survey. But as with banning assault weapons, there's a big partisan split: 88 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of Republicans are in favor, according to the Morning Consult survey.

Since the law expired, there has been a sharp increase in the number of mass shooting casualties due to assault weapons. One 2019 study found that mass shooting deaths were 70 percent less likely to occur while the federal assault weapons ban was in effect based on data from 1981 to 2017.

"We're seeing more of them because there are more of them and they're easier than ever to get. And there is an appeal to those who wish to do harm to the community," said Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy at the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

In lieu of a federal ban, nine states, along with Washington, DC, have implemented their own assault weapons bans - but Kentucky is not among them. Rather, the state has taken steps to loosen its gun laws in recent years:In 2019, the state legislature passed a law that allows most adults 21 or older to carry firearms without a permit. The Kentucky legislature has also passed a law that shields the state from any federal firearm ban.

Illinois became the latest state to ban assault weapons in January. Washington is also set to enact a ban once Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signs it.Colorado Democrats have also introduced a similar measure, but the issue has proved divisive in the caucus.

Do assault weapons bans work?

Mass shootings are difficult to study because they are uncommon occurrences, though more common in the US than in other countries. So that makes it hard to understand how gun policies, including assault weapons bans, might impact both the number of mass shooting incidents and the number of casualties.

The RAND Corporation, for instance, conducted a review of six studies on the effects of state or federal assault weapons bans on multiple-victim shootings and found the results inconclusive.

But individual studies have found evidence that assault weapons bans are effective. A 2021 study found that had the federal assault weapons ban remained in effect from 2005 through 2019, it would have prevented 30 mass shootings where an assault weapon was obtained legally resulting in the deaths of 339 people.

Beyond assault weapons bans, there are policies that evidence suggests might be more effective at preventing mass shootings and gun violence overall. For instance, extreme risk protection laws, otherwise known as "red flag" laws, can bar individuals who are believed to pose a danger to themselves or others from possessing firearms. These laws have increasingly come into favor in part because assault weapons account for only a small percentage of firearm murders overall.

"These laws are newer than assault weapons bans, but there's already a really strong and growing body of evidence that shows that they're very effective at preventing mass shootings, but even more so at preventing suicides," said David Pucino, Giffords Law Center's deputy chief counsel.

But that's not to say that assault weapons bans shouldn't be on the table.

"Everything that we know about mass shootings suggests that assault weapons, especially when equipped with high-capacity magazines, make them more deadly," Suplina said. "If something is legally and commonly available, you're only increasing the likelihood that it will be misused and or fall into the hands of somebody who is prohibited from possessing them."
Update, April 11, 11:30 am ET: Help us celebrate nine years of Vox This story was originally published on March 28 and has been updated with information on the Louisville shooting.
Since Vox launched in 2014, our audience has supported our mission in so many meaningful ways. More than 80,000 people have responded to requests to help with our reporting. Countless teachers have told us about how they're using our work in their classroom. And in the three years since we launched the Vox Contributions program, tens of thousands of people have chipped in to help keep our unique work free. We're committed to keeping our work free for all who need it, because we believe that high-quality explanatory journalism is a public good. We can't rely on ads alone to do that. Will you help us keep Vox free for the next nine years by making a gift today?

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An assault weapons ban might not end mass shootings. But it would help.

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The gunman who killed at least five people and injured eight more in Monday's mass shooting at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, was reportedly armed with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, which is designed to kill efficiently without having to reload frequently and is therefore considered an assault weapon.

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The guardian is a left leaning source and this article has that point of view.

Quotes

"It’s easy to buy, easy to shoot, easy to customise...those are also the reasons why the AR-15 is particularly deadly, and why it is popular among mass shooters."

"Often, perpetrators who plan their attacks seek out the AR-platform rifle for the same reasons other gun owners do, Reeher says: the aesthetics of the rifle and its military roots. There is also often a copycat element to mass shootings, which helps make the AR-15 the weapon of choice."

"But semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15 have thrived to become the weapon of choice for mass shooters aiming to kill dozens of people in a very short amount of time."

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ogs are a big problem on Brandon Brown's ranchland in the Texas panhandle. They tear up the ground, travel in droves and are a general nuisance, as they are in many other parts of the southern US. For some, hunting them is a combination of pastime and pest control.

So when Brown wanted to find a rifle that was accurate, lightweight and fired bullets big enough to take out a feral pig, he chose the most popular rifle in the US: the AR-15. "It's a great hunting gun. It's great," Brown says. "The AR overall is pretty much indestructible."

It is also an easy gun to use, he says - so easy that his eight-year-old son has used it to hunt deer. Brown eventually bought three of the rifles, each with a specific use and customised for target shooting or hunting at any time of day.

Brown also liked the fact that the AR-15 is semi-automatic, meaning that one squeeze of the trigger fires a single round without having to reload the rifle. Fully automatic guns, where the gun continuously fires multiple rounds as long as the trigger is pulled, have been heavily regulated in the US since the 1930s. But semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15 have thrived to become the weapon of choice for mass shooters aiming to kill dozens of people in a very short amount of time.

AR-15-style rifles for sale in California. Photograph: Bing Guan/Reuters

In high-profile mass shootings in Colorado Springs, Uvalde, Buffalo, Midland, Dayton, Pittsburgh, Parkland, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, Orlando, San Bernardino, Newtown and more, bullets fired from AR-style weapons have killed again and again. Most recently, on 27 March, a shooter with two "assault type" weapons killed three children and three adults at a school in Nashville, Tennessee.

The mass shooting in Nashville has reignited a consistent and familiar debate in American life over AR-15s and other firearms. The shooting happened within hours of the Washington Post publishing an in-depth series about the gun, including detailed graphics showing what a bullet fired from an AR-15 can do to a human body - and specifically the postmortem results of two children killed in school shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Newtown, Connecticut.

President Joe Biden said last Monday that he continues to support a ban on assault weapons that has been blocked by Republicans, even as the National Rifle Association and pro-gun conservatives doubled down on claims that banning AR-15s would be an attack on the second amendment of the US constitution.

"The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre, it's a crazy idea, so we're against that," Biden said last Tuesday. "I want to remind you, the last time we passed an assault weapons ban ... mass shootings went down ... I can't do anything except plead with the Congress to act reasonably." According to polls, more than 60% of Americans support the banning of semi-automatic weapons.

The crisis of gun deaths in the US is a complex quagmire of politics, cultural identity and violence that goes far beyond the horrific headlines of mass shootings. But understanding the AR-15 is key to understanding the US's history with civilian gun ownership, says Harel Shapira, who studies US gun culture at the University of Texas at Austin. "It has become the kind of central symbol of firearms ownership," he says.

he first time I shot with an AR-15 was at an indoor gun range in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. I don't own one, but I've shot them a few other times at ranges and private farmland. I'm always surprised by how simple they are. They're built to be comfortable. After an easy squeeze of the trigger, the pop of the round is powerful but without the bruising recoil of other wooden or composite rifles. Each of the AR-15s I've shot was different, customised by its owner to express their personality. One had a foregrip at the front of the rifle for better comfort. Another had a high-end holographic sight to line up your shot. Another was wrapped in a hot pink camouflage pattern, marketed at women who like to shoot.

For gun owners, it's the perfect hobby gun. The AR component - which stands for "ArmaLite rifle", not "assault rifle" - is a simple mechanism that can be connected to other parts which are easy to take apart and customise. It's why some people call it the Lego or the Barbie of guns. According to recent polling, an estimated one in 20 US adults owns an AR-15-style weapon.

Shapira compares the obsession with AR-platform customisation to American car culture. Gun owners can tinker and build the gun that fits them best. "A big part of what it means to own an AR is that you're not just purchasing a firearm off the shelf," he says. "It involves a process of modification, of transformation, where people come to develop really a kind of intimate relationship with ARs."

It's easy to buy, easy to shoot, easy to customise - all reasons why American gun owners love it. Those are also the reasons why the AR-15 is particularly deadly, and why it is popular among mass shooters.

An American colonel with his AR-15 in 1967. Photograph: Horst Faas/AP

The AR-15 has roots in the second world war, says Prof Grant Reeher, director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at Syracuse University in New York. While Germany and the Soviet Union developed lighter-weight semi-automatic rifles, the US military was hesitant to leave behind the tradition of heavy-calibre single-action rifles. That changed during the early days of the Vietnam war in the late 1950s, when the military adapted ArmaLite's gas-powered semi-automatic "AR" design into what became the M-16 rifle. ArmaLite sold its design in 1959 to Colt, which began marketing a civilian version.

The AR-15's use of plastic parts and its sleek design made it look like a "space age" weapon, in contrast to the bulky rifles of previous generations. That aesthetic popularity carried into the early 00s, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when more US civilians wanted "what the real soldiers carry", Reeher says.

Reeher also credits the rise of first-person shooter video games like 2003's Call of Dutywith popularising the AR platform among more diverse audiences. If people liked playing the game with a virtual AR-style rifle, he suggests, then they may have been more likely to buy a real one at home.

The AR-15's usefulness as a hunting rifle has been debated, however. Many Americans in the south use them for shooting feral pigs, as Brown does in Texas, but the .223-inch round that most AR-platform rifles fire is too small for larger game, says Reeher. "Some people have used them for deer, but not really. The hide's too thick. That is not a limitation if you're trying to kill a person. A person is a lot easier to kill than a deer."

ccording to statistics from Everytown for Gun Safety, a political group that argues for stricter gun regulations, only 1% of American gun deaths are attributed to mass shootings. Yet in those shootings, according to the group, six times as many people are shot when an assault weapon is used. And AR-style guns were involved in 10 of the 17 deadliest shootings since 2012.

Often, perpetrators who plan their attacks seek out the AR-platform rifle for the same reasons other gun owners do, Reeher says: the aesthetics of the rifle and its military roots. There is also often a copycat element to mass shootings, which helps make the AR-15 the weapon of choice.

"It's not a toy. It's not a game," says Noah Lumbantobing, a spokesperson for March for Our Lives. "It's a weapon to hunt people."

March for Our Lives was founded by survivors of the 2018 shooting in Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, Parkland, Florida, where a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 and injured 17 others in about four minutes with an AR-style firearm.

March for Our Lives campaigners on 25 March 2023, marking the fifth anniversary of the Parkland high school shooting. Photograph: Bob Daemmrich/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

March for Our Lives is one of many groups in the US pushing for a complete ban on the gun. It has been imposed before: in 1994, President Clinton signed a federal law that banned specific models (including the Colt AR-15) and general features of assault weapons - primarily the features that make up an AR-15-style rifle. Mass shooting deaths decreased during the 10 years it was enforced. A sunset provision in the law allowed the bill to expire in 2004, and it has not been renewed.

Experts who study gun violence say it's hard to know whether the fall in overall gun homicides in the US was caused by the assault weapons ban, or was a coincidence. Yet in the decade after the ban ended, deaths from mass shootings jumped up from an average of 4.8 to 23.8 a year, according to a 2019 New York University study.

In a 2020 study, researchers at George Mason University also found that the number of mass shootings increased after the ban expired. According to the nonprofit research group Gun Violence Archive, which classifies "mass shootings" as events where four or more people are injured or killed, there have been at least 130 such killings in 2023 so far. In 2014, Gun Violence Archive counted 273 mass shootings; that figure has soared to more than 600 each year since 2020.

This is why the AR-15 platform has become as emblematic for anti-gun advocates as it is for the pro-gun lobby.

The number of deaths from gun violence overall did not experience a major drop while Clinton's federal assault weapons ban was enforced, which is why many Republican politicians have jumped to cast the assault weapons ban as ineffective. If anything, Reeher says, Clinton's ban has made the gun even more popular among American conservatives. According to the National Rifle Association (NRA), 25 million Americans own an AR-15-style weapon, and it is the most common rifle used for home self-defence. It's why the NRA calls it "America's rifle."

"Simply because it becomes such a pariah gun, there are other gun owners that want to make sure that they've got at least one," Reeher says. "There are folks that like owning them, and want to show other people that they own them, in part to make a statement about themselves politically."

Because many places in the US permit firearms to be carried openly, AR-platform rifles have become a common sight at political protests. Along with other customisations, gun owners can buy magazines and other AR-style parts emblazoned with Donald Trump's face, or with his "Maga" slogan.

Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican member of congress for Florida, wearing a pin shaped like an assault rifle earlier this year. Photograph: Michael Brochstein/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock

In 2015, Texas senator Ted Cruz appeared in a video using the barrel of a semi-automatic rifle to fry bacon. South Dakota senator John Thune said last year that people in his state used the AR-15 for hunting "prairie dogs and other varmints". Colorado representative Lauren Boebert tweeted last summer that Jesus could have used more AR-15s to "keep his government from killing him". And earlier this year, US House representatives wore AR-15 lapel pins on the floor of Congress to show their support for gun ownership.

Guns are more than mere weapons to many Americans. They are a cultural symbol, Shapira says. "Asking the question, 'Why do you need this?' misunderstands a lot of why people own firearms," he says. It's not just about utility.

For many Americans, firing guns is a family pastime. It can be a chance for generations to bond over shared firearms that have been handed down. Taking your child shooting for the first time can be a rite of passage. According to the Washington Post's analysis, AR-15 owners are likely to be male (81%), white (74%) and between 40 and 65 years old (56%). And for some men, the weapons are a symbol of masculinity. The custom-friendliness of the AR-15 platform allows gun owners to express their individuality, while participating in the long and violent tradition of firearms in the US.

This deeply rooted culture is part of why AR-platform rifles alone are not the only key to solving the crisis of gun violence in the US, Lumbantobing says: "If you were to somehow magically do a perfect assault weapons ban overnight, and remove every single assault weapon from America, gun violence would still occur. We're certainly focused on banning assault weapons ... But it's just a small piece of a broader question that is this uniquely American crisis of gun violence."

rown says shooting his three ARs is a hobby, sure, but he also treats them as tools that are needed on his property. Still, he looks at the mass shootings and wonders how those shooters were allowed to buy their guns.

"Maybe we adjust the gun laws, but regardless of if they take them away or not, you're still going to have stuff like that taking place," he says. "I don't know the answer to this, but find a way to try to make it tougher and enforce realistic gun laws for people buying."

We're not gonna fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals

Congressman Tim Burchett

He thinks about when he bought his most recent AR-15. An outstanding traffic ticket in another state sent a red flag to the retailer when he tried to buy the rifle. The sale was left pending until he could clear the ticket and pay a fine. If he had to jump through those hoops for a traffic violation, he said, people intent on killing shouldn't be able to buy those rifles.

Yet in states such as Texas, where legislators blocked red-flag laws that would help stop people with mental health concerns from buying guns, it is relatively easy to buy an AR platform rifle, as the Uvalde shooter did last May, just days after his 18th birthday. Similarly in Tennessee, in 2021 Republican governor Bill Lee, supported by the NRA, signed into law legislation allowing for permit-free open carrying of handguns (although a 2019 poll showed 75% of Tennesseans opposed such a move).

There are proposals to make it possible to carry other guns without a permit, including shotguns and AR-style rifles. Hence Republican Tennessee congressman Tim Burchett's response to the Nashville shooting last week. "We're not gonna fix it," he bluntly told reporters. "Criminals are gonna be criminals ... I don't see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly." When Burchett was asked what more could be done to protect schoolkids such as his own daughter, he replied, "Well, we homeschool her."

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'It's a weapon to hunt people!' Why so many Americans hate - and love - the AR-15

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ogs are a big problem on Brandon Brown's ranchland in the Texas panhandle. They tear up the ground, travel in droves and are a general nuisance, as they are in many other parts of the southern US. For some, hunting them is a combination of pastime and pest control.

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Yahoo normally leans left, but this article has a far left point of view.

Quotes

"People bark about protections granted by the Second Amendment — written during a time when weapons were muskets"

"And it isn’t just school shootings —the AR-15 or some variant of it has been used in more mass shootings than anyone not paid to keep track of it can reasonably be expected to"

"Despite research concluding that mass-shooting-related homicides were reduced during that decade, attempts to renew the ban have not been successful."

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"Few people are interested in taking away all guns from all citizens, just ones that are literally designed for mass killing," the author writes.

The shooter livestreamed the attack; he apparently died while exchanging gunfire with police.

It's the same type of gun another shooter used to we had to endure news stories featuring the faces of kill six people, including three 9-year-olds, on March 27 at The Covenant School, a private Christian grade school in Nashville. It was yet another day innocent children who were cut down.

The Nashville shooter - who was also killed by police - reportedly took the rifle to the school in a bag along with two other guns and ammunition. Nashville police say that the shooter legally purchased several guns from five different stores despite being under care for an "emotional disorder."

An AR-15 was reportedly used in 10 of the last 17 deadly mass shootings in the country, including the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012 that claimed the lives of 20 children, all under eight years old. And it isn't just shootings -the AR-15 or some variant of it has been used in more mass shootings than anyone not paid to keep track of it can reasonably be expected to.

In the wake of the Nashville shooting, President Joe Biden renewed calls for an assault weapons ban. Anyone who's been conscious and living in America knows his pleas will go nowhere, especially with a divided Congress. Sure, you'll get "thoughts and prayers" up the wazoo, but we'll quietly move on and wait until the next tragedy to resume the fatuous cycle.

It's the movie " Groundhog Day" manifest in political agendas.

Demonstrators call for a ban on assault rifles in August 2019 during President Donald Trump's visit to El Paso, Texas, following back-to-back mass shootings there and in Dayton, Ohio.

In a country where I can't purchase Sudafed without identification, banning a weapon for citizen use that can fire several hundred rounds per minute is an issue that somehow still divides the masses. Hunting with an AR-15 is impractical, and there are many other legal weapons suited for home defense .

People bark about protections granted by the Second Amendment - written during a time when but seemingly refuse to acknowledge that few people are interested in taking away weapons were muskets - all guns from all citizens, just ones that are literally designed for mass killing. Some politicians, voted into office for the purpose of protecting their electorate, seem more interested in challenging the government to take away their assault rifles with juvenile bluster (see: Colorado Rep. and resident asshole Ken Buck).

From anti-climate legislation to banning dildos , politicians across the country have a dubious record of focusing on things that don't improve our safety. Here's a (very non-exhaustive) list of recent state and federal legislation - and other priorities - that lawmakers are more focused on than protecting pre-pubescent humans from getting torn through with metal:

Anti-LGBTQ legislation:

As soon as it was reported that the Nashville shooter was transgender, I knew it'd be the worst thing for a community perpetually working hard for normalization - because amoebic Republicans would leverage the shooting to attack the trans community. And they were right on time.

Politicians with a hard-on (literally and figuratively) for LGBTQ issues is nothing new, but it feels like they've been going a bit harder lately - because we know the one thing that freaks politicians out more than gun violence is (gasp!) consenting adults just living their lives.

There has been a maelstrom of anti-LGBTQ bills throughout the country, including a bill passed in Kentucky in March that bans gender-affirming care for trans people and prohibits conversations on sexual orientation in schools, among other foolishness. An anti-drag law passed in Tennessee the same month.

Anti-abortion legislation:

For my dollars, the most egregious legal decision I've witnessed as an adult is the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, which granted Americans abortion rights for nearly 50 years before the U.S. Supreme Court extended a strong middle finger to the people.

While many governors are admirably standing in defiance of that decision, several Republican-led states leaned into it with "trigger laws" that immediately criminalized the practice of abortion. In Florida, lawmakers proposed a " heartbeat bill " that would ban abortions as soon as a heartbeat is detected, which is about six weeks after conception.

The message here? Protect the fetus by encroaching on the rights of the mother, perhaps to her detriment , so it's born into a world where we won't give a damn about the child's well-being that child can easily be cut down by gunfire at school.

Laws making it easier to obtain guns:

Common sense and a basic understanding of human nature dictates that getting one's hands on tools specifically designed to kill should be no mean feat in any state.

The Tennessee House voted on April 6 to expel two of three Democrats who led protests for stricter gun laws in the wake of the Covenant School shooting. Two of the representatives - Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson - are Black men; Rep. Gloria Johnson is a white woman. It's Tennessee, so I'll give you one guess as to who expelled.

The push for more restrictive gun laws in Texas, home of Uvalde and seven other mass shootings in 13 years, buckled under the weight of the gun lobby, which owns more politicians than Questlove owns vinyl records.

Republicans in North Carolina proposed bills just a few hours after the Michigan State University shooting in February that would repeal a permit requirement for purchasing a pistol and allow people with a concealed carry licenses to bring their weapons into churches, even when they have a school on the property.

Considering banning TikTok:

Yes, this one is comparatively silly: The U.S. Government had a serious squabble with the Chinese-owned-and-operated social media behemoth, concerned that the country's Communist government is using it to spy on all the 45-year-old moms shimmying in front of their phone camera to Taylor Swift. The conversation started with the Trump administration and was recently renewed by Joe Biden.

I'm no expert in social media security, but I think the jig was up on our general privacy the first time we decided to sign up for BlackPlanet, and it's only gone south from there.

Thing is, there's no real, tangible evidence that TikTok is siphoning data for nefarious means, and there's a little thing called free speech that'll make it difficult to nuke the app on our shores.

But if TikTok somehow manages to get banned before AR-15s, maybe I'll just move to China so I can freely do the "Fancy Like" dance on the app. And not fall victim to a mass shooting.

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All The Stupid Laws That Have Passed Instead Of An Assault Rifle Ban

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"Few people are interested in taking away all guns from all citizens, just ones that are literally designed for mass killing," the author writes. The shooter livestreamed the attack; he apparently died while exchanging gunfire with police.

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NBC is a left leaning source but this article has a neutral point of view.

Quotes

"House Republicans on Friday insisted the legislation was unconstitutional and that Democrats want to confiscate firearms."

"During floor debate before Friday's vote, House Democrats argued an assault weapons ban was needed because of the number of recent shootings where gunmen have used assault-style weapons."

The House passed legislation Friday that would ban assault weapons for the first time since 2004, in a sign that Democrats intend to pursue more aggressive gun violence prevention measures after a spate of mass shootings.

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The House passed legislation Friday that would ban assault weapons for the first time since 2004, in a sign that Democrats intend to pursue more aggressive gun violence prevention measures after a spate of mass shootings.

The bill passed in a largely party-line vote of 217-213, with two Republicans voting for the measure and five Democrats opposing it.

The level of GOP opposition indicates the bill is unlikely to advance in the evenly split Senate, where it would require the support of at least 10 Republicans to defeat a guaranteed filibuster. It's also not clear if the measure has the support of all 50 Senate Democrats.

The legislation, authored by Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., would criminalize the knowing sale, manufacture, transfer, possession or importation of many types of semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity ammunition feeding devices.

President Joe Biden praised House Democrats for passing the bill and urged the Senate to follow suit.

"When guns are the number one killer of children in America, when more children die from guns than active-duty police and active-duty military combined, we have to act," he said in a statement. "Today, House Democrats acted by unifying to pass an assault weapons ban to keep weapons of war off our streets, save lives in this country, and reduce crime in our communities."

He added that the Senate should "move quickly to get this bill to my desk, and I will not stop fighting until it does."

During floor debate before Friday's vote, House Democrats argued an assault weapons ban was needed because of the number of recent shootings where gunmen have used assault-style weapons.

"Our nation has watched in unspeakable horror as assault weapons have been used in massacre after massacre in communities across the country," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. "We know that an assault weapons ban can work because it has worked before."

Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee asked: "How many more mass shootings must we endure? When will we learn?"

The Judiciary Committee advanced the measure last week on a party-line vote of 25 to 18.

House Republicans on Friday insisted the legislation was unconstitutional and that Democrats want to confiscate firearms.

"Today, they're coming for your guns," Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "They want to take all guns from all people."

This bill "will make communities, I think, less safe," he added.

The assault weapons ban would not apply to some types of firearms, including antiques, rifles and shotguns explicitly identified by make and model, and guns that are manually operated in a variety of ways.

Former President Bill Clinton signed into law a 10-year assault weapons ban in 1994. It expired in 2004. Several studies, including one published in 2019 in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, have shown that mass shooting deaths were reduced during the years the ban was in effect.

Senate Republicans have not been open to any additional gun measures after passing bipartisan legislation last month aimed at enhancing background checks to include juvenile records and providing grants to states to enact "red flag" laws.

The five House Democrats who voted against the assault weapons ban were Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Jared Golden of Maine and Ron Kind of Wisconsin.

The two Republicans who crossed the aisle to support the bill were Reps. Chris Jacobs of New York and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. Jacobs' district includes Buffalo, where a white gunman has been charged with killing 10 Black people in a racist mass shooting at a supermarket in May.

In a brief interview with NBC News after the vote, Jacobs said that while he doesn't expect the Senate to pass the bill, he hopes it "begins the dialogue towards something."

"I'm not being unrealistic that this is going to pass. The Senate doesn't seem inclined at this point in time to do it," he said.

The cause of tougher gun laws has gained traction in Congress and in U.S. public opinion surveys after the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas. The push for gun limits also represents a desire for Democrats to turn the tables on the GOP on the issue of crime heading into the November midterm elections.

The House had planned to vote on the assault weapons ban earlier this week alongside legislation to provide funding for local police departments. But members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other progressives balked at the latter measures, calling for more accountability measures in exchange for funding. They struck a deal to move forward solely on the assault weapons ban Friday.

Pelosi said the House would continue to work on the police funding legislation for future consideration.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, told reporters she was proud of the CBC's leadership in striking Friday's deal and grateful to Pelosi for listening to their concerns. She described the assault weapons vote as "step one" in addressing violence and policing.

"We have people from Uvalde and Parkland who are here today with those children, asking us to make sure that we do an assault ban. ... Now, are we done? No, we're not done. We will come back and we will look at the guardrails that we're putting in," she said, referring to the 2018 mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Friday's vote comes days after the House Oversight Committee held a contentious hearing in which Democrats pressed gun manufacturers to take responsibility for their role in the gun violence epidemic and took a look at what they termed "disturbing sales tactics" to get young men to buy assault weapons.

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House passes assault weapons ban that's doomed in the Senate

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The House passed legislation Friday that would ban assault weapons for the first time since 2004, in a sign that Democrats intend to pursue more aggressive gun violence prevention measures after a spate of mass shootings. The bill passed in a largely party-line vote of 217-213, with two Republicans voting for the measure and five Democrats opposing it.

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USA Today is a left leaning source, but this article has a far left view point.

Quotes

"Several Republicans expressed greater concerns about the transgender identity of the shooting suspect, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, than the assault-style weapons used in the attack."

"'Why in God's name do we allow these weapons of war on our streets and our schools?' Biden said Tuesday. 'I never thought when I started my public life that guns would be the No. 1 killer of children in America.'"

"Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has led the push for gun control legislation in the Senate, told Punchbowl News that Senate Democrats should at some point consider forcing a vote on an assault weapons ban to see where senators stand."

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WASHINGTON - Lawmakers from both parties said the prospects for major gun control legislation advancing in a divided Congress are slim even as President Joe Biden said he has exhausted what he can do to address gun violence through executive action.

It appears the nation's latest mass shooting - a massacre Monday at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee - could turn into a familiar story: calls for sweeping gun control laws, followed by inaction.

Joe Biden: No more options without Congress

Renewing push: Biden renewed his push for Congress to reinstate the nation's ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which expired in 2004 after 10 years as law, after Monday's shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville. He also wants Congress to close loopholes that allow firearms dealers to skirt gun background checks.

'Weapons of war': "Why in God's name do we allow these weapons of war on our streets and our schools?" Biden said Tuesday. "I never thought when I started my public life that guns would be the No. 1 killer of children in America."

Biden looks to Congress: After taking multiple executive actions on guns in his first two years in office, Biden said he has exercised the "full extent" of his executive authority on guns. "The Congress has to act."

More:'Congress has to act': Biden says there's nothing more he can do on his own to address guns
Recent history suggests a legislative long shot

But a ban on assault weapons lacks the votes in Republican-led House. And it even faces an uphill fight in the Democratic-led Senate despite a series of mass shootings that has again shined a spotlight on access to AR-15s and other semiautomatic weapons.
More:'A family's worst nightmare': Biden reacts to Nashville shooting, urges assault weapons ban
After mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, the House under Democratic control last year voted narrowly to approve a Democratic-backed assault weapons ban by a 217-213 vote.

Democrats no longer have a House majority, and nothing from House Republicans since the Nashville shooting suggests they're willing to flip their opposition.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise accused Biden and Democrats of politicizing the Nashville shooting with their calls of an assault weapons ban. "All they want to do is take guns away from law-abiding citizens before they even know the facts," he said in a news conference Tuesday. "And that's not the answer."

House Republicans in Tennessee remain opposed to tighter gun regulations."We're not going to fix it," U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told reporters Monday. "Criminals are going to be criminals."

Several Republicans expressed greater concerns about the transgender identity of the shooting suspect, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, than the assault-style weapons used in the attack. "If early reports are accurate that a trans shooter targeted a Christian school, there needs to be a lot of soul searching on the extreme left," Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, tweeted. "Giving in to these ideas isn't compassion, it's dangerous."

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called on federal law enforcement to investigate the shooting as a hate crime. "This murderous rampage, this taking of innocent life, was a horrific crime, but more specifically, it was a hate crime," he said on the House floor Tuesday.

More: Andy Ogles, GOP congressman representing Nashville shooting site, criticized for posing with guns in family Christmas photo
Last year's bill was never taken up by the Senate, which lacked 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster. Yet it was not even clear whether all Democratic senators supported the legislation - and that remains the case in a Senate Democrats now control 51-49.

'Not the answer': What Republicans are saying on guns after Nashville attack
More: Nashville school shooting renews gun control push: 'How many more classrooms must become crime scenes?'
A glimmer of hope for gun control activists?
Dig deeper: Why Tenn. Republican Tim Burchett says Congress would only 'mess things up' after school shooting

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has led the push for gun control legislation in the Senate, told Punchbowl News that Senate Democrats should at some pointconsider forcing a vote on an assault weapons ban to see where senators stand. "Mass shootings dropped significantly when the 1994 ban went into effect, and then spiked when the ban expired."

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, though, was noncommittal on bringing a bill to the floor. "We're working hard to get enough votes to pass it," he said.

Democrats don't seem encouraged about legislation for universal gun background checks, either. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said he'd like to take up a bill to expand background checks but added, "I'm a realist."

Contributing: Candy Woodall Reach Joey Garrison on Twitter @joeygarrison.
Despite long-standing disagreements on guns, a bipartisan group of lawmakers last year approved legislation after the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings that - although more modest than Biden's preference - provided incentives for states to adopt red-flag gun laws and enhanced background checks on young buyers.

The moment suggests a glimmer of hope for gun control activists after Nashville's shooting but probably not at the scale they want.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who helped pass the bipartisan gun bill, said the Senate doesn't have enough votes to go any further. "I would say we've gone about as far as we can go unless somebody identifies some area that we didn't address."

He said Biden's proposed assault weapon ban repeats talking points, lacks support in Congress and "would require the confiscation of 16 million semiautomatic weapons that are owned by law-abiding citizens."

Could Democrats force a Senate vote on assault weapons ban?

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'We're not going to fix it': Why lawmakers see no chance of major gun law changes after Nashville

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WASHINGTON - Lawmakers from both parties said the prospects for major gun control legislation advancing in a divided Congress are slim even as President Joe Biden said he has exhausted what he can do to address gun violence through executive action.

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CBS is a left leaning source and this article has that view point.

Quotes

"Even in the supposed Wild West, towns like Tombstone and Dodge City prohibited people from carrying guns in public."

"Too much anguish back then -- but what about now? Today there seems to be an alarming sameness to our gun violence -- from Columbine High School, to a Tucson parking lot, to a movie theater in Aurora, and to a grade school in Newtown, Conn."

"FDR signed the first federal gun control legislation in 1934, hoping to reduce the number of bootlegging gangsters armed with Tommy Guns and the like."

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No other developed country embraces firearms the way ours does. The more we argue about them, the more it seems their mystique grows. But just how guns became part of our cultural DNA has been a long journey. And that is where Lee Cowan begins:
Of all the artifacts that were aboard the good ship Mayflower, not a single gun is known to have survived. But historians believe they were probably there, accompanying the pilgrims to Plymouth Rock.

Guns are so woven into the fabric of our founding that on the fourth floor of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, they have their very own vault.

"I'm sure there are people who'd give anything to come in here and see these things, right?" Cowan asked.

"Yeah, I get lots of visitors who are just astounded and don't want to leave," curator David Miller replied.

He's got guns of all shapes, sizes and calibers, and every one has a historic reason for being here. Some we barely recognize (such as the "hand cannon," probably made in Germany in the 1390s, and the oldest gun the museum's collection), and some we all know, such as a musket. It's not THE gun that kicked off the Revolution with that "shot heard 'round the world," but it's similar.

The musket is now in every history book. It's come to symbolize freedom and independence -- even celebrated recently on Broadway, in the smash hit, "Hamilton."

Guns are part of our everyday language "Going off half-cocked" -- "flash in the pan" -- "bite the bullet"... they're all rooted in firearms lore.

But were we really BORN a gun culture? Historian Pamela Haag says, not necessarily.

"Listen to how many sentences begin with something like 'Americans have always.' 'They have always loved guns. They have always had guns.' These things are much more complicated than that. The meanings of guns have changed."

In her soon-to-be-released book, "The Gunning of America," Haag says most settlers viewed the gun as a tool -- as necessary, and yet as ordinary, as a plow or an ax.

"We think we have a gun culture because of this special exceptional status with guns, but really, commercially, the gun was extremely unexceptional," she said. "It was very much treated like any other commodity."

At the start of the Revolutionary War, we didn't even have enough arms to outfit the Continental Army. Today, however, it's estimated we have more guns than people.

So how did we get from there to here?

"The gun industry is not the only reason we got here," Haag said. "However, it is the reason that never gets talked about."

It's not just a matter of salesmanship, but gun industrialists like Oliver Winchester and Samuel Colt did their level best to create a market for their wares. Out of their factories in Connecticut -- what came to known as "Gun Valley" -- they would soon produce firearms with the same speed and efficiency as Henry Ford would later do with the automobile.

Best known: the Winchester '73 and the Colt Single Action Army revolver -- two of the guns that won the West.

But as the frontier disappeared, so did the desire of many Americans to own a gun. They were not, Haag said, "flying off the shelf."

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​How guns became a part of American culture

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No other developed country embraces firearms the way ours does. The more we argue about them, the more it seems their mystique grows. But just how guns became part of our cultural DNA has been a long journey.

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CNN is a left leaning source and this video and article show that point of view

Quotes

"Despite recent mass shootings in California, Buffalo, Uvalde, and Tulsa, Americans are pessimistic that new gun safety laws will pass Congress because of partisan polarization."

"But even in the mythical gun-loving wild west, sheriffs wouldn't allow guns into town."

"David Yamane, a gun-owning sociologist, discusses...the disconnect between gun mythology in America and its gun culture today."

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Despite recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, and Tulsa, Americans are pessimistic that new gun safety laws will pass Congress because of partisan polarization. But even in the mythical gun-loving wild west, sheriffs wouldn't allow guns into town. David Yamane, a gun-owning sociologist, discusses with Reality Check's John Avlon the disconnect between gun mythology in America and its gun culture today.

Source: CNN

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reality check: us gun control laws have a surprising history - cnn video

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Reality Check: US gun control laws have a surprising history - CNN Video

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Despite recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, and Tulsa, Americans are pessimistic that new gun safety laws will pass Congress because of partisan polarization. But even in the mythical gun-loving wild west, sheriffs wouldn't allow guns into town. David Yamane, a gun-owning sociologist, discusses with Reality Check's John Avlon the disconnect between gun mythology in America and its gun culture today.

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The Atlantic is a left source, but this article has a right leaning view point.

Quotes

"And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement."

"...those words are absolutely clear.  Gun-rights supporters believe the amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms and outlaws most gun control."

“the gun is the only thing that will free us—gain us our liberation.”

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The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership-and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers-the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there's no resolution in sight.

AP

The eighth-grade studentsgathering on the west lawn of the state capitol in Sacramento were planning to lunch on fried chicken with California's new governor, Ronald Reagan, and then tour the granite building constructed a century earlier to resemble the nation's Capitol. But the festivities were interrupted by the arrival of 30 young black men and women carrying .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, and .45-caliber pistols.

The 24 men and six women climbed the capitol steps, and one man, Bobby Seale, began to read from a prepared statement. "The American people in general and the black people in particular," he announced, must

take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against black people The time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.

Seale then turned to the others. "All right, brothers, come on. We're going inside." He opened the door, and the radicals walked straight into the state's most important government building, loaded guns in hand. No metal detectors stood in their way.

It was May 2, 1967, and the Black Panthers' invasion of the California statehouse launched the modern gun-rights movement.

* * *

The text ofthe Second Amendment is maddeningly ambiguous. It merely says, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Yet to each side in the gun debate, those words are absolutely clear.

Gun-rights supporters believe the amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms and outlaws most gun control. Hard-line gun-rights advocates portray even modest gun laws as infringements on that right and oppose widely popular proposals-such as background checks for all gun purchasers-on the ground that any gun-control measure, no matter how seemingly reasonable, puts us on the slippery slope toward total civilian disarmament.

This attitude was displayed on the side of the National Rifle Association's former headquarters: THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. The first clause of the Second Amendment, the part about "a well regulated Militia," was conveniently omitted. To the gun lobby, the Second Amendment is all rights and no regulation.

Although decades of electoral defeats have moderated the gun-control movement's stated goals, advocates still deny that individual Americans have any constitutional right to own guns. The Second Amendment, in their view, protects only state militias. Too politically weak to force disarmament on the nation, gun-control hard-liners support any new law that has a chance to be enacted, however unlikely that law is to reduce gun violence. For them, the Second Amendment is all regulation and no rights.

While the two sides disagree on the meaning of the Second Amendment, they share a similar view of the right to bear arms: both see such a right as fundamentally inconsistent with gun control, and believe we must choose one or the other. Gun rights and gun control, however, have lived together since the birth of the country. Americans have always had the right to keep and bear arms as a matter of state constitutional law. Today, 43 of the 50 state constitutions clearly protect an individual's right to own guns, apart from militia service.

Yet we've also always had gun control. The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.

For those men who were allowed to own guns, the Founders had their own version of the "individual mandate" that has proved so controversial in President Obama's health-care-reform law: they required the purchase of guns. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters-where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.

* * *

Opposition to gun control was what drove the black militants to visit the California capitol with loaded weapons in hand. The Black Panther Party had been formed six months earlier, in Oakland, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Like many young African Americans, Newton and Seale were frustrated with the failed promise of the civil-rights movement. Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were legal landmarks, but they had yet to deliver equal opportunity. In Newton and Seale's view, the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect and serve the public: the police.

Inspired by the teachings of Malcolm X, Newton and Seale decided to fight back. Before he was assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X had preached against Martin Luther King Jr.'s brand of nonviolent resistance. Because the government was "either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property" of blacks, he said, they had to defend themselves "by whatever means necessary." Malcolm X illustrated the idea for Ebony magazine by posing for photographs in suit and tie, peering out a window with an M-1 carbine semiautomatic in hand. Malcolm X and the Panthers described their right to use guns in self-defense in constitutional terms. "Article number two of the constitutional amendments," Malcolm X argued, "provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun."

Guns became central to the Panthers' identity, as they taught their early recruits that "the gun is the only thing that will free us-gain us our liberation." They bought some of their first guns with earnings from selling copies of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book to students at the University of California at Berkeley. In time, the Panther arsenal included machine guns; an assortment of rifles, handguns, explosives, and grenade launchers; and "boxes and boxes of ammunition," recalled Elaine Brown, one of the party's first female members, in her 1992 memoir. Some of this matériel came from the federal government: one member claimed he had connections at Camp Pendleton, in Southern California, who would sell the Panthers anything for the right price. One Panther bragged that, if they wanted, they could have bought an M48 tank and driven it right up the freeway.

Along with providing classes on black nationalism and socialism, Newton made sure recruits learned how to clean, handle, and shoot guns. Their instructors were sympathetic black veterans, recently home from Vietnam. For their "righteous revolutionary struggle," the Panthers were trained, as well as armed, however indirectly, by the U.S. government.

Civil-rights activists, even those committed to nonviolent resistance, had long appreciated the value of guns for self-protection. Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in 1956, after his house was bombed. His application was denied, but from then on, armed supporters guarded his home. One adviser, Glenn Smiley, described the King home as "an arsenal." William Worthy, a black reporter who covered the civil-rights movement, almost sat on a loaded gun in a living-room armchair during a visit to King's parsonage.

The Panthers, however, took it to an extreme, carrying their guns in public, displaying them for everyone-especially the police-to see. Newton had discovered, during classes at San Francisco Law School, that California law allowed people to carry guns in public so long as they were visible, and not pointed at anyone in a threatening way.

In February of 1967, Oakland police officers stopped a car carrying Newton, Seale, and several other Panthers with rifles and handguns. When one officer asked to see one of the guns, Newton refused. "I don't have to give you anything but my identification, name, and address," he insisted. This, too, he had learned in law school.

"Who in the hell do you think you are?" an officer responded.

"Who in the hell do you think you are?," Newton replied indignantly. He told the officer that he and his friends had a legal right to have their firearms.

Newton got out of the car, still holding his rifle.

"What are you going to do with that gun?" asked one of the stunned policemen.

"What are you going to do with your gun?," Newton replied.

By this time, the scene had drawn a crowd of onlookers. An officer told the bystanders to move on, but Newton shouted at them to stay. California law, he yelled, gave civilians a right to observe a police officer making an arrest, so long as they didn't interfere. Newton played it up for the crowd. In a loud voice, he told the police officers, "If you try to shoot at me or if you try to take this gun, I'm going to shoot back at you, swine." Although normally a black man with Newton's attitude would quickly find himself handcuffed in the back of a police car, enough people had gathered on the street to discourage the officers from doing anything rash. Because they hadn't committed any crime, the Panthers were allowed to go on their way.

The people who'd witnessed the scene were dumbstruck. Not even Bobby Seale could believe it. Right then, he said, he knew that Newton was the "baddest motherfucker in the world." Newton's message was clear: "The gun is where it's at and about and in." After the February incident, the Panthers began a regular practice of policing the police. Thanks to an army of new recruits inspired to join up when they heard about Newton's bravado, groups of armed Panthers would drive around following police cars. When the police stopped a black person, the Panthers would stand off to the side and shout out legal advice.

Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman from Alameda County, which includes Oakland, was determined to end the Panthers' police patrols. To disarm the Panthers, he proposed a law that would prohibit the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city. When Newton found out about this, he told Seale, "You know what we're going to do? We're going to the Capitol." Seale was incredulous. "The Capitol?" Newton explained: "Mulford's there, and they're trying to pass a law against our guns, and we're going to the Capitol steps." Newton's plan was to take a select group of Panthers "loaded down to the gills," to send a message to California lawmakers about the group's opposition to any new gun control.

ThePanthers' methodsprovoked an immediate backlash. The day of their statehouse protest, lawmakers said the incident would speed enactment of Mulford's gun-control proposal. Mulford himself pledged to make his bill even tougher, and he added a provision barring anyone but law enforcement from bringing a loaded firearm into the state capitol.

Republicans in California eagerly supported increased gun control. Governor Reagan told reporters that afternoon that he saw "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons." He called guns a "ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will." In a later press conference, Reagan said he didn't "know of any sportsman who leaves his home with a gun to go out into the field to hunt or for target shooting who carries that gun loaded." The Mulford Act, he said, "would work no hardship on the honest citizen."

The fear inspired by black people with guns also led the United States Congress to consider new gun restrictions, after the summer of 1967 brought what the historian Harvard Sitkoff called the "most intense and destructive wave of racial violence the nation had ever witnessed." Devastating riots engulfed Detroit and Newark. Police and National Guardsmen who tried to help restore order were greeted with sniper fire.

A 1968 federal report blamed the unrest at least partly on the easy availability of guns. Because rioters used guns to keep law enforcement at bay, the report's authors asserted that a recent spike in firearms sales and permit applications was "directly related to the actuality and prospect of civil disorders." They drew "the firm conclusion that effective firearms controls are an essential contribution to domestic peace and tranquility."

Political will in Congress reached the critical point around this time. In April of 1968, James Earl Ray, a virulent racist, used a Remington Gamemaster deer rifle to kill Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. King's assassination-and the sniper fire faced by police trying to quell the resulting riots-gave gun-control advocates a vivid argument. Two months later, a man wielding a .22-caliber Iver Johnson Cadet revolver shot Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles. The very next day, Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, the first federal gun-control law in 30 years. Months later, the Gun Control Act of 1968 amended and enlarged it.

Together, these laws greatly expanded the federal licensing system for gun dealers and clarified which people-including anyone previously convicted of a felony, the mentally ill, illegal-drug users, and minors-were not allowed to own firearms. More controversially, the laws restricted importation of "Saturday Night Specials"-the small, cheap, poor-quality handguns so named by Detroit police for their association with urban crime, which spiked on weekends. Because these inexpensive pistols were popular in minority communities, one critic said the new federal gun legislation "was passed not to control guns but to control blacks."

* * *

Indisputably, for muchof American history, gun-control measures, like many other laws, were used to oppress African Americans. The South had long prohibited blacks, both slave and free, from owning guns. In the North, however, at the end of the Civil War, the Union army allowed soldiers of any color to take home their rifles. Even blacks who hadn't served could buy guns in the North, amid the glut of firearms produced for the war. President Lincoln had promised a "new birth of freedom," but many blacks knew that white Southerners were not going to go along easily with such a vision. As one freedman in Louisiana recalled, "I would say to every colored soldier, 'Bring your gun home.'"

After losing the Civil War, Southern states quickly adopted the Black Codes, laws designed to reestablish white supremacy by dictating what the freedmen could and couldn't do. One common provision barred blacks from possessing firearms. To enforce the gun ban, white men riding in posses began terrorizing black communities. In January 1866, Harper's Weekly reported that in Mississippi, such groups had "seized every gun and pistol found in the hands of the (so called) freedmen" in parts of the state. The most infamous of these disarmament posses, of course, was the Ku Klux Klan.

* * *

In response to the Black Codes and the mounting atrocities against blacks in the former Confederacy, the North sought to reaffirm the freedmen's constitutional rights, including their right to possess guns. General Daniel E. Sickles, the commanding Union officer enforcing Reconstruction in South Carolina, ordered in January 1866 that "the constitutional rights of all loyal and well-disposed inhabitants to bear arms will not be infringed." When South Carolinians ignored Sickles's order and others like it, Congress passed the Freedmen's Bureau Act of July 1866, which assured ex-slaves the "full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty ... including the constitutional right to bear arms."

That same year, Congress passed the nation's first Civil Rights Act, which defined the freedmen as United States citizens and made it a federal offense to deprive them of their rights on the basis of race. Senator James Nye, a supporter of both laws, told his colleagues that the freedmen now had an "equal right to protection, and to keep and bear arms for self-defense." President Andrew Johnson vetoed both laws. Congress overrode the vetoes and eventually made Johnson the first president to be impeached.

One prosecutor in the impeachment trial, Representative John Bingham of Ohio, thought that the only way to protect the freedmen's rights was to amend the Constitution. Southern attempts to deny blacks equal rights, he said, were turning the Constitution-"a sublime and beautiful scripture-into a horrid charter of wrong." In December of 1865, Bingham had proposed what would become the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Among its provisions was a guarantee that all citizens would be secure in their fundamental rights:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The key phrase, in Bingham's view, was privileges or immunities of citizens -and those "privileges or immunities," he said, were "chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution." Jacob Howard of Michigan, the principal sponsor of Bingham's amendment in the Senate, reminded his colleagues that these amendments guaranteed "the freedom of speech and of the press," "the right to be exempt from unreasonable searches and seizures," and "the right to keep and bear arms."

Whether or not the Founding Fathers thought the Second Amendment was primarily about state militias, the men behind the Fourteenth Amendment-America's most sacred and significant civil-rights law-clearly believed that the right of individuals to have guns for self-defense was an essential element of citizenship. As the Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar has observed, "Between 1775 and 1866 the poster boy of arms morphed from the Concord minuteman to the Carolina freedman."

The Fourteenth Amendment illustrates a common dynamic in America's gun culture: extremism stirs a strong reaction. The aggressive Southern effort to disarm the freedmen prompted a constitutional amendment to better protect their rights. A hundred years later, the Black Panthers' brazen insistence on the right to bear arms led whites, including conservative Republicans, to support new gun control. Then the pendulum swung back. The gun-control laws of the late 1960s, designed to restrict the use of guns by urban black leftist radicals, fueled the rise of the present-day gun-rights movement-one that, in an ironic reversal, is predominantly white, rural, and politically conservative.

Today, the NRA is the unquestioned leader in the fight against gun control. Yet the organization didn't always oppose gun regulation. Founded in 1871 by George Wingate and William Church-the latter a former reporter for a newspaper now known for hostility to gun rights, The New York Times -the group first set out to improve American soldiers' marksmanship. Wingate and Church had fought for the North in the Civil War and been shocked by the poor shooting skills of city-bred Union soldiers.

In the 1920s and '30s, the NRA was at the forefront of legislative efforts to enact gun control. The organization's president at the time was Karl T. Frederick, a Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer known as "the best shot in America"-a title he earned by winning three gold medals in pistol-shooting at the 1920 Summer Olympic Games. As a special consultant to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, Frederick helped draft the Uniform Firearms Act, a model of state-level gun-control legislation. (Since the turn of the century, lawyers and public officials had increasingly sought to standardize the patchwork of state laws. The new measure imposed more order-and, in most cases, far more restrictions.)

Frederick's model law had three basic elements. The first required that no one carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit from the local police. A permit would be granted only to a "suitable" person with a "proper reason for carrying" a firearm. Second, the law required gun dealers to report to law enforcement every sale of a handgun, in essence creating a registry of small arms. Finally, the law imposed a two-day waiting period on handgun sales.

The NRA today condemns every one of these provisions as a burdensome and ineffective infringement on the right to bear arms. Frederick, however, said in 1934 that he did "not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses." The NRA's executive vice president at the time, Milton A. Reckord, told a congressional committee that his organization was "absolutely favorable to reasonable legislation." According to Frederick, the NRA "sponsored" the Uniform Firearms Act and promoted it nationwide. Highlighting the political strength of the NRA even back then, a 1932 Virginia Law Review article reported that laws requiring a license to carry a concealed weapon were already "in effect in practically every jurisdiction."

When Congress was considering the first significant federal gun law of the 20th century-the National Firearms Act of 1934, which imposed a steep tax and registration requirements on "gangster guns" like machine guns and sawed-off shotguns-the NRA endorsed the law. Karl Frederick and the NRA did not blindly support gun control; indeed, they successfully pushed to have similar prohibitive taxes on handguns stripped from the final bill, arguing that people needed such weapons to protect their homes. Yet the organization stood firmly behind what Frederick called "reasonable, sensible, and fair legislation."

One thing conspicuously missing from Frederick's comments about gun control was the Second Amendment. When asked during his testimony on the National Firearms Act whether the proposed law violated "any constitutional provision," he responded, "I have not given it any study from that point of view." In other words, the president of the NRA hadn't even considered whether the most far-reaching federal gun-control legislation in history conflicted with the Second Amendment. Preserving the ability of law-abiding people to have guns, Frederick would write elsewhere, "lies in an enlightened public sentiment and in intelligent legislative action. It is not to be found in the Constitution."

In the 1960s, the NRA once again supported the push for new federal gun laws. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald, who had bought his gun through a mail-order ad in the NRA's American Rifleman magazine, Franklin Orth, then the NRA's executive vice president, testified in favor of banning mail-order rifle sales. "We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States." Orth and the NRA didn't favor stricter proposals, like national gun registration, but when the final version of the Gun Control Act was adopted in 1968, Orth stood behind the legislation. While certain features of the law, he said, "appear unduly restrictive and unjustified in their application to law-abiding citizens, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with."

* * *

A growing group ofrank-and-file NRA members disagreed. In an era of rising crime rates, fewer people were buying guns for hunting, and more were buying them for protection. The NRA leadership didn't fully grasp the importance of this shift. In 1976, Maxwell Rich, the executive vice president, announced that the NRA would sell its building in Washington, D.C., and relocate the headquarters to Colorado Springs, retreating from political lobbying and expanding its outdoor and environmental activities.

Rich's plan sparked outrage among the new breed of staunch, hard-line gun-rights advocates. The dissidents were led by a bald, blue-eyed bulldog of a man named Harlon Carter, who ran the NRA's recently formed lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action. In May 1977, Carter and his allies staged a coup at the annual membership meeting. Elected the new executive vice president, Carter would transform the NRA into a lobbying powerhouse committed to a more aggressive view of what the Second Amendment promises to citizens.

The new NRA was not only responding to the wave of gun-control laws enacted to disarm black radicals; it also shared some of the Panthers' views about firearms. Both groups valued guns primarily as a means of self-defense. Both thought people had a right to carry guns in public places, where a person was easily victimized, and not just in the privacy of the home. They also shared a profound mistrust of law enforcement. (For years, the NRA has demonized government agents, like those in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency that enforces gun laws, as "jack-booted government thugs." Wayne LaPierre, the current executive vice president, warned members in 1995 that anyone who wears a badge has "the government's go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens.") For both the Panthers in 1967 and the new NRA after 1977, law-enforcement officers were too often representatives of an uncaring government bent on disarming ordinary citizens.

A sign of the NRA's new determination to influence electoral politics was the 1980 decision to endorse, for the first time in the organization's 100 years, a presidential candidate. Their chosen candidate was none other than Ronald Reagan, who more than a decade earlier had endorsed Don Mulford's law to disarm the Black Panthers-a law that had helped give Reagan's California one of the strictest gun-control regimes in the nation. Reagan's views had changed considerably since then, and the NRA evidently had forgiven his previous support of vigorous gun control.

* * *

In 2008, in a landmark ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the government cannot ever completely disarm the citizenry. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court clearly held, for the first time, that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual's right to possess a gun. In an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court declared unconstitutional several provisions of the District's unusually strict gun-control law, including its ban on handguns and its prohibition of the use of long guns for self-defense. Indeed, under D.C.'s law, you could own a shotgun, but you could not use it to defend yourself against a rapist climbing through your bedroom window.

Gun-rights groups trumpeted the ruling as the crowning achievement of the modern gun-rights movement and predicted certain victory in their war to end gun control. Their opponents criticized the Court's opinion as right-wing judicial activism that would call into question most forms of gun control and lead inevitably to more victims of gun violence.

So far, at least, neither side's predictions have come true. The courts have been inundated with lawsuits challenging nearly every type of gun regulation; in the three years since the Supreme Court's decision, lower courts have issued more than 200 rulings on the constitutionality of gun control. In a disappointment to the gun-rights community, nearly all laws have been upheld.

The lower courts consistently point to one paragraph in particular from the Heller decision. Nothing in the opinion, Scalia wrote, should

be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

This paragraph from the pen of Justice Scalia, the foremost proponent of constitutional originalism, was astounding. True, the Founders imposed gun control, but they had no laws resembling Scalia's list of Second Amendment exceptions. They had no laws banning guns in sensitive places, or laws prohibiting the mentally ill from possessing guns, or laws requiring commercial gun dealers to be licensed. Such restrictions are products of the 20th century. Justice Scalia, in other words, embraced a living Constitution. In this, Heller is a fine reflection of the ironies and contradictions-and the selective use of the past-that run throughout America's long history with guns.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership-and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers-the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement.

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CBN is a far right source, but this article has a lean right point of view

Quotes

"The definition of "assault rifle" is trending within the court of public opinion. But the fact is if we identify semi-automatic rifles as "assault rifles," then we will clean the majority of rifles off the market."

"The AR-15 is a "civilian model" of the military standard-issue M4 rifle, which also isn't automatic. The M4, which is a contemporary of the M16, has semi-automatic capabilities and one advanced mode, "burst," which fires three bullets per trigger squeeze."

"It's worth noting that a rifle takes two hands to handle properly, while a handgun can easily be operated with one hand efficiently. It is also worth noting that with regards to lethal assault, the deadliest school shooting in US history (Virginia Tech '07) was carried out with one assailant using handguns."

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School safety and responsible gun ownership are important discussions to be had. However, without proper facts the conversation will not advance in a productive manner. In regards to the discussion surrounding AR-15 rifles, here are some clarifying details about the often misrepresented firearm:

1.) The AR-15 is not an automatic weapon.
The AR-15 shoots in semi-automatic mode only. This means that the firearm will fire only one bullet per trigger squeeze. The vast majority of firearms on the market possess this exact characteristic. In contrast, automatic firearms will rapidly release continual fire as long as the trigger is held down.

2.) AR does not stand for "assault rifle."
The "AR" in AR-15 does not stand for assault rifle or automatic rifle. The AR is an abbreviation for ArmaLite, the firearm's original manufacturer. The definition of "assault rifle" is trending within the court of public opinion. But the fact is if we identify semi-automatic rifles as "assault rifles," then we will clean the majority of rifles off the market.

It's worth noting that a rifle takes two hands to handle properly, while a handgun can easily be operated with one hand efficiently. It is also worth noting that with regards to lethal assault, the deadliest school shooting in US history (Virginia Tech '07) was carried out with one assailant using handguns.

3.) The AR-15 might not be the best home defense weapon.
Home defense is a non-negotiable. We all want to feel safe in our own homes. But there are a few things to consider when selecting your weapon of choice. Given the close quarters of the common house, you want a firearm that is both compact and easily maneuverable. The AR-15 is a tactical firearm that fits well with close-quarter defense, especially if equipped with a collapsible butt-stock.

However, you also want to consider the capabilities of the ammunition. The AR-15 fires a .223 caliber round. While this is essentially the same diameter of the tame .22 caliber round, the .223 round is heavier, pointed, and has much more powder behind its ignition. The .223 round also fires at about twice the speed as a .22 (approx. 3000 fps vs. approx. 1500 fps). That said, while it will inflict sufficient impact on your adversary, it also poses the risk of going through walls and injuring others in or outside your house.

4.) The AR-15 is not a weapon of war.
The AR-15 is a "civilian model" of the military standard-issue M4 rifle, which also isn't automatic. The M4, which is a contemporary of the M16, has semi-automatic capabilities and one advanced mode, "burst," which fires three bullets per trigger squeeze. Military weaponry advances upward from the M4, putting the M4 in the lightest category of the military's arsenal.

The AR-15, being less capable than the military's lightest rifle, should not be referred to as a weapon of war. The AR-15 does have an appearance of a weapon of war, but appearance is no indication of the destructive power, or lack thereof, of a firearm. Painting a squirt gun black and removing the orange cap does not suddenly make it a real gun.

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School safety and responsible gun ownership are important discussions to be had. However, without proper facts the conversation will not advance in a productive manner. In regards to the discussion surrounding AR-15 rifles, here are some clarifying details about the often misrepresented firearm: 1.) The AR-15 is not an automatic weapon.