Why do gun owners constantly insist the AR-15 is not a military style gun when the AR-15 was invented for the military?
Former Sporting Traditions Specialist/Technical Advisor at The Orvis Company (2010–2015)
Very simply because the AR15, as designed by Eugene Stoner in 1956, was designated the M-16 shortly after the military accepted it. The military always names their weapons according to a system that makes sense to them. There actually were a few military versions of that rifle that have a stamp on the side saying AR-15 and also M-16 on them. Those weapons were issued to the air force. It was a small run built by Armalite (the AR in AR-15) before they licensed manufacturing to Colt. Armalite didn’t have the facilities or people to build the M-16 in the numbers needed for the Army so they licensed it to Colt too manufacture it.
Like many successful military weapon designs Colt decided to make a civilian model of it too, and named it the AR-15. The big difference between the M-16 and its descendants, and the AR-15 is that the M-16 is capable of fully automatic fire (pull the trigger and the rifle will continue fire until you either release the trigger or it fires all the ammo in the magazine). There is actually a “select fire” switch on the side of the rifle that goes from “safe” to “semi” and finally to “auto”. Click on the picture below for a larger image.
The civilian version of the rifle which was released as the AR-15, does NOT have a select fire switch and it cannot be fired in full-auto. It is what is known as a “semi-auto” rifle. Semi-auto means you pull the trigger once and it fires one round and loads another. You can hold that trigger down as long as you want and it won’t fire again. You have to let go of the trigger to let it reset and then it will fire one more round with one more pull of the trigger. This is the difference between the military arm, the M-16, and the civilian AR-15.
The full-auto military version is indeed a weapon of war and classified as an assault rifle. It allows the soldier to switch between use as a semi-auto rifle for longer range aimed shots (to about 400-yds.), and full auto fire to lay down a blanket of fire to stop your position from being overrun as you are attacked.
No army in the world has ever equipped their soldiers with the AR-15 because it is not capable of firing in full auto mode. The AR-15 is definitely NOT a weapon of war nor is it an assault rifle. The M-16, M-4, and its various descendants are true assault rifles and the AR-15 is not.
Hope that helps clear up some of your confusion.