Orlando, Fla. (home of giant theme parks) has 2 high profile murders in under 24 hours

[Drew Phipps]

He (Stoner) designed the original AR-15 in the late 1950s, working on it in his own garage and later as the chief designer for ArmaLite, a then small company in southern California. He made it light and powerful and he fashioned a new bullet for it a .223 caliber round capable of piercing a metal helmet at 500 yards. The Army loved it and renamed it the M16.

No. The Army hated it. It was "too puny." It was "inferior in some respects to the M-14." It "in no way represented enough of an improvement in the state of the art to justify replacing the M-14." It was forced down their throats by JFK and MacNamara. The Army only accepted it with three modifications: an unnecessary manual bolt closing device was added, the rifling inside the barrel was altered, and a slower burning powder was mandated for the cartridge. The resulting kludge was the M-16, which malfunctioned so often on the battlefield that Congressman Richard Ichord's congressional committee found that the Army's alterations "bordered on criminal negligence" (although which side of that border the Army was on is still an open question).


The Air Force loved the AR-15. The Secret Service loved the AR-15. In fact, an AR-15 was in the SS presidential follow-up car in Dealy Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963. In fact, Secret Service Agent George Hickey, according to his own statement, picked up the AR-15 and prepared to use it.