The AR-15

Two Wall Street Journal reporters, Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, have recently written American Gun:  The True Story of the AR-15.  The inventor was a guy named Eugene Stoner, and he built it in the mid-Fifties very close to Hollywood.  The first person to fire it who was not an employee of the manufacturing company was John Wayne. 

In 1966 the Pentagon ordered 403,905 of the rifles, but it called them M16s and made a few changes, some of which tended to make the rifle jam.  The first mass shooting using an AR-15 took place at an Oregon nightclub in 1979.  

I doubt too many AR-15 owners will read the book.  While I could be wrong, I don’t picture them as people who read much.