AMERICA'S SWEETHEART

The radical 60-year evolution of the AR-15.

New shooters and gun buyers can be forgiven for thinking the AR-15 has always been the way it is. Nope. It’s had more than a half-century of growth, modification and upgrades.

The history of the platform is long and storied. Buckle up.

TRIPPING OUT OF THE GATE

In the beginning, there was the Colt SP1. This was a rifle with a fixed stock, a triangular handguard around a 20inch barrel, a carry handle and sights that needed a tool to adjust them. The barrel was skinny, and the twist it had was one turn in 12 inches—suitable only for 55-grain FMJ bullets.

The time? 1967. And the Colt had an MSRP of $195. (In 2022 bucks, that comes to $1,650.) The shooting public wasn’t impressed. The world, hunting and tactical, was still dominated by .30-caliber rifles, such as the M14 or FAL, and hunting done with Winchester (a Model 94 ran $85, a Model 70 cost $150) or Remington (M700, $130) bolt guns in .30-06. The few varmint shooters that existed weren’t at all interested in a self-loading rifle.

The teething problems that happened with any new rifle of the day were worked out, much to the detriment of those involved, in the jungles of Vietnam. This is the origin of many of the myths you’ll read about the “unreliable” AR-15, M16 and M4.

The jungles also called for a variant, the “Commando,” which ended up being a carbine with a barrel of 11.5 inches and a sliding stock that could be made shorter for storage and transport. During this time, and the next decade-plus, you could buy your Colt any way you wanted, provided it was black, an SP1—take it or leave it. Oh, the semi-auto variant of the Commando might be in the catalog, with its 16-inch barrel … but good luck finding one.