The AR-15 - a nice writeup

I am surprised! With all the gun grabbing going on and especially with all the focus on the eeeevil black assault rifle (AR-15) here is a wonderfully written piece at Wired:

The AR-15 Is More Than a Gun. It�s a Gadget
I was shaking as I shouldered the rifle and peered through the scope at the small steel target 100 yards downrange. It was officially the coldest day in Las Vegas history, and I was in the middle of the desert, buffeted by wind and surrounded by the professional gun press, about to fire an AR-15 for the first time.

I grew up with guns, and I even own a small .22-caliber target pistol that I take to the range occasionally. But I had fired a rifle maybe twice in the past five years. I was a novice, and I was frozen to the core. I flinched as I pulled the trigger the first time, sending my shot wide of the mark. But the recoil wasn�t nearly as bad as I had feared; in fact, the shot was actually pleasant. I fired again with more confidence, and the bullet rang the distant steel plate like a bell; then the next shot hit, and the next.

�You�re doing great,� said Justin Harvel, founder of Black Rain Ordnance and maker of the gun I was shooting.

�It�s not me,� I replied. �I�ve never shot like this in my life. It�s gotta be this gun.�

�Yeah, it�s definitely not your daddy�s hunting rifle, is it?�

In the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the AR-15 has gone from the most popular rifle in America to the most scrutinized and, in some quarters, vilified. Also known in its fully automatic, military incarnation as the M16, the rifle was racking up record sales in the years before Sandy Hook, but now, in the midst of a renewed effort to ban this weapon and others like it from civilian hands, the AR-15 market has gone nuclear, with some gun outlets rumored to have done three years� worth of sales in the three weeks after Newtown.

Designed by Eugene Stoner in the 1960's. Stoner is right up there in my top pantheon with John Moses Browning. George Kelgren (I own several of his designs) is a 2nd ranker. The article goes into the initial design and development, the first ten-year assault-weapon ban and concludes:

From the morning that ArmaLite opened its doors in 1954 to the present, most of the innovation that has gone into the AR-15 has been aimed at making the gun as accurate and pleasurable to shoot as possible. The result is a gun that really is an order of magnitude easier to use effectively than many of the traditional wood-stocked rifles that black-rifle-hating hunters grew up with. For someone who enjoys shooting a $2,500 AR-15 from a company like Lewis Machine and Tool, Black Rain Ordnance, Daniel Defense, or KAC, is like a driving enthusiast sitting behind the wheel of an Italian or German supercar. It�s a revelation, and the experience doesn�t wear off quickly.

Emphasis mine. I really love mine and mine is just an off-the-shelf unit from H&K. And this is not because it's a black rifle, I am restoring a 1943 Mosin-Nagant and having a blast (literally) with it too (Gawd I hate Cosmoline -- I frikkn' HATES ITSSSS) My AR is a precision machine -- I can reach out and touch something with precision, ease and reliability.