I'm not sure the AR-type rifle was designed for killing people. If I could remember where I read it, I'd cite the source in which I read the AR-type rifle was originally a civilian weapon. It was designed a few years before 1958. Look at it: Lightweight, plastic furniture, easy to disassemble and clean, low recoil and inexpensive ammunition. Sounds to me like it was designed to be a sporting rifle. If you recall during that time, the United States was consumed with anything having to do with space exploration. For 1958, the AR-type rifle looks like something right out of Buck Rogers. I'd imagine its looks had something to do with its popularity.The AR15 was designed to kill people. All of you are drawn to it because of its lethality.
To say that every person who owns an AR-type rifle is "drawn to it because of its lethality" is pure bullschumer. It's brain-dead sophistry and an insult to AR owners. I have never purchased an AR rifle "because of its lethality." I have never purchased any firearm "because of its lethality." Your all-encompassing statement paints every man and every woman who owns an AR-type rifle to be two seconds from committing a heinous crime with it. Every person I know who has one would never use it for anything illegal-- and neither would the overwhelmingly massive numbers of Americans who I have not met. Over 100 million Americans own over 300 million guns, and probably have close to a billion or two rounds of ammunition. If the everyday American gun owner was the problem, we'd certainly all know it.
The M1 Garand was definitely designed to kill the enemy. The US military was using bolt-action rifles with five-round stripper clips to load it during the insanity of combat. My contention is that you have no problem with the Garand-- because of its appearance. It looks like your father's hunting rifle. The lack of a protruding pistol grip exponentially reduces the looks of its lethality. The Garand has a bayonet lug but instead, its wood stock goes a country mile to reduce the looks of its lethality. The .30-06 Springfield round for which it is chambered is several times more powerful than the 5.56mm NATO round but the '06 is a fine hunting round, so it has to be less lethal than the NATO round. You're consumed with the appearance-- the cosmetics-- of the AR rifle just as were the brain-damaged dingbats who gave us that idiotic Sick Willy Klantoon weapons ban of 1994. The rifle "looks scary," so in no way can it have any positive attributes.
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