ar 15 rifle for sale in USA

By Tony atlanticoutdoorguns 

I was in my mid-50s before I ever owned or even shot a gun.

My older brother was a cop in Philadelphia, who got sick and died at 57. Afterward, his wife was surprised to find he had been collecting guns, including a few AR-15-style rifles, all stowed in a couple of gun safes. She got rid of the guns responsibly and asked if I wanted one of the handguns — which seemed an odd sort of memento to me.

But I took a small caliber pistol and had ownership transferred at a gun shop. This was about 10 years ago. Soon I went to a local shooting range and had my first instruction on using a gun. The explosive physicality of pulling the trigger was both exhilarating and terrifying. And knowing the gun could kill someone, including myself, in an instant was very unsettling.

I went to the shooting range twice before it closed. After a while, I put the gun on the highest shelf in my home office and more or less forgot about it. I was not going to become a gun enthusiast like my brother.

But you can’t forget about guns for long in this country: routine gun violence, gun ownership debates, suicides by gun, and, most recently of course, the many horrific mass shootings with semi-automatic AR-15-style weapons.

The Jan. 6 insurrection, when a violent mob attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, got me wondering: Maybe I should get an AR-15. It sounded crazy, even to myself; up to that point, as a liberal Democrat, I believed assault weapons should be outlawed. But we can’t ignore the fact that some of those involved in the insurrection have also expressed their intent to foment continued conflict that could lead to armed unrest. Some talk of civil war. It’s noteworthy that many of the insurrectionists were military veterans and retired police, who, like my brother, tend to have lots of guns for sale in the USA.

What would have happened if Donald Trump and his legion of “big lie” believers had succeeded in taking power? What if the outcome of the next election is again contested? After all, Trump has already preemptively said the only way he can lose is if the election is rigged against him. The question troubling me back then was this: If everything goes to hell, as it almost did on Jan. 6, do I want to be among the well-armed or the unarmed? So, not long after Jan. 6, 2021, as a complete firearms novice, I started to explore acquiring an AR-15 rifle.

I first approached a local gun store. But I was stopped in my tracks by a sign posted that read: “If you voted for Biden, please shop elsewhere. Don’t do your panic buying here. You made your bed now LIE IN IT.” I obliged the odd mandate and didn’t enter. Only later did I realize that that was exactly what I was trying to do — panic buying a weapon in response to Jan. 6. I didn’t pursue the matter at a different shop; I was clearly ambivalent about gun ownership.

Next, I took a concealed carry and home safety course at a gun club. The class covered a lot of unexpected ground, most notably how to avoid situations where a gun might be drawn, when and why not to shoot in a confrontation, as well as the legal ramifications of drawing a gun on another person. I was glad to learn that many, if not most, gun owners want to be safe and responsible.

Meanwhile, before I could get around to shooting or buying an AR-15, there were multiple mass shootings all over the country, too many to list. But even a superficial investigation into gun death statistics shows only a small fraction of gun murders in the United States involve buying AR-15 rifles online. According to the Pew Research Center and The Gun Violence Archive, less than 5% of the 21,000 gun murders in 2021 involved an AR-15. So the 44 million AR-15s owned by U.S. citizens are one problem; the nearly 400 million handguns are a much bigger problem.

We’ll never take away the guns legally owned by our fellow Americans. But the more people buy handguns and AR-15s, the more these weapons will be manufactured and sold. And the more that happens, the more likely it is that guns will end up in the hands of people willing to use them to kill.

This can be mitigated only with measures like more stringent background checks, eliminating the gun show loophole, better implementation of red flag laws, and, yes, ending the sale of AR-15-style weapons and devices that turn semi-automatic rifles effectively into machine guns.

I recently went to a local gun show for the first time. I could have left with an AR-15 rifle for under $500. But I was out of my element, and that ended my curiosity about acquiring that weapon. I’m also reconsidering owning a handgun, mainly because the thought of one of my young grandchildren ever getting hold of it is unbearable. And unless I’m willing to become adept at shooting through occasional practice, it makes little sense to own one.

Tony O’Malley of Emmaus is a freelance writer who primarily publishes in trade magazines, including Fine Woodworking magazine. He wrote this piece as a guest columnist and did not receive pay for it.