Why I don’t “need” an AR-15:

“Once again, there has been another mass shooting involving a gun that looks like an AR-15 (it’s technically a Sig Sauer MCX, which may or may not be an “AR-15””

And you know, that really doesn’t matter. The weapon in question is “a rifle capable of semiautomatic fire and that uses a large magazine.” The exact nomenclature doesn’t matter. You seem to settle on using the term AR-15, so I’ll largely do the same.

“And, once again, the calls have gone out to ban the “black rifle” from civilian sales. “Nobody needs one of these weapons of war”, is the common refrain.”

Nobody I have ever heard speak refers to this type of weapon as a “black rifle.” Not even the article to which you link. And while these are technically not weapons of war in one or more senses (e.g., they’re not fully-automatic) I don’t think anyone really needs one (more on this below). Certainly such weapons need better regulation, but arguing for a ban here isn’t on my agenda. Rather, this is my reply to what I take as a defense (or perhaps offense) of the indefensible.

“Yet, if the statistics from the National Shooting Sports Federation can be believed, some 5 million Americans have decided that they do, in fact, “need” an AR-15. Are all of these people bloodthirsty savages? Delusional survivalists? Military fetishists? Insecure men with tiny… hands?”

Hmm. Interesting. Is that how many people own them or how many AR-15s have been sold in the US? In either case, I should point out that well over 200 million Americans have decided that they don’t, in fact, “need” an AR-15. I’m one of them.

“If you’re prepared to answer ‘yes’ to all of the above and consider the case closed, then please move on and don’t read anymore. This article isn’t my attempt to justify anything to you — it’s not a defense of what’s in my gun safe or of the AR-15 itself. If, for you, my AR-15 ownership is prima facie evidence of my mental instability, sexual inadequacy, lack of a conscience, or what-have-you, then I honestly don’t care what you think about this issue. You can go back to broadcasting your own moral superiority on social media, and I can go back to tuning you out until your rage therapy session is over.”

Let me respond by saying that if you’re prepared to answer ‘no’ to all of the above and consider the case closed, then please skip the rest of this post. If the fact that I have never owned a weapon more dangerous than a Daisy BB gun or a Swiss Army knife makes you think I’m a defenseless chump ripe for the picking who doesn’t love his family, then “[Y]ou can go back to broadcasting your own moral superiority on social media, and I can go back to tuning you out until your rage therapy session is over.

By the end of this piece, you probably still will not believe that I or any other civilian actually don’t need an AR-15. That’s fine. My only hope is that you’ll go forth better equipped to talk about gun control based on an understanding of how real live people view and use these firearms, and why so many feel that they are pointless in modern society.

And yes, I do understand the difference between “automatic” and semiautomatic. Fully automatic weapons (which the stock AR-15 and its ilk are not) are somewhat akin to machine guns, in that they keep firing as long as the trigger is depressed and there is ammunition in the magazine; burst firing (which the stock AR-15 does not do) permits the weapon to fire multiple shots with each trigger press. But let’s be clear — the AR-15 that you can buy over the counter does not provide these functions. It will fire one bullet each time you pull the trigger. Rate of fire is entirely up to the operator.

A note on militaria: when I was a ham radio operator, many years ago, there was a fascination with military radios (the ARC-5 comes to mind), because these things had to work well under very rough conditions. The manufacturers of military radio equipment, in fact, advertised their production of such radios ceaselessly, and consequently were able to sell their civilian equipment at a premium, so yes, I fully understand your argument here. Essentially, “military hardware is the best hardware.”

So far, I’m with you. But.

While guns for hunting animals and guns for killing opposing soldiers may have started out as similar tools, military weapons are subject to forces that do not apply in the target-shooting and/or hunting spheres. To wit, escalation. See, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-automatic_rifle#Notable_gas-operated_rifles

You build a better weapon, the other side builds better weapons, and so on and so forth. This clearly applies to military hardware and, to a much lesser extent, to criminal hardware.

At the same time, deer have not developed semi-automatic weapons or the ability to use them, and as far as I know, chipmunks do not yet have ballistic armor. If you really need to kill a chipmunk, a .22 and some skill may be required. An AR-15 isn’t. I used to work for a fellow who hunted deer using only a bow. That is skill.

If you are facing an armed, armored foe, on the other hand, one who is bent on your destruction, skill is far less important (not unimportant); rate of fire, stopping power, and magazine capacity are the things that matter. You don’t have time to pull a lever before taking your next shot. You want to fire rapidly and repeatedly without taking your finger off the trigger — which is precisely (a) what semiautomatic weapons provide and (b) the way in which they differ from both historic military weapons and hunting gear. And which is also one of the reasons that they have large magazines.

Is the AR15 the only decent weapon available to hunters? I’d need a hunter to weight in on this.

As for the police — they are also called “peace officers” for a reason. They are trained in the use of firearms but for the most part the weapons they carry are intended as symbols, to back up their authority, not to be used as a first solution: “cop shows” focus on a tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of police work. I might also point out that the growing militarization of police departments in the wake of 9/11 (of which the acquisition of large numbers of assault weapons is a part) is not exactly universally seen as a good thing. The town I used to live in, 55,000 people in Wisconsin, has its own BearCat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenco_BearCat), for gods’ sake. I suppose when ISIS comes to take down the co-op, it’ll be useful.

I fully understand the appeal of a customizable weapon (I was recently in Utah, and a sign on the side of a gun shop invited passers-by to “build your AR-15”). I’m a cyclist who has custom-built his own bikes for years; I customize my computers and guitars as well. Hacking is fun. And at 58, I still have a tub of Lego under the stairs. So let’s take customization as a given.

But let’s be realistic about it: I don’t field-hack my bike, and you don’t field-hack your weapons. Yes, you can have a set of parts and you can assemble the weapon in different ways, but that’s a task more suited to a workbench than the bed of a pickup truck. Which in turn means that most people who would have had separate weapons for groundhogs, feral hogs, and home defense still have separate weapons for those functions. They may all be based on the AR-15 design, they may all share a lot of parts (which is good if the one you need at the moment breaks and you need, say, a spring, I suppose), but if I felt I needed a weapon for home defense (I don’t), I don’t think I’d be likely to be reassembling that weapon into a groundhog gun. Or vice-versa, should I hear glass breaking downstairs. Whether AR-15s are truly suitable for sniper use, I’d have to ask a friend of mine who used to teach sniper school, but from what he’s told me, I suspect they’re not

Now, more to the point:

“[I]f you’re planning to shoot up a room full of people, are you going to reach for a rare, exotic weapon that you have little experience with, or will you select the familiar option that’s easy to train with and that you have plenty of practice time behind? The answer, for anybody who shoots, is the latter.”

Yes, yes it is. In this sense, shooting has been reduced from a sport (for marksmen and hunters) to something more akin to driving a car with an automatic transmission. It’s been deskilled. I recently had to rent a car after a long flight. I reserved a compact with four doors because (a) I needed to put my grandchildren in the back and (b) that’s what I’m used to, though I resigned myself to getting something with a soul-sucking automatic transmission.

When I got to the airport, they gave me a brand-new Mustang, in arrest-me-red.

Totally ridiculous, hard to fit car seats, but easy to drive. No skill involved, because this monster (it has about four times the horsepower of my own vehicle) was sitting there with an automatic transmission.

Now, there are multiple problems with deskilling, including the fact that “anybody who shoots” can now acquire a weapon capable of firing a lot of bullets in a very short time. (Yes, I do have similar objection to automatic transmissions in cars, if that isn’t clear enough. Watch someone who has recently learned to drive texting, if you disagree.) It’s possible that if weapons with high rates of fire and large magazine capacities were not readily available, some mass shooters might (a) think twice and abandon the attempt, or (b) be more easily stopped by the people they attack.

Familiarity is, of course, important. But I suspect that if you spent a fraction of the time with an M1A that you did with your current weapon(s), I you’d be able to use it as well. But it’s likely not suitable for groundhogs.

I’ll concur in that there is no such thing as a defense rifle. But I also strongly suspect that most owners of AR-15 type weapons are in no need of self-defense weapons. It would be interesting to know the proportion that are purchased by people who live in areas with high crime rates vs. those in low crime rate areas. My experience has tended to be that poverty and crime are closely associated, and that the weapon of choice in high-crime areas is some variety of pistol.

Ultimately, do you need a semi-automatic rifle with a large magazine? Maybe.

If you’re part of a SWAT team, maybe. If you are a prison guard, perhaps. If you hunt wild boars, or other large, aggressive game, could be (though more stopping power might be a good idea in that case).

If you hunt deer or chipmunks? No. If you want to defend your home? Dunno…are you or your family likely to be assaulted, kidnapped, raped, taken hostage in or from your home by a number of armed, armored intruders hyped on adrenaline who won’t be deterred by a burglar alarm and a Doberman?