Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. We're going to talk now about things you may not know about the AR-15. What you probably do know is that it's become the weapon of choice for mass shooters in the United States. It was used in Sandy Hook, Parkland, Las Vegas, Uvalde, and in Buffalo, for example. That gun, unsurprisingly, was created not for civilians but for the military, you probably know that much, under the name of M16. It was first used in the Vietnam War.

Following a confluence of events after 9/11, gun manufacturers saw an opportunity to market the weapon to civilians. For some Americans, it became and still is seen as the symbol of freedom. Joining me now to tell the story of American gun culture through that of the AR-15 are Cameron McWhirter, an Atlanta-based national reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Zusha Elinson, Wall Street Journal reporter covering America's gun culture in industry. They are the co-authors of a new book called American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15. Welcome to WNYC, Cameron and Zusha. Thanks for coming on with us.

Cameron McWhirter: Thanks for having us.

Zusha Elinson: A real honor.

Cameron McWhirter: Yes, a real honor.

Brian Lehrer: Your book begins with the story of Eugene Stoner, a marine in World War II, who came up with the idea of the AR-15, I see, in his garage in Los Angeles. You can decide who's going to answer, but who was Eugene Stoner, and was his initial vision for the AR-15 what we see today?

Zusha Elinson: Yes, so everything began in this detached garage in Los Angeles. Eugene Stoner was an amateur tinkerer. He was a marine veteran. He was a very gentle guy. He never spanked his kids. He never swore. When he was upset, he would say, "Boy, that frosts me." He was fascinated with the way that guns work and how to improve guns. He would constantly be scribbling gun designs down on restaurant tablecloths, napkins, anywhere he could find. He was just obsessed with engineering challenges. That had started at a very early age.

When he was growing up in the Coachella Valley, he would make little rockets. He would make pipe bombs. He would make anything that he could that exploded. During the 1950s, when he's thinking about these ideas, what he's really trying to do is come up with a lighter gun. At the time, rifles were made of heavy steel and heavy wood, and he thought, "Why can't I make them out of more modern, lightweight materials like aluminum, plastic, fiberglass?" That was really the beginning of him thinking about a new way to make a rifle and really began this sort of revolution in firearms manufacturing.

Brian Lehrer: A lot of people probably don't know that the AR in AR-15 does not stand for "assault rifle." It stands for "ArmaLite Research," the company for which Stoner was the chief engineer in the 1950s. The term, "AR-15," is now used to define the style of the rifle, I gather. Can you just explain that further and what makes an AR-15 an AR-15?

Cameron McWhirter: Well, yes, as Zusha was talking about, this is Cam, the gun used these lightweight materials, which hadn't been used before, and that made the gun lighter. Stoner also redesigned the gun and redesigned how expelled gas from each bullet was used to recycle and load another round. He was able to do that. That was the real innovation that made it even more lighter because he used less parts that were needed to operate that process. He was able to create a gun that was much, much lighter and shot smaller-caliber bullets.

Brian Lehrer: Right, so Stoner had no formal training. You're right and you write about how that gave him the edge to think outside the box and create a lighter weapon. You write a bullet fired from the AR-15 flew nose-first through the air, but when it hit the body, it became unstable. Once unstable, the bullet tore through the body like a tornado spiraling and tipping as it obliterated organs, blood vessels, and bones. I'm getting nauseous as I read that passage, but that said, the AR-15 took a circuitous path before it became the weapon of choice in the US military. Can you talk about how a version of the AR-15 known as the M16 came to be used in Vietnam?

Zusha Elinson: Sure. Stoner joins a tiny little startup called ArmaLite. This is much like a Silicon Valley startup. It's a bunch of brainy guys trying to come up with futuristic weapons that they're trying to sell to the military. They go through a number of iterations of different rifles and lightweight guns, and none of them really pan out. Then, finally, a general from the US military, very powerful man, Willard Wyman, is growing concerned about all these communist threats around the world.

All these communist guerillas are armed with this formidable weapon called the AK-47, a very rugged, rapid-fire rifle. He feels that the US military needs a counterpart to that to counteract that. He comes to Stoner with some specifications and that is really what becomes the AR-15. It's this lightweight gun that fires a small round as you described. In the past, the military's rifles had fired large rounds. What they found in testing is that when they fired a large round, it could do devastating damage to a human being.

It tended to punch right through. The smaller bullet they found, it went unstable very quickly when it entered the human body. The benefit as the military saw it was they wanted their soldiers to carry a lot more ammunition. If the ammunition is lighter, they can carry a lot more ammo. In battles, the person who shoots more lead wins, and that's what they were aiming for. Those were the forces and the thoughts that formed this weapon.

Cameron McWhirter: As you pointed out, the road to that accomplishment was very circuitous. There was a lot of resistance by the military bureaucracy because they had produced their own rifle, which was heavier and more traditional, and they wanted that gun to be the gun that soldiers used. With the arrival of the Kennedy administration and Robert McNamara, there was a real push to find newer things, newer types of weapons. Through a lot of crazy, crazy events, the M16, as it is renamed by the military, standing for Model 16, not very innovative name, but that gun is eventually embraced just as the Vietnam War begins and our troops, marines, and soldiers start to go over there.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, does anybody have a question about the AR-15 for our two guests from The Wall Street Journal, Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, who, together, have written a new book called American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15? We've been talking about the origin story so far, but we're about to talk about what it's come to mean in American culture.

A symbol of freedom to some and the essence of evil to others, to be sure. I wonder if we have any AR-15 owners in the listenership right now who want to talk about why you have an AR-15 and whether it represents freedom to you or something else, or maybe anybody whoever used an M16, the military version, maybe you served in Vietnam or whenever, 212-433-WNYC.

What do you wish more people knew about the gun if you have firsthand experience with it? 212-433-9692, call or text for our two guests. You write in the book, jumping to the present, in many ways, the AR-15 was the ideal firearm for the modern American man. It looked macho, but you didn't have to put much effort into shooting it. [chuckles] By that profile, who owns an AR-15 today in America? What's the demographic?

Cameron McWhirter: Well, there are at least 20 million AR-15-style rifles in civilian hands today. We don't really know the exact number. The answer to that question is lots and lots and lots of different people own the gun. The design that Stoner created to make it light and easy to shoot was perfect for the military function, but it also makes it really easy to pick up and shoot. We've, of course, fired the gun for researching for this book. It's really easy compared to other rifles that you would pick up and fire. It's very easy to fire the gun. As you know, that silhouette that everyone is now aware of infighting over this political chew toy that we've created, that image looks intimidating. It looks military, but it's super, super easy to shoot.

Brian Lehrer: The gun used in the 2012 massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, I see, was created by a company called Freedom Group. In the book, you write about how the leaders of Freedom Group held an emergency meeting the day after the mass shooting, in which they talked shockingly about authorizing a $6 million acquisition of a gun barrel manufacturer, which would increase profits. You examined the CEO's deposition of that meeting or in that meeting. What did he say?

Zusha Elinson: One of the things that we're really grateful for in this book is a lot of people helped us in our research. We were able to get access to internal documents at Freedom Group, emails, memos, and also depositions that came out of some subsequent litigation. What he was talking about in that deposition was that that tragic event, horrific as it was, did not affect the business of selling guns. He has some quote in there talking about how the only thing to do on Monday morning is to wake up and sell guns legally to legal gun owners because that's what they were in the business of doing, and I'm paraphrasing there. That quote has appeared in a number of reviews of our book and people had their eyes opened by that.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Alex in Edison calling in. An AR-15 owner, he says. Alex, thanks for calling. You're on WNYC.

Alex: Thank you so much. The one thing I really wish people understood about AR-15s is that a gun's a gun's a gun and AR-15 is just a modern weapon. I know that when I decided to buy a firearm myself and was trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to purchase. One of the reasons why I chose an AR-15 is because it's also completely modular. If I want to change the caliber of my weapon to, say, use it for hunting purposes, I only need to buy a new upper receiver.

I also think that when we talk about banning firearms like AR-15s, what we're really just talking about is banning modern technology. I'd say it's the equivalent of basically saying we want to stop people from making cellular phone calls, so we're going to ban smartphones while still letting people use flip phones. Overarching, the one thing I wish people really understood about AR-15s is the incredible amount of ingenuity that went into creating them.

I think that when we tell ourselves that banning particular weapons like AR-15s is going to necessarily make us "safer," I think we, A, miss the point of what a firearm actually is and, B, also end up overriding what is actually an incredible piece of American engineering despite the incredible amount of controversy that it has garnered in recent years. Let's be real. The only reason why it has the place that it has is because it is such an effective firearm and it's owned so widely. That's the one thing I wish people knew about AR-15s.

Brian Lehrer: Alex, do you disagree with what a lot of people say that you could have other guns for hunting, you could have other guns for personal protection? What distinguishes the AR-15 from other guns is that if you use it in a crowd, these people who do the mass shootings, you're more likely to kill many other innocent people, many more innocent people than if you use other kinds of weapons.

Alex: I would certainly agree with the fact if we want to talk about semi-automatic firearms and the reality that a semi-automatic firearm can cause a lot more damage as opposed to, say, a bolt-action firearm, that's an undeniable fact, right? I also think that there's a reality here in which, in an effort to "make people more safe," we end up making firearms incredibly expensive, right?

Listen, even as a Democrat myself, I am a big supporter of the Second Amendment because I believe that when we make these firearms illegal, we don't end up making them illegal. We just make them inaccessible to the poor, and like an AR-15 is an affordable way in order to own essentially multiple different types of firearms without actually owning multiple different types of firearms.

Just to reinforce that point with one more thing. At the end of the day, when we ban these firearms, we end up making them inaccessible to the very same demographic of people that oftentimes can't even trust the police to come and protect their own homes because they believe that they're going to get shot by accident. I think that also could be so in this conversation.

Brian Lehrer: Alex, thank you very much. Well, I'm going to let you two react to that caller and put it in the context of whatever you've reported about people with those points of view in your book and how much that's representative of some of the conversation that goes on in policy circles.

Cameron McWhirter: Right. Well, there's a lot to unpack in what the caller said. One point I would start with is his point about the gun being modular. The gun is known as Legos for adults. Gun owners really like the gun and gun makers really like that they can sell accessories. You can swap things out, add things. It's akin to a guy who works in his garage on his car and does that every weekend. You're constantly tinkering. If you have a tinkering mind, you can just spend hours and hours tinkering with the gun. That is appealing to a lot of gun owners. The whole issue of whether it's a good weapon for self-defense, that's a big debate. A lot of people agree with that. A lot of people disagree with that.

Brian Lehrer: In your book, you write that many gun-control activists have stopped pushing for an assault weapons ban at this point. We'll get into some other solutions you highlight, but do either of you want to reflect on the current political viability of a ban on this particular weapon? You heard the caller's arguments against it.

Zusha Elinson: I think an important statistic to think about is that when Congress passed the federal assault weapons ban in 1994, there were 400,000 AR-15s in the country. Part of passing that ban, one of the reasons they're able to do it is that the AR-15 did not have a big constituency back then. Today, as Cam noted, there are more than 20 million in our country. On top of that, it's become a symbol for Second Amendment rights. Passing any sort of ban on the federal level does seem unlikely. On the state level, though, we've seen a cleaving, a splitting of the states. You see more liberal states moving to restrict this gun while Republican-led states are loosening gun laws.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another caller. Here's Bob in Bay Ridge. You're on WNYC. Hi, Bob.

Bob: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to call in to relay a personal, little piece of information. As a Marine Corps vet, I carried the M16 during my service. As a small-town kid from a rural area, everyone had guns when I was growing up. I want to dispel a very common piece of misinformation that the pro-gun community often uses. When they say that M16 round, a NATO 5.56 round is the same as a .22-caliber bullet. It's only talking about the diameter.

There's a huge difference between a .22-caliber bullet, which kids use to shoot at paper targets to learn the basics of marksmanship, versus a NATO 5.56 round, which has a much bigger case and a much bigger gunpowder to project more force. It has a much higher muzzle velocity. As your guests were noting, this muzzle velocity is so high that when the bullet enters the body, it tumbles and shreds organs. A .22-caliber bullet has little powder that it barely penetrates a paper target. There's absolutely no comparison. This is something the gun lobby and gun supporters like to use a lot to try to minimize the damage that M16s or AR-15s can cause.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, thank you very much for your call and given your experience. Let me ask the two of you. If a way to make people safer from AR-15s as they remain legal for now would be to regulate the bullets in some way, I read that nauseating description earlier of what happens when a bullet from an AR-15 tears through the body like a tornado as you described it and the caller reinforced that, could people get the same pleasure out of owning this weapon with the various advantages that the previous caller was describing and things that you've described that people like it for but use a different kind of bullet?

Zusha Elinson: That's a great question and it was really a great call. The caller really knows his stuff and really described well how this bullet works. One of the things we wanted to do with this book was to highlight the stories of survivors of these mass shootings. Now, we all know that the vast majority of murders in this country are carried out with handguns, but people in mass shootings are more often shot with AR-15s. We wanted to tell people what it's like to live with those injuries. We highlight the story of a survivor from San Bernardino. That was a shooting several years ago.

She was shot once in the pelvis and once in the shoulder, pulverized her shoulder, shattered her pelvis. She had to go through more than 60 surgeries and thousands of hours of physical therapy. She had small victories along this path. To us, they seem mundane, but one day, she was standing in her kitchen and she unwrapped a granola bar and ate it with her hand, which she had not been able to use because her nerves had been so damaged. She was beyond elated. We wanted to really show what is that like to live with those injuries from this bullet.

Cameron McWhirter: To your point in addition, this notion that banning the bullets, I don't see how that could happen. The big question here and the one that we hope this history that we've put together will help inform people as a nation go forward is to try to figure out, "How do we keep this gun out of the hands of people who want to hurt other people?" The vast majority of people who own guns in this country aren't shooting other people. Otherwise, we'd be in total chaos. What we do have is this gun is so easily available that some of the people who get it are out to cause mayhem. As you pointed out rightly, you can do a lot of damage really, really, really quickly.

Brian Lehrer: To end on your chapter beyond talking points in which you bring out some stories that offer solutions, one maybe unlikely story is how a sheriff in Polk County, Florida used red flag laws. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about what he did?

Zusha Elinson: Sure. What's interesting about red flag laws as opposed to an assault weapons ban is that it really targets the individual instead of the type of weapon. Because of that, red flag laws, just for your listeners, it allows people to go to courts and ask to remove the weapons from someone who may be threatening suicide or a mass shooting. Because of that, it won support on both sides of the aisle.

We spoke with a sheriff in a very red county in Florida who has, after the Parkland massacre, just embraced this law. Anytime there's an inkling of a mass shooting happen, he uses it to take the guns away. He said, "Well, I have this tool and I'm going to use it to try to prevent mass shootings." We really tried to highlight surprising solutions from surprising sources in this book, and we hope it will open people's minds and eyes.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote mass shootings had 60% lower odds of occurring in states that require permits to purchase guns than in those that didn't. We'll note that New York where we're broadcasting from requires permits. Can you talk about the permitting process and how it helps curb gun violence because that's a target of Second Amendment activists?

Zusha Elinson: Certainly. We spoke with some researchers who have looked at this issue. I just want to note. This is pretty preliminary research they're doing and it's statistical in nature. What they believe happens is that it provides some sort of cooling-down period, but they said they really don't know and that the issue needs to be studied more. They also found that in states that regulated the capacity of magazines that while it didn't impact the number of mass shootings, it could have an impact on the number of people killed in mass shootings. Again, this research is somewhat preliminary.

Cameron McWhirter: I would add that this is the bigger picture is we have to try different things. We have to try different measures here. To just go to our corners and yell at each other and talk about ban, no ban is obviously got us nowhere. We have to have an engineer's mind to this issue. We have to bring that thought process to this issue.

Brian Lehrer: We leave it there with our guests, Cameron McWhirter, an Atlanta-based national reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Zusha Elinson, Wall Street Journal reporter covering America's gun culture and gun industry. They have a new book together called American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15. Thanks both of you so much for coming on.

Cameron McWhirter: Thank you.

Zusha Elinson: Thank you for having us.

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