{"id":1492939,"date":"2022-05-26T11:31:23","date_gmt":"2022-05-26T15:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1492939"},"modified":"2022-05-26T11:32:05","modified_gmt":"2022-05-26T15:32:05","slug":"the-washington-post-invents-a-new-history-for-ar-15s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-washington-post-invents-a-new-history-for-ar-15s\/","title":{"rendered":"The Washington Post Invents A New History For AR-15s"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-washington-post-invents-a-new-history-for-ar-15s%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1492939&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Sturmgewehr-44-1024x555-1.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>A 2018 Washington Post article about AR-15s is recirculating today after senior editor Marc Fisher tweeted it out in the wake of the Texas elementary school shooting. In it, he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/the-ar-15-americas-rifle-or-illegitimate-killing-machine\/2018\/02\/15\/743e66ca-1266-11e8-9065-e55346f6de81_story.html\">contends<\/a> that the AR-15 was \u201c[i]nvented for Nazi infantrymen\u201d and \u201cis a descendant of the machine guns Nazi infantrymen used against Soviet forces in World War II.\u201d The piece is brimming with the customary fearmongering, but as I\u2019d written a chapter about the AR-15\/M-16 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/First-Freedom-Through-Americas-Enduring\/dp\/1501174002\">in my cultural history of guns<\/a>, the claim piqued my curiosity. <\/p>\n<p>In researching the origins of the Armalite company, reading every book and contemporaneous information I could get my hands on, never once do I recall running across any mention of the AR\u2019s inventor Gene Stoner being influenced by \u201cNazi\u201d firearms, much less basing his famous rifle on a German assault rifle. Armalite, in fact, was the first company to successfully hybridize American technological advances of World War II airplane design, plastics, and alloys, with small arms. So, I\u2019d love to find out which Wikipedia page Fisher pulled this information from.<\/p>\n<p>The piece \u2014 really a column \u2014 is misleading in many other ways, like when it conflates AR-15 with the military-grade M-16. Though it\u2019s true that mass shooters often use AR-15s, probably because of their aesthetics and popularity in video games and films, Fisher doesn\u2019t mention that the gun is rarely used in crime despite its popularity. In 2019, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ucr.fbi.gov\/crime-in-the-u.s\/2019\/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019\/tables\/table-20\">last year of FBI data<\/a>, we find that more Americans were murdered by fists and kicking than AR-15s. <\/p>\n<p>Handguns are by far the most predominant weapon used in homicides. In Texas 568 murders involved a handgun and 72 involved a rifle (not all of them AR-15s.) In Illinois 564 murders involved a handgun and 7 a rifle \u2014 33 states had five murders or fewer by way of rifle. None of this diminishes the horror of school shootings, but ostensibly journalists are here to inform not crusade. <\/p>\n<p>Now, the most generous reading of the piece is that Fisher means that Stoner \u2014 who didn\u2019t even serve in Europe during World War II, but in Asia \u2014 and the Nazis both shared some of the same fundamental firearm technology that was developed by people like Mannlicher or Browning. It is true that there was a literal arms race through the 20th century, and inventors are always looking to other technology. <\/p>\n<p>Using that standard, though, we\u2019re driving cars and flying airplanes and launching satellites that are \u201cdescendant\u201d from the Nazis, as well. So my guess is that Fisher decided that AR-15 should be placed near the word \u201cNazi\u201d because demonization trumps journalistic standards at the Post.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books\u2014the most recent, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Eurotrash-America-Reject-Failed-Continent\/dp\/0063066017\/\">Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent<\/a>. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post, and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davidharsanyi\/\">@davidharsanyi<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A 2018 Washington Post article about AR-15s is recirculating today after senior editor Marc Fisher tweeted it out in the wake of the Texas elementary school shooting. In it, he<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":831,"featured_media":1894299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1492939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1492939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1894299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1492939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1492939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1492939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}