American Gun: The True Story of the Ar-15 presents the epic hiStory of America\'s most controversial weapon.
The result is a moral hiStory of contemporary America\'s love affair with technology, freedom, and weaponry..
Writing with fairness and compassion, Mcwhirter and Elinson explore America\'s gun culture, revealing the deep appeal of the AR-15, the awful havoc it wreaks, and the politics of reducing its toll.
And in the 2000s, it would become the weapon of choice for mass shooters, prompting widespread calls for proscription even as the gun industry embraced it as a financial savior.
Shunned by gun owners at first, the rifle\'s popularity would take off thanks to a renegade band of small-time gun makers.
How did the same gun represent the essence of freedom to millions of Americans and the essence of evil to millions more? To answer this question, Mcwhirter and Elinson follow Stoner--the American Kalashnikov--as he struggled mightily to win support for his invention, which under the name M16 would become standard equipment in Vietnam.
In American Gun , the veteran Wall Street Journal reporters Cameron Mcwhirter and Zusha Elinson track the Ar-15 from inception to ubiquity.
What he did create was a lethal handheld icon of the American century.
High-minded and patriotic, Stoner sought to devise a lightweight, easy-to-use weapon that could replace the M1s touted by soldiers in World War II.
In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the Ar-15 rifle in a California garage.
American Gun: The True Story of the Ar-15 presents the epic hiStory of America\'s most controversial weapon
