The infamous AR-15 rifle and its several variants, such as the M16, the CAR-15, the XM 177E1, and the M4 Carbine, manufactured by Colt and many others, is probably the worst military rifle the United States has issued since the 1873 "Trapdoor" Springfield got George Armstrong Custer and his men killed at the Little Big Horn. Ballistically, it hasn't much more real striking power than a .357 Magnum, not a good thing in a battlefield weapon. Our enemies in the last couple of wars have had far better ordnance.

I was at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida in the 1960s where the AR-15 was first demonstrated to the public, and it was obvious, even then, that it was a Robert S. McNamara-style lemon, unreliable and massively under-powered, compared to the M14—a 20-round magazine version of the M1 Garand that George S. Patton called "the greatest battle implement ever devised"—that it was tragically replacing.

However despite its many and various shortcomings, the AR-15 seems to have won the hearts of ordinary Americans when I wasn't looking. There's one standing beside my desk this minute as I write this. It's relatively lightweight, splendidly accurate, and produces almost no recoil. Females who try it usually love it, and they have adopted the AR-15 as their rifle. I have a file of hundreds of photos of women and girls shooting the AR-15, mostly with big grins across their faces, and I've witnessed the same phenomenon in real life.