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UPPER MARLBORO, Md. — There are a lot of reasons people love their AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, and information technology doesn't much matter to them what the haters say.

For some, the gun is a tool, a finely tuned machine that can cutting downward an brute or intruder, or pierce a afar target, with a single precise shot.

For others, it is a toy, a sleek beast of black plastic and metal that delivers a gratifying blast of adrenaline.

And for many, information technology is a symbol, the embodiment of core American values — liberty, might, self-reliance.

"In that location are very few things that serve such a groovy form and function, and look absurd," said Daniel Chandler, 26, an AR-15 owner here in suburban Maryland. When he takes his AR out of its example at a shooting range, he smiles like he merely unwrapped a gift. "In that location are few things you'll notice that are wonderfully appealing to await at, wonderful exercises in mechanical engineering, and that could salvage your life."

This is the side of the AR-xv that many don't see, or e'er consider.

Because an AR-15, or a variant, was reportedly used in several mass shootings — including Aurora, Colorado; Newtown, Connecticut; San Bernardino,California; Sutherland Springs, Texas; Las Vegas and Parkland, Florida, in which a full of 154 people were killed — this civilian sibling of a war machine assault rifle is an exceptionally polarizing product of modernistic American industry. The AR-15 and its semiautomatic cousins — they shoot i round for each pull of the trigger ─ incite repulsion among those who see them every bit excessive, grotesque and having no identify on the civilian market.

It is the focus of multiple attempts at prohibition, which in turn has prompted people to run out and buy more than. Such "panic buying" drove sales of AR-15s to record levels during the presidency of Barack Obama and the 2016 presidential entrada. Gun merchants say some buyers are also driven by a fascination with a weapon used in notoriously heinous crimes.

Fears of a ban have subsided under gun-friendly President Donald Trump, and so have sales; gun makers are in the midst of a year-long slump that has driven downwardly prices for AR-fashion rifles. Those discounts appear to accept driven a record number of Blackness Fri gun background checks.

Devotees say the AR-15 has been wrongly demonized, arguing that the vast majority of owners never utilize information technology in a criminal offence, and that despite the burglarize'southward use in mass shootings, it is responsible for a very small proportion of the land's gun violence.

Thanks to that agog following, and shrewd marketing, the AR-15 remains a jewel of the gun industry, the country's most popular rifle, irreversibly lodged into American culture.

From Vietnam to the mainstream

The AR-15 was developed in the late 1950s as a noncombatant weapon past Eugene Stoner, a quondam Marine working for small California startup called ArmaLite (which is where the AR comes from). The gun, revolutionary for its light weight, like shooting fish in a barrel care and adaptability with additional components, entered the mainstream in the mid-1960s, later on Colt bought the patent and developed an automatic-fire version for troops in Vietnam, called the M16.

The civilian model wasn't mass produced until the 1980s, after the original patent expired and a variety of companies began making them. That transformed a specific brand to a more generic offer on which a mini-industry would flourish.

When the AR-fifteen and other semiautomatic rifles began to turn up in shootings, a movement began to restrict their manufacture and sale. Much of the outrage stemmed from the militaristic appearance of those guns, and their ability to fire rapidly.

But at that place was as well a more visceral reason, involving flesh and claret. AR-15s inflict much more damage to human tissue than the typical handgun, which is used in virtually shootings. That's largely considering of the speed at which projectiles leave the weapons; they are much faster out of the muzzle of an AR-15, or similar rifle, and deliver a more devastating accident to basic and organs. Those projectiles are as well more likely to break autonomously equally they laissez passer through the trunk, inflicting more impairment.

"The higher muzzle-velocity projectiles, if they strike an organ, you're more probable to accept severe injury and haemorrhage and dying than with lower cage-velocity munitions," said Donald Jenkins, a trauma surgeon at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the owner of several guns, including an AR-fifteen.

The backfire peaked in 1994, when President Bill Clinton signed a ban on the sale of many types of semiautomatic rifles accounted "assault weapons," including versions of the AR-15. Manufacturers continued making versions of the AR-15 that complied with the new law, which was allowed to expire in 2004. That set the phase for an explosion in AR-fifteen sales.

By and so, military-style weapons were becoming a more mutual sight in America, due largely to the response to the 9/xi attacks. Anti-terror constabulary forces began patrolling cities and transportation hubs, and the wars in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan and Iraq were covered intimately. That college visibility seemingly fed a desire among gun owners to get what the troops and cops were using.

With encouragement from the gun industry, the AR-15 grew pop not only among people who enjoyed owning the latest tactical gear, just also amidst recreational and competitive target shooters, and hunters. Many saw it as a peak of firearms technology — ergonomic, accurate, reliable.

Graphic: Estimated number of AR-style rifles produced and murder victims by firesarms

"It's kind of the standard, de-facto rifle at present," said Evan Daire, 23, a gun-range worker in New Jersey who aspires to become a professional person target shooter. "No matter what function you're looking at, it pretty much fills that function."

Product of AR-style guns has soared since the federal ban expired. In 2004, 107,000 were made. In 2015, the number was i.2 million, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), an manufacture merchandise association. The arrangement does not provide sales data, nor does it have 2016 production estimates, but says that twelvemonth's activity likely broke all records.

Today, i of out of every five firearms purchased in this country is an AR-style burglarize, according to a NSSF judge. Americans now own an estimated 15 million AR-15s, gun groups say. New AR-fifteen mode guns range widely in price, from about $500 to more than $two,000.

'Destined to be a all-time-seller'

Chandler is an unlikely AR enthusiast. He grew upward outside Baltimore, a city plagued by gun violence, raised past parents opposed to firearms and was friends with kids whose lives had been torn apart by them. For much of his youth he considered himself anti-gun.

Then a well-to-practice neighbor was shot in a home invasion. Chandler realized that his family had no weapon to defend itself, and decided to purchase a gun when he got quondam enough.