Tag Archives: Armalite

Mr. Stoner, at 100

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Indiana’s own Eugene Morrison Stoner cut his teeth in small arms as a Marine Corps armorer in World War II and left the world some of the most iconic black rifles in history.

Born on Nov. 22, 1922, in the small town of Gosport, just outside of Bloomington, Indiana, Stoner moved to California with his parents and graduated from high school in Long Beach. After a short term with an aircraft company in the area that later became part of Lockheed, the young man enlisted in the Marines and served in the South Pacific in the Corps’ aviation branch, fixing, and maintaining machine guns in squadrons forward deployed as far as China.

Leaving the Marines as a corporal after the war, Stoner held a variety of jobs in the aviation industry in California before arriving at ArmaLite, a tiny division of the Fairchild Engine & Airplane Corporation, where he made soon made his name in a series of ArmaLite Rifle designs, or ARs, something he would later describe as “a hobby that got out of hand.”

 

You know the AR-15, but what about the AR-1? How about the AR-9?

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The “AR” in each case does not stand for “assault rifle” as those who are uninformed often think. It is, in fact, short for Armalite, the firearms company that employed a generation of incredible forward-thinking gun designers, engineers, and inventors including Eugene Stoner, Charles Sullivan, Charles Dorchester, Arthur Miller, Daniel Musgrave, Robert Fremont and even the great Melvin Johnson (inventor of the M1941 Johnson rifle series).

Established in the early 1950s as a division of the Fairchild Airplane Corporation, the latter perhaps most famous today for their A-10 Warthog tank buster attack plane, Armalite leveraged aviation industry’s advances and applied them to firearms. Their engineers registered some of the first firearm patents incorporating foamed plastics in both stocks and handguards, aluminum receivers, self-lubricating alloy gun barrels, folding synthetic buttstocks, and other developments.

Before the original Armalite company tanked in 1983, they made it from the AR-1 to the AR-180, with lots of interesting stops in between to include bolt-action rifles, 22s, and even shotguns.

A better look at the whole AR lineage in my column at Guns.com.

Meet the first “AR”

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ArmaLite started in Hollywood of all places in 1954 as a division of the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Company and long before the iconic AR-10 and AR-15 came along, their first rifle was the AR-1 (ArmaLite Rifle-1) better known as the Parasniper.

The gun was designed by George Sullivan and Charles Dorchester (both of whom went on to pitch in with Eugene Sullivan on the AR-15) between 1948-54 to be a super lightweight sniper rifle, presumably for airborne and air assault troops. It used a foam-filled fiberglass stock and an aluminum alloy barrel with a steel liner to prevent over pressure ka-booms.

11287-SA.A.1The improved bolt-action (some used steel FN Mauser bolts while others have been seen with Remington 722 bolts) also made extensive use of alloys. Fitted with a commercial 4x Bushnell Chief scope, mount, rings, and sling the whole thing weighed in at 6-pounds flat. Now remember this was a half century before today’s fluted barrel polymer stock “light hunter” guns that still don’t come that close to 6-pounds when outfitted.

11138-SA.A.1

They were chambered in .308 and 30.06 Springfield and some models had a muzzie break to help tame the recoil.

Parasniper brocure NASM-NASM-9A12088

What became of them?

Well just 25 were reportedly made and several were submitted for testing to Aberdeen Proving Ground where the Army found them lacking citing frequent extractor failures and poor accuracy. At least four test models were forwarded to Springfield Armory in 1961 where they remain today in the Museum’s extensive collection.

73371954.SsRBrFAu

Note the peculiar brown color to the stocks. That’s 1950s plastics for you…

SN# 44

SN#158 weighing in at Weighs 5 lbs. 12 oz

SN#415 chambered for T65E3 with a Bushnell 4x scope

SN# 351533 (?)

SPAR's Parasniper collection. Note the "ArmaLite Hollywood" rollmarks on the receiver showing early production as the company later moved to Costa Mesa

SPAR’s Parasniper collection. Note the “ArmaLite Hollywood” rollmarks on the receiver showing early production as the company later moved to Costa Mesa

As for ArmaLite? The biggest mistake the company made was when they sold the rights to the AR-15 to Colt, as their follow-on products: the AR-17 semi-auto shotgun (it had a gold finish with an aluminum barrel– no fooling) and the AR-18/180 never really caught on before the company folded its Costa Mesa location in 1973.

Eagle Arms picked up the rights and trademarks in 1995 and carries on as ArmaLite today, based out of Geneseo, Ill. and has since introduced the AR-20, 30, 50 et.al.

An ‘assault weapon’ by any other name…

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In 1989 California lawmakers puked up one of the first assault weapons bans in U.S. history and in subsequent years added tweaked it and added such blanket restrictions as prohibitions on .50BMG (because there are so many crimes done with these…). While the California Department of Justice has tried really hard to ban anything that is AR-15ish or AK-47like, all enterprising gun owners have had to do is use devices such as ‘bullet buttons’ and low-capacity magazines to be able to own one today.

Still, between 1989 and 2001, the state allowed the registration by civilians of grandfathered guns. Well through Guns.com I did a public records request to CA DOJ and obtained their list of registered guns, all 145,253 of them. A detailed analysis found some really interesting things.

Here’s a snapshot of the top 25 manufacturers for example:

 

  •     28,259 Colt Mfg, almost all Sporters and AR-15 type rifles
  •     16,665 Chinese Norinco/Polytech/Clayco rifles, primarily AK and SKS pattern guns in 7.62mm
  •     14,797 Bushmasters, almost exclusively XM-15 series rifles
  •     9,158 Heckler & Koch firearms, with Model HK 91, 93 and 94 rifles accounting for the majority
  •     4,529 Springfield Armory rifles, primarily M1/M1A 7.62mm guns
  •     4,528 IMI guns including 179 Galil rifles and 4301 UZIs of multiple types in 9mm and .45
  •     4,199 Armalites including 291 AR-10s and 1046 AR-180s
  •     3,124 Eagle AR-pattern firearms
  •     2,924 Intratec branded guns, all variants of the TEC-9/AB-10 and TEC-22 pistol
  •     2,732 Ruger firearms, mostly Mini-14 and Mini-30 rifles
  •     2,199 FN/Browning/FNH with mainly FAL and FNC type rifles listed
  •     2,189 SWD guns mostly Cobray and M10/11/12 MAC-style pistols
  •     1,876 Arsenal made AK-pattern rifles in 7.62mm
  •     1,461 DPMs, all AR-15 variants
  •     1,457 Austrian Steyrs, almost all AUG-series 5.56mm rifles
  •     1,303 Korean Daewoo firearms in several variants, almost all 5.56mm rifles but also 16 DR300s in 7.62 and 5 DP51 pistols
  •     1,170 Franchi shotguns in the uber-scary SPAS 12 and LAW12 varieties
  •     1,132 CAI/Century guns, primarily 7.62mm rifles
  •     1,082 Hungarian FEG guns, mostly SA85 AK-style rifles
  •     914 Auto Ordnance, typically all Thompson 1927 style carbines
  •     770 Imbel L1A1 type rifles in 7.62mm
  •     693 DSA rifles, all SA58 models
  •     526 Enterprise Arms 7.62mm rifles
  •     496 Berettas including some 122 AR-70s and 60 rare BM-59s
  •     445 SIGs, including 122 P-series pistols and 139 SG550 5.56mm rifles
  •     392 Benellis, split roughly between their M1 and M3 tactical shotguns

The rest of the 3,000~ word report over at Guns.com along with a photo gallery of some of the more interesting guns here.

weaver arms nighthawk

 

Happy St. Paddy’s: Those ‘red-headed’ AR18 rifles

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And here is a bonus in honor of all those who wore green to work today…

Ireland never really had that much of a firearms industry, but when you mention the AR18 across the pond, you should know that it was (almost) the most iconic rifle of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland during the last part of the 20th century

female ira terrorist with AR180 ar-18 ar18 rifle

More in my column at Guns.com