The Obama Administration along with the House and Senate Democrats who are behind strict gun control laws including the so called “Assault Weapons Ban” are constantly berating our guns as “military style” weapons that “don’t belong on our streets.” A simple fact-check of that one crucial statement disproves their entire agenda.

When Fairchild’s subsidiary Armalite introduced the first AR-15 prototypes (ARmalite, not Assault Rifle) in the 1950′s, like most fads of that era they were looking to create a “futuristic” rifle that would fit in with the pop-culture elements of the time, such as fins on Cadillacs, or fiberglass bodies, and the like. Their concept was to revolutionize the “look” of a rifle–to remove the centuries old tradition of wooden stocks housing steel receivers, while utilizing the latest in manufacturing technological know-how learned over two world wars and the conflict in Korea. Armalite developed the AR, but could not get the military contract or afford to manufacture it, so they sold the rights to Colt, which sold the rifle off on the civilian market as we know it today.

Interestingly enough, in that era, military contracts on firearms were hard to come by. Unlike the Communists, who had Mikhail Kalashnikov on payroll to develop his rifle, some of the key firearms adopted by the US military in history were done so after interest was drummed up by success in the civilian market and requirements were delivered to the manufacturer for a military model. M14′s were in the process of replacing the Garand, and it should be noted that the military was in the business of obtaining select-fire rifles at the time–true assault weapons.

Semi-automatic rifles, along with their bolt action predecessors, were virtually tactically useless in the era of mechanized warfare vs. hoards of communist conscripts. The Japanese Bonzai Charge of the 1940′s would go on to influence the tactics of the North Korean and Chinese Armies, and as a result, rapid fire became a necessity for combat troops.

The AR was first designed as a civilian sporting rifle and would not become the M16 until the military tested it and submitted their requirement for a select-fire version on time for the Vietnam War. The photograph above this article demonstrates an original Colt AR-15 advertisement from fifty years ago. The original AR-15 Sporter was never an automatic rifle, rather, the M16 became the select fire rifle after the success of the semi-automatic AR-15 in the civilian market, and in military field testing when General Curtis LeMay of Strategic Air Command thought it would be the perfect fit for Air Force MP’s. Thus, the M16 was born.

Do not let the propaganda efforts of the left wing gun grabbing movement fool you. The AR-15 is not the M16, and the M16 did not come before the AR-15. In this instance, the question of “which came first” is simple to answer – for science, whether it was the chicken or the egg remains debatable.

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