Conservative politicians pose with AR-style rifles for Christmas card portraits. Churches in deep red states give them away at raffles. Demonstrators on both sides of the political divide tote them at protests.
A bill in Congress supported by conservative representatives even wants to designate the AR-15 style rifle as “the National Gun of the United States.”
The AR platform of rifle – used in several of the most notorious and deadly mass shootings in American history in the past two decades – is in the spotlight again because a would-be assassin used one on Saturday to shoot former President Donald Trump, grazing him on the ear.
Deft marketing and the partisan divide have helped drive many Americans’ embrace of this style of gun, making it a potent cultural and political symbol in a country where the Constitution’s Second Amendment enshrines the right to bear arms.
“The romanticism around the AR-15s comes from marketing,” said Carolyn Gallaher, an American University professor whose research has in part focused on militia violence and who has followed the rise of AR-style guns. “It’s like theater.”