Uncle updates on the NBC video:
And let’s get this out of they way: they’re not known in the trade as black rifles. They’re known as AR-15s. On some gun boards, they started referring to AR-15s as Evil Black Rifles to poke fun of the assault weapons ban, which seemed to target rifles that were black.
Man, if you had told me back in the early 90s that we’d be upset with the press because they are calling them “black rifles” rather than “killing machines” or “assault weapons”, I would have said you were nuts. Back then they said the only reason for a civilian to own one would be to mow down a kindergarten, which you could do, pretty easily, since 2 minutes with a nail file would convert it into a fully automatic machine gun, according to the news media.
I’m not sure I’d object to the term “military style” from anything other than a public relations point of view. The rifles are made from a military pattern. This you can’t really argue with. While they are not true military assault rifles, they are patterned after them. So I’m not sure “military style” isn’t fitting from a technical point of view.
To me the important message that seems to be getting out there is that these firearms do have a sporting use, and people do use them for legitimate other purposes, like home defense. This has always been the case, but I’m glad to see the media is moving beyond regurgitating whatever the Brady Campaign or Violence Policy Center tells them.