Nashville shooting: what it reveals about Americans' love of military-style guns

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7. Washington Post article referenced:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/ar-15-america-gun-culture-politics/

AMERICAN ICON
The gun that divides a nation
The AR-15 thrives in times of tension and tragedy. This is how it came to dominate the marketplace – and loom so large in the American psyche.
It is revered as a modern-day musket.
It is reviled as a tool for mass killers.

By Todd C. Frankel, Shawn Boburg, Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Alex Horton
March 27 at 6:13 a.m.

The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a bestseller.

The rugged, powerful weapon was originally designed as a soldiers’ rifle in the late 1950s. “An outstanding weapon with phenomenal lethality,” an internal Pentagon report raved. It soon became standard issue for U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, where the weapon earned a new name: the M16.

But few gunmakers saw a semiautomatic version of the rifle — with its shrouded barrel, pistol grip and jutting ammunition magazine — as a product for ordinary people. It didn’t seem suited for hunting. It seemed like overkill for home defense. Gun executives doubted many buyers would want to spend their money on one.

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