The AR-15 is a symbol of liberty or loss, depending on whom you ask

ONE OF THE first people to shoot an AR-15 was John Wayne in 1957. Wayne, then the face of American masculinity and the gunslinging West, was at a nearby shipyard repairing his boat when he heard that ArmaLite, a small gunmaker, was testing a new kind of firearm; he dropped by to try it. The AR-15 would go on to become one of America’s most famous and controversial weapons: the gun with which not just real war, but culture war, was fought.

As Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, two reporters for the Wall Street Journal, recount in their new history of the AR-15, Eugene Stoner, who worked for ArmaLite, was the underdog inventor who wanted to craft a tool for defending American lives. Stoner was a self-taught engineer with a penchant for clip-on bow ties. He improved on what came before by making his gun’s central mechanism, or receiver, out of aluminium rather than heavy steel and its stock out of fibreglass. Gas, rather than a delicate metal rod, would eject spent casings and load in new rounds, enabling it to fire rapidly—around 45 rounds per minute.