“Modern Sporting Rifles” = Farce. Yes, it’s a farce. The phrase was coined by the actual gun lobby, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. They’re the ones that lobby for the arms industry. Meanwhile groups like GOA, SAF, FPC, NAGR, etc, lobby for we the people.
This is the webpage, from the NSSF detailing what a “modern sporting rifle” is. As you’ll see it’s laughable at all the contradictions they make.
“Modern sporting rifles are a modern representation of old technology.” That’s what the NSSF says. But what’s “modern” about the AR15? First Mr. Stoner, America’s finest arms designer develops the internal piston AR10 in 1955, then the scaled down version, the AR15 in 1957. So, mid ’50s technology is “modern”?
Remember, the AR15, is older than the Remington 700, Savage 110, Browning’s BLR, and the BAR, Weatherby’s Mark V and Vanguard and Ruger’s M77. Yet only the AR15, is a “modern sporting rifle”?
Today’s AR15’s have been tweeked and improved, sure. But all use the internal piston system. Same controls. The modularity? Try dropping a modern bolt carrier group in an original SP1 or an original BCG in a new AR15… It’ll shoot. Magazines too, will work. Pretty much everything’s interchangeable even after all these years.
So again, “modern”? America’s Rifle, in 2025, the AR15, is 1950’s technology.
Why does the NSSF and other 2A groups, try to tell us the AR15 is a “modern sporting rifle”?
“These rifles are used by hunters, competitors, millions of Americans seeking home-defense guns and many others who simply enjoy going to the range.” Says NSSF. They also say,
“Also, groups wanting to ban these rifles have for years purposely spread misinformation about them to aid their cause, including using the terms “assault rifle” and “weapons of war.””
What’s the Second Amendment say? Does it say anything about “sporting”? “Hunting”? “Competition”? “Home-defense”? No, the Second Amendment refers to the “militia”. A militia needs in the words of Trench Coxe, “Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American.“
Unlike the rifles I mentioned earlier, that are newer, and yet not “modern sporting rifles”, the AR15 was designed to be a weapon of war. It was designed to kill the enemy, not deer, coyotes or elk. It was designed to kill men. The M16, is simply the military’s version of a sku, that is all.
So, again, what’s wrong with American civilians having access to AR15’s with select fire capability? Or truly mil-spec M4A1’s? And other select fire versions of the M16/M4 platform? Or a M249 SAW? A Browning M2 .50? Rocket launchers? Explosives? Tanks? Artillery? Speaking of artillery, the motto, “Come and take it”, comes from Texans who refused to turn over a cannon to the Mexican Army during the Texas Revolution.
Why does the NSSF go milquetoast on the militia? Afraid of losing government contracts? To be fair it’s not just them. 2A groups, are largely averse to the term. Why is it too “radical”? Republicans wet their pants, at the mere mention of the term, militia.
Why doesn’t America’s gun lobby instead educate the American public on what “militia” actually means? And that, yes, under the Second Amendment, we, the American people, we the militia have the right to have “weapons of war”? After all, what good’s a militia if it doesn’t have the same arms as the standing army? If the militia is out gunned, how can it be a check to tyranny, both foreign and domestic?
2A groups, yes, you too, stop focusing on “in common use”, and “self defense” and “sporting” and start advocating for the militia.
Meanwhile, Republicans, try not to wet yourselves and do something useful for a change.
P.S. The photo of Duke on my home page, where’s he’s filming the ‘The Green Berets’ (1968), and wearing a Green Beret, olive drab fatigues and an LBE harness… Wait, what’s that rifle he’s holding? That’s not his usual Winchester 1892 is it? No! Could it be an XM16E1? Yes it is! Again, Mr. Stoner’s design is “modern”? Not hardly. And, one of Duke’s best lines comes from that very film, “Out here due process is a bullet!”.
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