The recent phenomenon of the AR-15’s popularity

Make Me Smart April 4, 2023 Transcript

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Kimberly Adams 

Hello, I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome to make me smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

Samantha Fields

I’m Samantha Fields in for Kai Ryssdal. Thanks for joining us. It is Tuesday, which means it’s time for our weekly deep dive. Today we’re talking about the AR 15. That gun we hear about after what feels like almost every mass shooting, including the one last week at the Covenant School in Nashville where three kids and three adults were killed.

Kimberly Adams

Right. Last week, I mentioned The Washington Post’s “American Icon” series, which is just so powerful. It profiles the AR 15, the most popular rifle on the consumer market. And it there’s so much in this reporting, we really wanted to dig into it and learn more about the rise of the AR 15 and how it really has become this grim symbol of division in our country. And just I’ll flag for people who may be listening with folks with sensitive ears, there is going to be probably some discussion of some really challenging topics in this conversation. So just please be a little mindful of that. But here to make a smart about this is Todd Frankel, a financial reporter at The Washington Post, and one of the authors of the American Icon series. Todd, thank you so much for joining us.

Todd Frankel 

Thank you.

Kimberly Adams 

First of all, can you describe the AR 15? We often hear about the AR 15 or AR 15 style rifles. What what does that mean?

Todd Frankel 

Yeah, it’s sort of a broad definition. It’s, it’s one of the things that makes it tricky for like lawmakers trying to, you know, deal with this weapon if they if they want to. You know, it sort of fits into that rubric of assault weapon, which means it’s a rifle. So it has a long barrel. It’s not a handgun, right? It’s not a hunting rifle because its ability to fire quite rapidly. Very often it has a magazine that can carry like 30 bullets, if not more at a time. But you know, it has a grip that’s like a hand gun. And you know, for folks who’ve never seen one, or everyone I think it’s one of their mind’s eye at least, you know it sort of looks like that classic military infantryman rifle. That’s I think that’s how’s best to describe it.

Samantha Fields 

And that really is what it was originally designed for right? These guns weren’t originally intended or designed to be for people to just sort of have at home. Right?

Todd Frankel 

Exactly right. Yeah. No, it was originally designed by invented by this guy named Eugene Stoner, a very famous gun designer. And he was charged with trying to make a replacement rifle for the US military. They wanted to get rid of its World War Two era rifles. And so yeah, he came up with this design. And his first customer was the US military.

Kimberly Adams 

How common or I guess popular are the style of guns in the US right now. I mean, do we have any sense of how many there are the size of the market, how common?

Todd Frankel 

Yeah, you know, it’s… so the federal government doesn’t really track this or at least doesn’t make public what it knows about the number of AR-15s out there. But industry groups and you know, can sort of triangulate the market. And so we did a survey too. We found that 1 in 20 US adults, or roughly around 16 million people own at least one AR-15. And there’s somewhere between at least 20 million AR fifteens out there in the US. And it’s a recent phenomenon. I think one of the more surprising things that we found was that it’s only in the last decade that like two thirds of the AR-15 that are on the market reached the market. So it’s it’s sort of a juggernaut that’s really quite recent. It’s not a long standing firearm tradition. It’s it’s almost a new thing.

Samantha Fields 

I have to say that’s the piece that of your reporting that stood out to me the most and that I really sort of had been thinking about for a while now. I didn’t realize how recently these rose in popularity. It does feel sort of, as I said at the at the beginning, that they’re everywhere. We hear about them all the time now, especially in the wake of mass shootings. What was it? What changed that made them become so much more popular in the last sort of 10-15 years?

Todd Frankel 

Yeah, I think that was one thing that we found sort of surprising, as we’re doing the reporting too tis that, you know, even the gun industry itself was not a big fan of the air 15 When it first came on the market, right? So it was invented in the late 50s, military takes it up in the 60s, and it’s sort of subsist as like a small oddball, like niche weapon for decades, right? And up until when America had that assault weapons ban that went from 94 to 2004. And even after that expired, the US gun makers, for the most part, were sort of hesitant, you know, they weren’t really welcome at the industry trade shows and gun makers and gun owners didn’t really know what to do with it, didn’t see why they would should have an AR 15. And so it’s really again, only been the last decade that this thing has just really exploded on the scene, or maybe it’s more like 15 years. And it’s become a symbol, even more so than just a weapon, it has taken on the sort of life of its own.

Kimberly Adams 

And what role did marketing play in getting it there?

Todd Frankel 

Yeah, the marketing was interesting for us to look at too, because it’s different than the traditional marketing as we think of like, you know, guns have always had a hunting background. Right? So you think of your grandfather’s perhaps hunting rifle with the wood stock and or if you think about the, the the gun you might see in the back of a pickup truck, you know, in the in the gun rack. But the advertising… Or [guns are] for personal protection, right? The handgun market. But the the advertising for the AR 15 is, was notably more aggressive with, notably more tactical military, police and threatening and fear. And so we saw that there was a real change in tone in how the industry marketed this gun in particular.

Samantha Fields 

And how… you sort of mentioned in your reporting the “halo effect,” which is related to that sort of focus on the use of similar guns are these guns by military and by police. Right? How effective was that? Why is that so important?

Todd Frankel 

Yeah, the halo  effect is like a sort of advertising term of like, you know, one, one thing sort of leading on and encouraging others to use it. So the AR15, at first gun makers, like, “oh, we could sell this to the police and military market.” Smith and Wesson, one of the biggest gun makers in the country, introduced its first AR 15, its first rifle actually in its, you know, 100 plus year history, it was called the M&P 15. And that stood for military and police 15, AR15. And the whole thing was to let regular consumers sort of think and believe, and it was true too, but also that they you know, you’re using the same weapon as the pros do, you know, professional grade. This is, this is not, you know, some simple weapon. This is the same thing that you know, the cops use, or the military uses. And that really proved to be alluring, and really part of the sell and the drive of this weapon.

Kimberly Adams 

Another thing that seems to drive the sale, the sale of AR15s in elections, which is kind of wild to see the direct link between, you know, a rise in sales or something like an AR 15 with contentious presidential elections or potential changes to gun laws. Why why is there such a strong link there?

Todd Frankel 

Yeah I think we sort of called the AR-15, it’s like this barometer of fear. And this gun was, you know, yeah, with the, you know… President Obama when he was first elected in 2008. You know, this, the sales to this gun jumped because there was a Democrat in office, and the belief was, “oh, you know, maybe we’ll they’ll bring back the assault weapons ban” which had only expired, you know, four or five years earlier. So, it is remarkable, though, with each contentious presidential election, with each actually, unfortunately, school shooting or mass shooting, and there’s talk of new regulations, the focus falls on this weapon. And as a result, and this is partly driven the industry, the gun industry itself realizes that they can drive sales by ginning up fear of new bans or, you know, someone coming to take away your gun. And those, the sales of AR 15, all gun sales go up like in these moments, but the sales of AR-15 in particular jump just much more than any other sort of weapon. It’s remarkable.

Samantha Fields 

It is remarkable. And one of the things I want to circle back to sort of when it went from being something that the industry wasn’t even many in the industry weren’t even that supportive of, weren’t really that into right? To sort of where we are now where you said something like 1 in 20 people have these guns in their homes. And I’m curious, you know, it seemed like from your reporting a lot of the motivation for gun makers like Smith and Wesson and others to start making AR 15 and selling them was about money right? Like gun sales were flat for sort of a few years in the early 2000s. And they were looking for a way to get more people to buy guns. Talk about the money piece here.

Todd Frankel 

Yeah, I mean, it’s, so I work at the financial desk of the Post so I’m always sort of curious about the money end of things. And you know, the industry is a business, you know, they want profits. You know, so one of the former Smith&Wesson employees pointed out to me that it’s like, it’s actually a small, like, in terms of size of the national economy, but the amount of attention and like, you know, just destruction and problems that it causes is way outside, way above its punching weight. Right? So yeah, so at the time, you know, the assault weapons ban ends in 2004, and the gun industry is sort of mired in a slump. You know, you can only… guns are sort of an odd product, because, they last forever, right? For for decades, right? You can’t… you have to figure out a way to like make sales. And so you know, you can only sell so many hunting rifles and handguns. And then this new category comes along, and it was really a savior. And I think the industry, you know, I think it’s remarkable, like a really well known firm like Sturm Ruger, they realized that, you know, revenue side, they, they were earning about maybe, you know, $2,000 for each handgun they sold, but they were earning $1,000 for each AR15. So that, that for them made a business case for why they wanted to enter this market.

Kimberly Adams 

The AR15 has really become more than just a gun in this country. You know, looking back on your reporting, and all the people that you talk to, what do you think it has come to symbolize in American life and politics?

Todd Frankel 

Yeah, it’s much more than a gun, just a gun. Right? So, you know, folks describe it to me as the modern day musket, right. So the sort of if the musket is like the founding weapon of the Revolutionary War that, you know, established this country, and so to call the AR 15, the modern day musket sort of elevates it to an almost an untouchable place. You know, we have people in Congress, Congressmen, Republicans who wear lapel pins that are little AR 15, folks have t-shirts that say, you know, “come and take it.” It has become synonymous with, you know, gun rights, and then on the flip side it’s become the target of a lot of the folks who want to push for new gun regulation, right? So most shootings, actually, you know, right, still occur, most homicides occur with handguns. But AR-15s sort of strike unusual amounts of fear and also soak up unusual amounts of attention in American culture, and it’s really become this lightning rod and, you know, in all these different debates that we have.

Samantha Fields 

You’ve talked about the assault weapons ban which was only in place in this country from 1994 to 2004. President Biden has been pushing for another similar kind of ban for a while. It seems pretty clear to me that there are not the votes there. But I’m curious what you would say about sort of the conversation now about any kind of gun legislation, maybe, you know, this in particular, but sort of any other kind of, you know, legislation around guns. Where are we with that?

Todd Frankel 

Yeah President Biden has been very forthright about, you know, pretty much every time the issue of guns comes up, or even when he’s at you know, some other talk about a different topic, he mentioned that he would love to see the assault weapons ban brought back. And, you know, Congress, the House of Representatives, you know, last year, when Democrats still controlled it did actually pass an assault weapons ban, it never took up any action or saw any light of day in the Senate. So it just died. But it’s a very partisan issue. Right. And, you know, I think, you know, not even sure you can actually get a democratic with a razor thin margin of Democrats in the Senate to vote for it. And Republicans just never will. It’s really one of the sort of intractable issues that, you know, I’m not sure anyone would ever imagined back in 94, that they could have passed an assault weapons ban. So you never say never. And it’s just one of those issues that is going to loom there. And then you also have the Supreme Court, right, which has been rolling back on laws. So who knows if it’ll even matter what Congress does.

Kimberly Adams 

Some of the stories in this series are really just awful in terms of the consequences on people’s life and health, the loved ones lost, the very graphic nature of what AR 15 is due to bodies, especially children’s bodies. How has that been for you, covering this story? And like, what do you have to do to sort of take care of yourself when you’re reporting on something like this?

Todd Frankel 

Yeah, it’s, it’s hard. You know, I worked with a huge team of reporters at The Post of this and, you know, it’s… we thought it was really important to sort of.. in a lot of these instances you sort of hear and see the death tolls and you see, you know, these shocking scenes afterwards, but we really want to sort of get inside and sort of really explain why these shootings with an AR15 are different than than other shootings and and really capture what is driving this debate, what’s at stake. It was difficult, you know, but we have reporters, you know, and I think you see us across the country where mass shootings are so frequent, like some of these reporters are even victims, right, are showing up at two, three of these right? There’s that woman who survived one mass shooting and happen to be in Tennessee and Nashville when that unfortunate school shooting occurred. And it’s just, it’s becoming so commonplace that it’s… I think we’re really sort of feel like we’re, it’s more important to tell the story and worry about the, you know, deal with our own consequences, however they may fall.

Kimberly Adams 

Todd Frankel is a financial reporter at The Washington Post. Thank you so much.

Todd Frankel 

Thank you.

Samantha Fields 

Tough one. And I was just looking earlier. I was online on social media and saw a tweet from Nelba Marquez-Greene whose daughter Ana was killed at Sandy Hook, and today should have been her 17th birthday. So when we’re talking about sort of the, the toll of these guns and the rise of these guns, I’m glad you brought that up at the end, because it’s, it’s huge.

Kimberly Adams 

And this, this idea of it becoming so common, is so rough… When I used to, when I used to work in the Middle East, I remember there were all these bombings in different countries, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, you know, you got to this point where there were bombings with really high death tolls every day. And we didn’t talk about all of them in the news, because at some point people just sort of tune it out. Like, “oh, there’s been another bombing in Iraq today, and another 20,30 people are dead.” And those are people with lives and families and things. And it feels very similar to how we’ve started talking about mass shootings, because they are so common. And I really hope we don’t get to the place where people just become these numbers and that it stops, you know, registering that these were people’s lives, you know, and it will be fascinating to see how, you know, sort of Gen Z and younger as they enter the voting population, start to really push through.

Samantha Fields 

Who are so affected by these school shootings in a way that you and I weren’t.

Kimberly Adams 

Exactly because this is the, this is the generation that has really grown up with the drills and the lock downs, and like… I hid under my desk and training for tornadoes when I was a kid, you know, and they have all of these traumatic experiences training for mass shootings, and some of them have experienced it. And I wonder how that’s going to translate into when it comes to actual political leaders.

Samantha Fields 

Yeah, it was interesting reading this piece and talking as Todd was about just how recent this is, and the rise of these guns in particular, but also I saw a graph from from a different piece of reporting, also on social media that had this very… it was very distinctive, and it sort of was a scatterplot graph. And it had a line marking when the assault weapons ban expired. And the incredible growth in mass shootings after that corresponds very much with the rise in popularity of this gun and you know, it’s after 2004. And it really is just… I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I saw it. So if you’re listening to this and you have thoughts on the rise and popularity of the AR 15, we’d love to hear from you. Our number is 508-827-6278. That’s also known as 508-U-B-SMART. Or you can email us at make mesmart@marketplace.org. We’ll be right back.

Kimberly Adams 

Not to keep things too heavy but since we are coming back, I’ll start the news fix with something also related to war and I guess the weapons of war. But a little bit distant. NATO because of Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine, NATO now has a new member. Finland joined the NATO military alliance on Tuesday, which is, you know, kind of the exact opposite of what Russia wanted. Exactly, because the whole reason that Russia said it was invading Ukraine was to prevent NATO from expanding and to prevent Ukraine specifically from joining NATO. And now as a result of their actions, with Finland joining, it doubles the amount of Russia’s border that is, you know, bordered by NATO countries, which…

Samantha Fields 

I can’t get over that. It’s incredible.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, it is and, you know, at great cost to the Ukrainians and and to the Russians. I’m very fascinated also by this sort of shift away from neutrality. And this idea that more and more European governments are being pushed to take a more active stance. You know, you have this sort of post World War Two, desire to just like avoid conflict at all costs, stay out of it, like negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, don’t take the military option unless you absolutely have to. And this seems to be a conflict that’s really pushing that, that, you know, desire for neutrality and Finland is like “I can’t do it anymore.” And so Finland adopted its neutrality after it was defeated by the Soviets then, not the Russians at the time but the Soviets, in World War Two. But, you know, the Ukraine invasion is what triggered this. And so that’s part one of my news fix. But while I was looking for a little bit more news about Finland joining NATO, I actually saw that Finland’s Prime Minister just kind of got the boot it seems. So it was a young woman named Sana Marin, I believe is how you say her name, but I may have that wrong. But she was one of the most popular Prime Minister ministers in Finland and the century, and like many of the women leaders globally, was really praised for how she handled the COVID 19 pandemic. And she got Finland to join NATO and really brought them, brought her population along with a lot of support for this move. And yet, her party lost control of the Finnish Parliament. And in the system where you have Parliament’s and prime ministers, whoever has the most seats, gets to pick the leader of the government, unlike our system. And so, Sunday’s election, I’m gonna I’m reading here from The Guardian. “In Sunday’s election, her center rights Social Democratic Party increased its vote share and number of MPs,” ministers of Parliament. “Nonetheless, she and the SDP have been defeated, and Finland is moving to the right.” So the leader of the Conservative National Coalition party is likely to be the next prime minister, because between his party winning more seats and the sort of collapse of some of the other left-leaning groups and Marin’s coalition. You know, now it looks like the right and more conservative parties have enough to form their own coalition and push the country a little more right-ward. And a big issue was the economy. And now that you know, the pandemic is lessening in its impact on many people, not all people, there’s a big push in Finland to return to a bit more restrictive social services or to dial back on spending and to really work on you know, unemployment. The person who ended up winning, whose name I’m not even going to attempt, he promised to cut spending on unemployment and benefits and other welfare programs in order to allow tax cuts. Which is something that we have all heard before. So it, you know, this is something that’s not just happening in Finland, we seeing a lot of this move and other parts of Europe as well. And you know, it’s a version of what we get here, too.

Samantha Fields 

I was just gonna say this all sounds pretty familiar, the broad strokes anyway.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, for sure. What do you have?

Samantha Fields 

Alright, mine is a little bit later or more of a news you can use kind of news fix here today. If you are planning to travel internationally anytime soon, and you need a new passport, or you might need to renew your passport, you might want to send that in right now because there are huge backlogs at the Passport Agency these days. That was a big thing back in sort of late 2020-2021, when so much was shut down, everything was taking a really long time. I remember I renewed my passport at the end of 2020 and it took a really long time. But then it seemed to get better and now those huge backlogs are back. They are saying the average wait time is two to three months for most people to get their passports back these days. And even if you pay to have it expedited, you’re looking at seven to nine weeks, which is pretty long. Now, it seems a lot of that has to do with staffing, which, you know, is also sort of a story that we’re hearing in all sorts of industries these days. But, and especially in the government, but it’s staffing, and then it’s also a demand issue. They’re getting record numbers of people applying for passports and they just can’t keep up. So if you might need a passport, you might want to get on that soon.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, it’s um it’s always fascinating to me anytime I think about passports is how few people have passports. You know we speak about them as if, you know, everybody has a passport. And this sort of popular narrative of like the international travel culture that you see on Instagram and on TikTok or whatever. And it’s not so common. I feel like there’s a lot of FOMO and people feeling like they’re the only ones not going to these cool places. But a lot of people don’t get to travel or don’t want to travel. Like people like Disney World.

Samantha Fields 

That’s true. That said, I was sort of struck by this. It says “the department receives about half a million passport applications each week” which is about 30%. This was in 2023 or late 2022. And it said it was about 30% more than during the same time last year. So for whatever reason, a lot more people it seems are applying for passports these days. And…

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, it’s probably the pandemic. Probably the pandemic and people wanting to get stuff off that bucket list. All right. That’s it for the news fix. Let us do the mailbag.

Mailbag 

Hi Kai and Kimberly. This is Godfrey from San Francisco. Jessie from Charleston, South Carolina. And I have a follow up question. It has me thinking and feeling a lot of things.

Kimberly Adams 

To my great delight, listeners have been calling in about cherry blossom season. Here’s a voice memo we got from a listener in Japan.

Matthew 

My name is Matthew Damp, and I live in Makuhari Baytown, which is the cheapest side of Tokyo. And I had a little tidbit to add to your make me smart about the hamani in Tokyo. Way back in the day, some of the daimyo, the samurai who were in charge, the samurai lords in charge of different areas, would intentionally plant cherries, cherry trees along the sides of the dikes that they’ve built. And then every year they lay down fresh gravel and get free work from other people coming to watch the the cherry blossoms. They would pack down the fresh gravel. Apparently that became common all over the place. So when you see pictures of cherry trees down the edges of dikes and canals in Japan, that’s why.

Kimberly Adams 

That is amazing. Jinx! Yeah, I love that. That is such a great… like that is the thing you throw out in trivia, you know, or at a cocktail party where you’re like, “did you now that we’re talking about cherry blossoms.” And just like wow. That’s so cool! Thank you so much, Matthew.

Samantha Fields 

Yeah thank you for sharing that, for sure. And speaking of cherry blossoms, we also got a gorgeous aerial photo from Lily in Seattle. And it is of cherry trees in full bloom on the University of Washington’s campus, apparently the best known spot in the area for cherry blossoms and it’s really incredible. The light is beautiful. It makes me want to be there. So we’re going to add that photo to our show page if you want to go check it out.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s a really stunning picture. You see this like gorgeous sunset with like oranges and blues in the background and these big white puffy clouds. And then it’s like this look down on a quad with like the paths criss crossing across the bright green. And then the entire sort of quad area is rimmed by these very puffy, bright pink flowering trees with these sort of pastel colored buildings that are all like white, whitish, gray stone and blue roofs, you know, just behind them all the way around. It’s a lovely photo.

Samantha Fields 

That certainly makes you want to go. How’s the cherry blossom scene in DC right now?

Kimberly Adams 

They’re pretty much gone at this point in time. But, you know, they were they were nice. They don’t last that long. And yeah, you know, I’m in St. Paul, Minnesota at the moment where there are not so many flowering trees to be seen. Alex the engineer is like yeah, no. All right. Before we go, we are going to leave you with this. This week’s answer to the make me smart question, which is: what is something you thought you knew but later found out you are wrong about. In the absolute amazingness of Marissa Cabrera, after I was talking yesterday about wanting to talk to one of these new astronauts from the Artemis mission. She somehow pulled it together. And this morning, I got to speak to the commander of the Artemis 2 mission. And his name is Reid Wiseman. And here’s his answer to the make me smart question.

Reid Wiseman 

So when I was a kid growing up, I would watch space shuttles launch from Kennedy Space Center on the coast of Florida. And I truly thought rocket ships just went up into space and that was it. And it honestly, it wasn’t until I was far too old, that I realized rocket ships accelerate down range almost parallel to Earth, like throwing a baseball as fast as possible. And that is how you get into orbit, achieving about 17,000 miles an hour for low Earth orbit. And then I can’t wait to see that on Artemis as we’re heading out to the moon because we’re gonna go to some fantastic orbits on our way.

Samantha Fields  

Wow, that is incredible.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, it was just like, how was your day Kimberly? I started my day talking to an astronaut. It’s pretty good!!

Samantha Fields 

Doesn’t get much better than that for Tuesday.

Kimberly Adams 

It really doesn’t. Not for Tuesday, especially.

Samantha Fields 

Especially. I want to hear more of that conversation.

Kimberly Adams 

You will don’t worry.

Samantha Fields 

Well, we would love to hear something you’ve been wrong about. Leave us a voicemail with your answer to the make me smart question. Our number is 508-827-6278 or 508-U-B-SMART.

Kimberly Adams 

Make me smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Antonio Barreras. Today’s program was engineered by Drew Jostad with help over here in St. Paul by Alex Simpson. And mixing by Gary O’Keefe.

Samantha Fields 

Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our acting senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital. And Marketplace’s Vice President and General Manager is Neal Scarbrough.

Kimberly Adams 

What’s the weather like in New York right now?

Samantha Fields 

It looks incredible outside. I think it’s almost 70. I have to go out for a walk.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh man.

Samantha Fields 

I know I haven’t been out yet though, which kills me.