Gun executives doubted many buyers would want to spend their money on one. It seemed like overkill for home defense. troops in the Vietnam War, where the weapon earned a new name: the M16.īut few gunmakers saw a semiautomatic version of the rifle - with its shrouded barrel, pistol grip and jutting ammunition magazine - as a product for ordinary people. “An outstanding weapon with phenomenal lethality,” an internal Pentagon report raved. The rugged, powerful weapon was originally designed as a soldiers’ rifle in the late 1950s. The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a bestseller. For this reason, we refer to the rifle broadly as the AR-15 in this series. While Colt still holds the trademark, “AR-15” has become a ubiquitous term for a popular style of gas-operated, magazine-fed semiautomatic rifles. The patent expired, leaving many companies to produce their own weapons, commonly called AR-style rifles.
Colt acquired the AR-15 patent and trademark from Armalite in 1959.
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