The Mitochondria of American Gun Culture

What makes the AR-15 more than just another gun, the most cancellable take

A few times over the years, I’ve said/promised/threatened I would share my perspective on the AR-15 and its nature as an object in the broader arena of gun culture.

One of the many spaces I’ve gotten around in is that of gun culture. I held a national position in the Socialist Rifle Association and I’ve been around firearms in a lot of other contexts. I have a particular relationship with firearms, however. I’ve never been a hunter—having only gone hunting twice in my life and on the sport side of shooting, I’m a long-range accuracy shooter. I come from the world of bolt guns and occasional trap shooting.

There are places where I look at American gun culture and see something that simply isn’t for me. There is one area in particular, however, where I see an object of more than just commodity fetishism. There, I see a place where an object, the roles it fills, and the very design of that object enable a mindset around a firearm that pollutes the very idea of what a gun is as an engineered instrument of death.

That is the AR-15.

In the minds of people unfamiliar and inexperienced with firearms, the AR-15 and 5.56 entirely understandably occupy a strange space. To be clear, the rifle and its round are (mostly) not in and of themselves spectacular. I regularly fire larger, more powerful rounds. That’s not to say I’d rather be shot by 5.56, but that on a list of bad options, there are far worse options.

My rifle of choice is a Benelli Lupo chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor. It is a round of range, power, and penetration that is—at least on paper—absolutely devastating compared to 5.56. I also regularly train with an M1911A1 chambered in .45 ACP. It is a powerful handgun round likewise prone to severe penetration. While the AR-15’s 5.56 is generally more powerful, the smaller 1911 delivers a shocking amount of destruction to a target.

This isn’t some kind of “flex”. These are fairly standard rounds. .45 ACP was introduced in 1905 and while 6.5 Creedmoor is from 2007, it is a common round among long-range shooters and is increasingly used by hunters. The point I want to make is that 5.56 isn’t uniquely powerful and although the way it fragments in a human target is devastating to that target, that also isn’t unique.

What makes the AR-15 unique is its nature not as a firearm, but as a platform.

First and simplest, the AR-15 is a shockingly easy rifle to use. Not only is it easy to use correctly, but it is also surprisingly hard to use wrong. To return to the two other firearms I’ve referenced, the Lupo and 1911 have serious recoil. You can actually hurt yourself just by holding the gun wrong when firing it. Myriad injuries can come from not just irresponsible, but even slightly inattentive gun use.

When I first returned to shooting after years of not doing so, I was doing drills with a Winchester Model 70—a classic hunting rifle if there ever was one. In a moment of thoughtlessness, I adjusted my shoulder without returning to a “square” position before firing. I instantly realized my error when the rifle slammed back into my collarbone. Thankfully, all that happened was an ugly bruise that hurt for a week and was sore for some time after.

It was an error in my posture that could have bruised or even broken bone.

With the AR-15, there is no risk on that scale. It is incredibly easy to deliver an accurate, lethal round at a reliable range with no real risk or challenge to the user. The recoil is manageable and the risk is minor. It is a rifle perfectly designed for use by the lowest common denominator of shooters with minimal training and the least thought at the most common engagement ranges for other humans.

There are reasons beyond the cultural the AR-15 is the rifle of choice for mass shooters.

After all, it is based on the M-16, a rifle that is designed around the principle of training the greatest number of people possible for infantry combat as quickly, cheaply, and reliably as possible.

The problem is not that the AR-15 is a military-grade weapon. The problem is that the AR-15 is a by-product of a platform designed to solve a problem of military culture in a civilian space. In a civilian space, it feeds into the myth of the gun and that is an image of power and the projection of that power through the gun as a totem and the wielder of that totem as an unassailable combatant.

That is, however, just the first problem. It’s the easiest problem, though.

The second problem is tetchier and more technical.

If you have an eye for equipment and I tell you someone has an AR-15 with a 20” barrel, an ACOG, and a bipod, you know what that weapon is for. You might even be able to make some assumptions about the user of that weapon. Alternatively, an AR-15 with a 16” barrel, red dot sights, and a foregrip tells you something else.

One of the strengths of the AR-15 as a platform is its modularity. This is one of the reasons one would use the term “platform” and not just “weapon”, after all.

There is a problem with that, however.

If one goes on YouTube and looks at the photography community or the car community or any other subculture on there, one sees a very entertaining and often joked-about phenomenon that certainly predates the internet: gear acquisition syndrome.

I will argue that a little bit of G.A.S. is not necessarily the worst thing ever if someone is buying a macro lens for their camera to play around with or if they’re getting a new air filter for their car to take down to the track. Maybe they’re out some money they wouldn’t have spent, but setting aside the broader cultural and economic topic of commodity fetishism and what does and doesn’t count as that, those people probably aren’t making the world markedly worse.

However, somewhere between those examples and gear acquisition syndrome in gun culture and the attitudes projected by that culture, a line is crossed. A firearm stops having whatever use it has as an instrument of sport, a tool for hunting, or indeed a means of self-defense. It instead becomes a representative object of power. When that happens, acquiring new objects and baubles and gewgaws cannot help but be cast in a stark light.

The AR-15 as a platform is uniquely predisposed to that behavior and because of its incredible approachability, it becomes a communal behavior. It becomes a form of virtue signaling and, in many cases, a form of vice signaling. That participating in commodity fetishism around the AR-15 is not just participation in gun culture, but the cultures adjacent to it because the AR-15 is so easily commodified.

American gun culture is inherently deeply rooted in its baggage, much of which is still held over from its founding. That doesn’t change the fact that culture has nucleated around a single object, a single gun.

Failing to interrogate that fact and why that might be is a failure on the part of anyone who might wish to change it, even and perhaps especially from those not looking to abolish guns outright.