How a Maine Businessman Made the AR-15 Into America’s Best-Selling Rifle
How a Maine Businessman Made the AR-15 Into America’s Best-Selling Rifle
Neither a gun enthusiast nor a right-wing ideologue, Richard Dyke used political connections and lobster giveaways to build Bushmaster, the company that popularized assault-style rifles.
When the public asks, “How did we get here?” after each mass shooting, the answer goes beyond National Rifle Association lobbyists and Second Amendment zealots. It lies in large measure with the strategies of firearms executives like Dyke. Long before his competitors, the mercurial showman saw the profits in a product that tapped into Americans’ primal fears, and he pulled the mundane levers of American business and politics to get what he wanted.
Dyke brought the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, which had been considered taboo to market to civilians, into general circulation, and helped keep it there. A folksy turnaround artist who spun all manner of companies into gold, he bought a failing gun maker for $241,000 and built it over more than a quarter-century into a $76 million business producing 9,000 guns a month. Bushmaster, which operated out of a facility just 30 miles from the Lewiston massacre, was the nation’s leading seller of AR-15s for nearly a decade. It also made Dyke rich. He owned at least four homes, a $315,000 Rolls Royce and a helicopter, in which he enjoyed landing on the lawn of his alma mater, Husson University.
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You know... I don't care that it isn't an assault rifle. I don't care that it isn't the type of gun used most often in mass killings.
People fetishize it and it's weird.
Since I keep getting told that guns are tools, I'd feel the same if a bunch of people treated a certain brand of cordless drill with holy reverence.
The AR-15 is just popular because it's the honda civic of rifles and people fetishize it for the same reason highschool car guys fetishize honda civics. It's cheap, ubiquitous, and you can modify it to do basically anything you want. You can get an AR-15 chambered in anything from a .17 varmint round up to .50 Beowulf if you really want. You can slap basically any attachment or replacement part you can think of on it and it will just work. It's also fairly robust so maintenance isn't a huge concern. It's just a generic, cheap, and highly versitile platform. As far as "big bad guns" go the AR-15 isn't anywhere close to the top of that list. To anyone who actually knows about guns the AR-15 is basically the great value brand rifle. It's what you buy when you don't know what you actually want.
You also have a bit of the glock phenomenon going on. It became a thing a while back where a lot of people just started calling all handguns glocks even if they weren't actually Glock handguns. Similarly now you have people calling any black rifle with a handguard and a picatinny rail an AR-15 even if it's not even close to an AR-15.
Since I keep getting told that guns are tools, I'd feel the same if a bunch of people treated a certain brand of cordless drill with holy reverence.
I mean, people DO do that...
The time of the Stoner platform was coming, one way or another. It's effectively open source at this point and home manufacturing has exploded.
Okay, well like I said, if people treat a certain brand of cordless drill with holy reverence to the point that churches hold cordless drill services, that's weird as fuck too.
I wouldn't be shocked if there's some rural churches that do that kind of thing...
Wasn't there a church in Lake Oswego, OR USA that raffled off an AR-15 not that long ago?
Since I keep getting told that guns are tools, I’d feel the same if a bunch of people treated a certain brand of cordless drill with holy reverence.
The AR-15 is the pickup truck of guns.
Most people don't use its capacities. A few have genuine appreciation for its finer details, a larger number just think it 'looks neat' and doesn't care beyond that, and a very large number just own it because it makes them feel like Big Men™.
The AR-15 was designed as a main battle rifle for light infantry. The rounds are designed to do a fair bit of extra damage. Other than that, it's only good for small game or target shooting. .22lr is just as capable for civilian use, rounds are cheaper, lighter and are used in more firearms.
Yes it has had a long life as the main battle rifle of the US, abd Canada uses a variant (I was trained on it when I was in the Navy) but it having the following that it does kinda confuses me.
By definition, MBRs use full size cartridges (eg .30-06, .308) whereas assault rifles use intermediate cartridges. The difference between say, M1 Garand/M14/AR10 and the AR-15.
'Assualt rifle' isn't a classification outside of the news media.
It most certainly is. It is the distinction between weapons that use full size cartridges (FAL/ M1/M14/AR10) and those that use intermediate cartridges (StG43-44/AR-15/AK47-74+), long before news media even knew what they were. In fact, "battle rifle" was created to distinguish between the older full size cartridge weapons and the newer intermediate cartridge weapons. But don't take my word for it, just listen to Eugene Stoner. He knew better than either of us.
Really? Because no weapons instructor I've ever had used the term, no other military personnel that I talked to (including infantry and from other countries) ever used the term other than to mock it.
Cool anecdote bro.
And a 'full sized cartridge' is some bullshit as well. So, yeah cool factiods for whatever war game you play.
Are you really arguing the existence and use of terminology like full size (or power) and intermediate cartridge? Do you have a problem with "Magnum" as well?
You do realise a .22lr is a 'full size cartridge' for a rifle that is chambered in .22lr right?
You keep saying things about calibres saying cartridge.
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It's by definition not a battle rifle. It's a rifle taken into battle sure but it's an assault rifle with roots in the sturmgewehr 44 literally "assault rifle 44".
I get your point but in the example the AR-15.. is the cordless drill, not a brand. Tons of brands make variants/parts for the platform.
The people who "fetishize" it most are all the terminally online antigunners. I seriously see daily posts on Lemmy about the evils of this particular weapons design. Meanwhile I own several and during an average week I don't think about them at all.
That article has many incorrect statements and assumptions. The original Colt/Armalite was marketed towards the public but it wasn't initially popular with consumers because it started off expensive and it was a design departure from what they were used to (polymer instead of wood). Today there are a bunch of reasons the rifle design is popular. Due to how patents work, it is effectively Open Source at this point. 100+ companies make versions of it, or compatible parts. Therefore it is cheap and widely available.
Same thing with the Glock 19. It isn't necessarily better or different than most other autoloading handguns on the market. Its patent expired so it became an "Open" design, cheaper and customizable.