It’s a classic American tale not just because of Stoner’s determination, but also because of the tides of graft and grifting that helped the gun’s rise to fame. The AR-15’s adoption by the U.S. military was hampered by corruption: The Army’s bureaucracy didn’t want a gun that hadn’t been developed in-house by military personnel; they repeatedly pushed the less-effective M14, skewing performance tests and attempting to tarnish the AR-15’s reputation. Without government contracts, the gun’s sales languished, and in 1959 ArmaLite moved to off-load the product, selling manufacturing rights to Colt. When the military finally began purchasing the AR-15 (rechristened the “M16”) for GIs fighting in Vietnam, they altered the design (against Stoner’s recommendations) to save money, sacrificing its effectiveness and earning it a reputation for jamming at crucial moments.
If it seems at times that American Gun gives Eugene Stoner the Inspired Genius treatment that, say, Walter Isaacson has reserved for Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, the book never fully lets you forget that Stoner designed a killing machine, and that he knew it. As a Dallas Morning News reporter who observed rifle instructors in 1966 put it, “Killing people is what it is built for, and what it does with great efficiency.”
The second half of the book chronicles the introduction of the AR-15 into American civilian life, and the deadly consequences that ensued. Colt’s decision to release a semiautomatic version into the sporting market in the 1960s did not attract much interest at the time. The gun’s nontraditional appearance did not appeal to the hunting community, nor did its ability to fire rapidly. To hunt game, a competent hunter doesn’t need a thing that sprays bullets at short range; they need a steady rifle with a high caliber, something that can bring down a deer in a single, well-aimed shot. As a machine designed to kill humans, Stoner’s gun had little to offer the hunting community, and at first it barely sold.
But as America’s hunting culture waned, new customers emerged: people interested in killing other humans. Its first use in a homicide committed by a civilian appears to have been in the 1975 Pine Ridge murders, for which the Native American activist Leonard Peltier was later convicted. Its first use in a mass shooting came two years later, when six people were killed in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Another mass killing in Pennsylvania in 1982 prompted the county prosecutor who handled the case, Robert Gillespie, to later remark: “I felt the weapon should be banned for civilians…. The devastation that was done by that gun was shocking to me.”