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Forum Name: Gun of the Week
Topic ID: 94
#0, comfort zones
Posted by Gryphon on Apr-21-18 at 03:30 AM
So.

It should be pretty obvious from the existing roster of Gun of the Week essays that my taste in guns runs toward the vintage end of the spectrum. I have a few reasonably modern handguns (a Beretta Px4, for instance), but almost all of my long guns are in curio-and-relic territory (in terms of type, if not necessarily their individual cases, as with my modern-repro AR-7). Offhand I can only think of one that isn't, my Taurus/Rossi Circuit Judge.

If nothing else, I'm definitely not a Black Rifle guy. The closest thing I have to a modern military rifle is my AK-alike (and that fact really has more to do with how the AK family has failed to go out of style for so damn long).

Many of you will have heard of what might be (admittedly a bit inaccurately) called the "original" black rifle, the U.S. M16, and its progenitor, the AR-15. The AR-15 platform is sort of the IBM PC of the rifle world nowadays. (Which I guess makes the AK the military rifle world's Mac. Or maybe they're more like IOS and Android? ... Anyway.) Much as virtually no rifle you will ever see described as an AK-47 in the wild actually is an AK-47, very few of the rifles one sees described as AR-15s in the press these days genuinely are AR-15s; rather, they're rifles based on the AR-15 patents, which expired in 1977—possibly sharing some parts commonality with the originals, but also quite possibly not. Just as virtually no one uses an actual IBM PC these days, ArmaLite Rifle №15 is a pretty rare animal in the twenty-first century.

The AR-15-pattern rifle has been much in the news of late, and not for good reasons. Mostly, when you hear its name in mainstream society nowdays, it's someone calling for them to be banned. Not only because they have a very high profile in the hands of the kinds of people who give the rest of us gun collectors a bad name; but also because—since they are widely available, relatively inexpensive, quite lethal, and not very difficult to operate—they have acquired a largely deserved reputation as the weapon of choice for spree killers of a certain type. The Sandy Hook killer used an AR-15 derivative. So did the Vegas shooter (although his was fitted with a pretty sketchy modification that is its own separate argument all unto itself), and the recent and still very much reverberating case in Florida involved one as well.

As the controversy around these rifles has ebbed and surged and swirled these last few years, although I've watched the controversy itself with great interest (not to say mounting dread), I haven't taken much interest in the rifles themselves. If anything, I've sort of vaguely disdained them for a while now, not because of any inherent quality they possess, but mainly because the guys you see toting them ostentatiously around in Wal-Marts on TV are making us all look like jerks and they're mostly using ARs to do it. Besides, they're so... modern. They're not my thing, particularly not in their 21st-century form.

Except... the AR-15 as a design is sixty-one years old. Older, if you count the AR-10, of which it is basically a scaled-down version. Not entirely unlike the AK (which is only ~10 years older), it seems modern because there are so many of them, and because it's still the basis of a major front-line combat rifle (two, if you count the M16 and the M4 carbine as two different rifles; even more, if you add in cousins and step-uncles like the HK416), and because people are making any number of slick modern tinsel-bedecked race-car space-laser things based on their actions; but it's an old gun. Hell, in its semiautomatic civilian form, the oldest ones are C&R-eligible now.

So yeah. Long lead-up because I felt the need to Explain My Position a little, but anyway: I've bought an AR-15. Not an actual C&R-vintage one, those are well outside my price range, but it is a genuine Colt AR-15 (ArmaLite having sold the pattern to Colt in 1959, as part of their standard corporate practice of missing out on any of their designs actually succeeding). It isn't a racing car or a space laser or anything of the kind: no accessory rails, no optical sights, no carbon fiber. Like I often feel in the cultural scrum about gun ownership today, it's sort of caught in the middle: To those who want tighter controls or outright bans, it would look like an icon of incarnate evil, while to the space laser set, it would probably seem about as contemporary as a flintlock musket.

This isn't the entry on it; you probably won't see the actual entry on it for a while, because a) it isn't even here yet and b) I don't know quite when I'll have the time and mental bandwidth to research such a sprawling topic adequately and prepare a writeup that would come close to doing it justice. Because that, I ultimately decided, is the important thing: that as a thing apart from its fiercely controversial present-day image, the story of the AR-15, the proper and historical AR-15, is interesting and deserves to be told.

Someday.

Hopefully someday relatively soon.

(This particular one is also a hook into the potentially interesting sub-topic of the 1994-to-2004 U.S. "assault weapons" ban, during which it was manufactured. Hint: It isn't one of the ones that were modified to be compliant with said ban.)

--G.
Also, it'd be dope if I could get the feeling back in my shooting hand along the way. Come back, myelin. My T-cells didn't mean what they said.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#1, RE: comfort zones
Posted by MoonEyes on Apr-21-18 at 06:20 AM
In response to message #0
Looking forward to this, because those are the best part of the GotW posts, is the massive back-ground stuff you present.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"


#2, RE: comfort zones
Posted by Mercutio on Apr-21-18 at 08:28 PM
In response to message #1
I would say that they're the main point of the posts, really.

I mean, with respect to Ben, "I took my gun out to the range and here's what it felt like to shoot" stories are amazingly common. "This is the absolutely fucking nutso bananaballs story involving its development and procurement, which, spoiler alert, involves Douglas MacArthur being a giant douchebag in the twenties, a decision somehow still relevant today" are... much LESS common.

-Merc
Keep Rat


#3, RE: comfort zones
Posted by Gryphon on Apr-21-18 at 09:34 PM
In response to message #2
>"This
>is the absolutely fucking nutso bananaballs story involving its
>development and procurement

... and boy howdy, there was a lot of that in the early life of the M16.

(Although less of it involved Douglas MacArthur. There still was a lot of Ordnance Department pigheadedness about cartridges, though!)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#12, RE: comfort zones
Posted by Peter Eng on Apr-25-18 at 07:46 PM
In response to message #2
Well, there's also the "look at the mechanics of this, and isn't this part elegant, it's almost shocking to find it in the same firearm as this WTF kludge over here" part, which I find greatly entertaining.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


#13, RE: comfort zones
Posted by Gryphon on Apr-25-18 at 07:54 PM
In response to message #12
>Well, there's also the "look at the mechanics of this, and isn't this
>part elegant, it's almost shocking to find it in the same firearm as
>this WTF kludge over here" part, which I find greatly entertaining.

Heh, I've already found something like that in the AR-15, although not for values of where-else-I've-seen-it that involve the "WTF kludge" part. For the moment, let's say automatic firearms design is a small world. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#4, RE: comfort zones
Posted by eriktown on Apr-24-18 at 08:21 PM
In response to message #0
I look forward to this with great interest.

Are you familliar with the What Would Stoner Do project? For the collision of historical and modern, it's an interesting exercise.


#5, RE: comfort zones
Posted by Gryphon on Apr-24-18 at 08:43 PM
In response to message #4
>Are you familliar with the What Would Stoner Do project?

I've seen pieces of it (including the wrap-up/AAR they posted a bit ago), but haven't followed it in great detail.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#7, RE: comfort zones
Posted by eriktown on Apr-25-18 at 01:30 AM
In response to message #5
>>Are you familliar with the What Would Stoner Do project?
>
>I've seen pieces of it (including the wrap-up/AAR they posted a bit
>ago), but haven't followed it in great detail.

I liked where they went with it; they made some controversial decisions that I happen to agree with. I'm convinced enough that I'm replicating the build - or trying to. Problem is, the WWSD project has achieved some sort of commercial critical mass, and the supply is not there yet.


#8, RE: comfort zones
Posted by Gryphon on Apr-25-18 at 01:34 AM
In response to message #7
>Problem is, the WWSD project has
>achieved some sort of commercial critical mass, and the supply is not
>there yet.

Tr. "InRange fans have bought all the carbon fiber float tubes"? :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#16, RE: comfort zones
Posted by eriktown on May-01-18 at 01:41 PM
In response to message #8
>>Problem is, the WWSD project has
>>achieved some sort of commercial critical mass, and the supply is not
>>there yet.
>
>Tr. "InRange fans have bought all the carbon fiber float tubes"? :)

Tubes, barrels (particularly barrels), bolt carriers, lowers, triggers - I mean, the world is not going to run low on Aero Precision upper receivers any time soon, but practically everything else in the build sells out almost immediately when it goes in stock.

Rumor has it that Cav Arms (who make the GWACS poly lower), Faxon (who make the barrel and the handguard) and KE Arms are working together to coordinate production and perhaps bring a WWSD-style rifle to market as a thing. Cav, KE and Faxon all make OEM ARs of their own already (each of which contains parts from one of the others - you can buy a complete rifle from KE Arms with a GWACS lower and the SLT-1 trigger InRange endorses), so it's not an unimaginable stretch.

Karl mentioned on the InRange discord that Cav Arms is working on the adjustable stock problem, and that he and Ian have been part of the design discussions around that. The whole polymer lower thing might take off with the sporting crowd finally at that point. I am hoping they manage to make an impact on the future of AR development; from a historical/nerd perspective it's just cool to have an up-close view of how the project impacts the design of ARs over time.

I am a (software) product manager by profession, and these sorts of design/development discussions over major architecture changes that have long-term impacts across an industry are obviously pretty relevant to that. One of the things I like about Ian and Karl is that they talk and think exactly like competent product managers trying to figure out how to improve a product, and it's an approach that seems to lead to pretty major returns in terms of usability improvements when it's applied. Obviously manufacturing is less of an issue in software, but maintainability and scalability fills a similar position by way of compensation. It's been hugely educational just to listen to the way that Ian talks about the design process. I know it's certainly impacting the way I talk and think about the product I manage.


#9, RE: comfort zones
Posted by Gryphon on Apr-25-18 at 01:41 AM
In response to message #5
LAST EDITED ON Apr-25-18 AT 08:30 PM (EDT)
 
>>Are you familliar with the What Would Stoner Do project?
>
>I've seen pieces of it (including the wrap-up/AAR they posted a bit
>ago), but haven't followed it in great detail.

Also, while I have some interest in said project from an intellectual/technological point of view, for GotW purposes I shall be keeping matters very much more... traditional. :)

--G.
"Wow, that's old-school," said the man at the shop, to my obscure pride. :)
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#17, RE: comfort zones
Posted by eriktown on May-01-18 at 02:20 PM
In response to message #9
You did a beautiful job with that. Seriously. If I was going to own a classic AR, that's what it'd look like. I am grateful to get to enjoy your enjoyment of historical firearms, if that makes any sense?

I was driven to focus on modern firearms because the classics were not enjoyable to me when I was starting out. I grew up shooting my dad's guns, and they were not just relics, he refused to buy any more ammo because the stuff he bought in bulk back in the 70s was still around. It was extremely frustrating because it made it really hard to learn to shoot well when I had to clear a misfire every other round (the ammo had corroded, but would he listen? nooooope). I also was infuriated to learn that "springs pinging across the room" is an expected part of the maintenance process and thought surely, surely there must be better ways, because who has time for that? So I appreciate the history tremendously but as far as things I actually want to shoot, I really value a pleasant user experience.

The other reason is that I have always been driven first and foremost to study the past mainly as a means to consider in very concrete terms what comes next - that's why I went into product management in the first place. As a PM, you're engaging in worldbuilding exercises all the time where the world you're writing about is ours, and what you're writing about is really going to exist, and you have to figure out the best way of making sure the world you're imagining is as close to true to reality as possible. That means studying a whole lot of history but it always has me looking at it main through a lens of thinking about where it's all headed.

If I had my druthers I'd have started a rocket company, but this is the best I can do as far as making the future real. As jobs go, there's worse.


#18, RE: comfort zones
Posted by Gryphon on May-01-18 at 02:41 PM
In response to message #17
>You did a beautiful job with that. Seriously. If I was going to own a
>classic AR, that's what it'd look like. I am grateful to get to enjoy
>your enjoyment of historical firearms, if that makes any sense?

I'm glad you like it, although in the interest of full disclosure, I should say I didn't build it; it came that way. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#6, oh yeah, also
Posted by Gryphon on Apr-24-18 at 09:13 PM
In response to message #0
LAST EDITED ON Apr-24-18 AT 09:13 PM (EDT)
 
Picked up my AR today (I bought it online from out of state, so it had to be shipped to a dealer nearby for proper transfer). While I was waiting for the man to hear back from the ATF, I looked idly around the shop and noticed, with a sharp pang of dismay, that there on the wall in front of me was a No. 4 Mk I Lee-Enfield (the WWII successor to the No. 1 Mk III SMLE) that someone had (not very well-)sporterized. Poor old thing. I almost bought it out of sheer sympathy.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#10, RE: oh yeah, also
Posted by Peter Eng on Apr-25-18 at 01:59 AM
In response to message #6
>I almost bought it out of sheer sympathy.
>

In my head, this is more or less what happens to you when you see a good character who survives bad canon.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


#11, RE: oh yeah, also
Posted by Gryphon on Apr-25-18 at 02:31 AM
In response to message #10
>>I almost bought it out of sheer sympathy.
>>
>
>In my head, this is more or less what happens to you when you see a
>good character who survives bad canon.

Well... you're not wrong.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#14, a note
Posted by Gryphon on Apr-26-18 at 03:38 PM
In response to message #0
I'll get into this in greater depth in the entry, but, handling the AR-15 for photography and whatnot, I can totally see why guys who came up in the M1-to-M14 era assumed these things were toys. The light weight, the small caliber, the plastic furniture—it must have seemed like the weirdest, sketchiest thing in the world to ordnance officers who were in WWII (which only ended ~12 years before the first AR prototypes appeared).

It makes me kind of want to get a set of wooden furniture for it, just to be perverse. And people make them!

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


#15, RE: a note
Posted by McFortner on Apr-26-18 at 06:15 PM
In response to message #14
I like the Racer, just not the colors they show it in. A little new psychedelic for my tastes.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".


#19, RE: a note
Posted by Mephron on May-01-18 at 04:27 PM
In response to message #14
I was trying to figure out why you would need a chair or table for a gun, and then remembered that in some stores, the suits department is "Men's Furnishings", and it made sense.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"


#20, RE: a note
Posted by Gryphon on May-01-18 at 04:37 PM
In response to message #19
>I was trying to figure out why you would need a chair or table for a
>gun, and then remembered that in some stores, the suits department is
>"Men's Furnishings", and it made sense.

Heh. Yeah, the non-metal parts of firearms (grip panels, shoulder stocks, etc.) are commonly called furniture, presumably because traditionally they've been made of wood.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.