They're accurate, they're customizable and they're fun to shoot. Why you're going to see more AR-style rifles in the woods this fall.
Jul 2, 2007
In truth, I came late to the black-rifle party, but it wasn't as if I didn't get a heads-up. In the late 1970s, like so many other shooters, I'd fallen under the sway of Colonel Jeff Cooper, the cult of the 1911 and the idea-or perhaps the ideal-of practical shooting. But the sport had just been born, matches were few and far between, and the only "custom" 1911s I'd ever seen were in the pages of Guns & Ammo.
That's when I met Jimmy Q, an explosive ordnance-disposal expert back from Vietnam. Jimmy was typically seen in a cut-off gray sweatshirt and mirrored aviator shades and lived in a one-room apartment over his gun store. He was also the first for-real "combat shooter" (that's what we called it back then, combat shooting) I'd actually met. He had one of those 1911s just like in G&A, and he was amazing with it. I knew a lot about hunting guns and not much else. Growing up in Tennessee, I'd had a lever-action .30-30 put in my hands about the time I said my first word, which I believe was "deer." I'd done a lot of shooting with Ruger Blackhawks, owned a 1930s vintage S&W double-action .38 for"self-defense" and purchased, for a deal that was definitely too good to be true, a first-generation S&W M59 9mm that worked only occasionally.
So I hocked the 9mm and a hunting rifle and put the money into a Colt Combat Commander 1911 .45 and a custom set of S&W revolver sights that cost me more than the gun, and off I went. Jimmy Q towed me along like the ice trail on the butt end of a comet, through competition, into police training, military special-forces training, simulations and role-playing-the whole world of what we now call tactical shooting.
At lunch one day in his apartment-he and his girlfriend had been teaching a bunch of us to rappel Australian-style off the top of his building-I opined with great conviction that the 1911 was by far the single greatest fighting machine created by man since the Scottish claymore, bar none, period, exclamation point, so there! Jimmy Q listened for a while, then cut me off.
"Hell, Michael," he said. "You're wrong."
He pointed at his beat-up AR-15 leaning against the wall, complete with two 30-round magazines duct-taped together for a quick reload.
"That is the best gun in the world," he said with finality. "A gun just like it got me out of the jungle and back to the world, and I'll never be without one." I started the usual litany against the M-16/AR-15-unreliable, inaccurate, plastic, under-powered "poodle shooter," butt-ugly-until Jimmy Q stopped me again.
"Wrong on all counts," he said. "That is the Swiss Army knife of firearms. It'll do just about anything, and do it well." Then, pointing to the beautiful 1911 by his bed, he added, "The only reason I need that is to get me to my rifle."
Well, it took me 25 years to come around, but I have to admit that, yes, Jimmy Q was right all along. The AR-15 carbine, the bastard child of a nasty jungle war halfway around the world, is indeed the Swiss Army knife of firearms. The butt-ugly poodle shooter has morphed into not only the longest-lived battle rifle in history, but in civilian hands a mainstay for competition, self-defense and, most recently, many flavors of hunting. In fact, walking the miles and miles of aisles at the 2007 SHOT (Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade) Show made it clear that "black rifles"-rifles derived from military platforms, like the M-4/M-16, the AK-47, the M-14 and the FN-FAL-not only are the best-selling rifles in America, but are the unequivocal driving force in the industry today.
The numbers are staggering. AR-platform guns are approaching handgun-level sales and may soon surpass even Jeff Cooper's mighty 1911, which has ruled the sales roost in the firearms world for the last two decades.
What's the best-selling ammo in America? Try the .223/5.56, standard fodder for the AR-platform guns. Other top performers? Well, there's the 7.62X39, food for the AK-47 and its hundreds of variants, and, of course, the .308/7.62 NATO, feeding the more traditional "battle rifles" like the M-1A, a hot seller, and the reborn FN-FAL. Last I heard, the best-selling "traditional" hunting caliber on the list was the .45/70, of all things.
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