I am not a gun person but this essentially says: reliability, availability, adaptability/versatility, and affordability/lethality for a range of targets (from gophers to feral hogs) avoiding the need for more then one gun.
What everyone is getting wrong about the weapon behind some of the worst mass shootings in America.
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Some of the exact reasons a version of this design was chosen for the Vietnam war.
JIM SULLIVAN: “The hits on the enemy, were just fatal– almost anywhere. One guy had been hit in the ankle, and it killed him.”
DAVID SCOTT: “Why?”
JIM SULLIVAN: “They couldn’t stop the bleeding. I mean, there was just so much damage.”
DAVID SCOTT: “No matter where you hit the enemy, you’d take him off the battlefield.”
JIM SULLIVAN: “That’s right. It was more lethal than any cartridge that was fired by any army in, in history.”
DAVID SCOTT: “Did you ever imagine—“
JIM SULLIVAN: “No. Never even considered that—it had any civilian application.”
DAVID SCOTT: “Concern you at all?”
JIM SULLIVAN: “Of course, everybody gets concerned when there’s one of these school issues where children are killed by an AR-15. I mean, that’s sickening. But that was never the intended purpose. Civilian sales was never the intended purpose.
DAVID SCOTT: “The lethality of the AR-15, is that reduced in the civilian semi-automatic mode?”
JIM SULLIVAN: “No.”
DAVID SCOTT: “It’s not?”
JIM SULLIVAN: “Same effectiveness. I mean, in fact, the gun is functioning exactly the way the military model is in semi-automatic.”