John Kerry’s AR-16

Sorry, for all of you out there laughing at John Kerry over his AR-16 comment, which you should because he’s proof that you can marry more money than you could ever hope to make, but money can’t buy you functioning brain cells.

But the AR-16 is a thing, and I would totally own one too if I could.

Related posts (automatically generated):

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  2. A John Kerry Moment?
  3. Response to John Edwards

4 thoughts on “John Kerry’s AR-16”

  1. I would be more offended by Kerry’s display of ignorance if I hadn’t met early Vietnam Veterans who referred to “the .30/30s we carried in the Army.” (They were 7.62 x 51 M-14s.)

    Both varieties of veteran (Kerry and my early-war contemporaries) have excuses; Kerry cross-pollinated the M-16s he carried, with the civilian AR-15s that were available even then; most of the guys I served with knew vaguely that our M-14s were “.30 caliber”, whatever that meant.

    (Kerry began active duty about a year before I got out of the Army.)

    Nothing I experienced in the military was likely to turn anyone into a gun hobbyist if (like me) they weren’t already. I actually had a Staff Sergeant lifer in my platoon who had served a hitch on the Army Rifle Team; he was a good shooter, obviously, but it was “just a job” as far as he was concerned. He had no personal interest in the sport at all. (He also was a qualified Airborne Ranger. Don’t ask me how we wound up in the same platoon.)

    IMO if we are reduced to appealing to virtue-signaling (knowledge of technical details being the virtue) for arguments to jazz the base we’re skating on pretty thin ice. Most of the population is more ignorant than Kerry and doesn’t care at all. They all understand perfectly what he means.

  2. BTW, I forgot to thank you for linking to that article with the history of 7.62 x 51 rifles on the basic AR conceptual platform.

    The last rifle I really craved was the AR-10 HB, but I was put off both by the price, and the magazine problem. But those were the days when I could still conjure fantasies of myself in Cowboy and Indian combat scenarios. I outgrew those shortly after that.

    Anyone else remember when surplussed Portugese AR-10s were available from Ye Olde Hunter, et al? One of those, and a BM-59 are a couple I wish I’d picked up back in the day. I think I remember both being around $150, but I could be wrong about the AR-10s. Of course $150 was a fair piece of change at the time.

    1. “Anyone else remember when surplussed Portugese AR-10s were available from Ye Olde Hunter, et al?”

      I couldn’t find any of the old ads for AR-10s or BM-59s, but in the mid-’60s CETME’s were going for $219.95, so maybe that was a more realistic price. The MSRP for an AR-15 was $250 in 1969.

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