Mandatory note that the AR-15 is just "Scary Black Gun" and that gun control efforts would be best served by focusing on features and accessories (and especially, actually fucking enforcing licensing and background checks) that actually increase lethality or mass-shooting potential of a gun.
... but the AR-15 fetishism by gun control opponents is cringe anyway.
A knife is far more intimate!
First: need doesn't play into civil rights. You don't need to have freedom of speech, religion, etc. And yet, these are your rights as a legal resident of the US. (Note that 2A rights are also rights for any person that is a legal resident of the US, including student visa holders.) Would anyone support licensing requirements prior to voting, shitposting online, or not having your house searched by cops on a whim? For anyone that thinks 'features' bans are a good idea, here's the judicial argument against them. Short version: if you can ban everything except the 'gun', because of how a 'gun' has been defined under the law, you can functionally ban guns, which undermines the entire point of having a second amendment. Maybe you think that's good; I would say that the entire history of gun control in the US disagrees with you, as it has always been used as a bludgeon against the black, the immigrant, the working poor, and anyone that doesn't have wealth, power, and privilege.
Second: an AR-15 is useful because:
it's fully modular; you can easily customize it to suit your use-case. This is not true with most other rifles.
They're cheap, and so are parts. Because so many are made, you can pick up one that's perfectly serviceable for about $500. In contrast, my carry pistol (CZ Shadow 2 compact) has a retail of about $1300 for the gun alone, not including spare magazines, optics, replacement grips, trigger parts, barrel bushing, slide stop, IWB holster, etc. My AR-15, all in, with optics, trigger, multiple magazines, replacement barrel, muzzle brake, etc., cost less than my carry gun. A Glock 19 g5 MOS and optic would run about the same as an inexpensive AR-15 and red dot.
ammunition is cheap (for a rifle), and readily available almost anywhere. At about 40cpr, it's cheaper than nearly any other rifle ammunition.
You have fewer issues with over-penetration as a home-defense weapon; the bullet tends to start tumbling as soon as hits drywall, and quickly loses speed. 9mm can have bigger issues with over-penetration in a home than 5.56/.223.
It's more effective than a shotgun for home defense use, because it's more controllable, you have more shots before you need to reload, and it's easier/faster to reload. (Have you ever seen someone doing quad reloads on a shotgun? That's a skill that takes a very, very long time to master.) No, you don't have to just point a shotgun in the general direction of something; at home-defense ranges, shot spread is negligible. Most shotguns will also be longer than an AR-15, which make them less-ideal for more confined spaces.
It's more effective than a handgun; a longer sight radius combined with more points of contact on your body makes it easier to aim and shoot effectively. And, again, you have more ammunition, which is a good thing when you're feeling deeply stressed. (Would an SBR AR-15 or a bullpup rifle be even better indoors? Yes.)
They can be incredibly accurate; it's not difficult to turn an AR-15 into a sub-MOA rifle. A Ruger Mini-14 will never do better than about 2.5MOA.
It can easily be chambered for multiple cartridges by swapping out barrels. With a different barrel, you can use a large variety of different cartridges, the most popular of which are .300BO, 6mm ARC, .400 Legend, .458 SOCOM, and .50 Beowulf.
Plastic and aluminum pieces are less susceptible to environmental issues, e.g., they aren't affected by humidity and rot the way that wood is.
As far as the so-called "fetishism" goes - it's a tool. It's an effective tool, and often the best tool available. It's also an ad hominem attack; it says nothing about the tool, and instead goes after the people.
I disagree with a number of your points but I’m actually more disappointed you you took all the time to write all that out and didn’t bother to take a second to call out the poor trigger discipline shown in the picture.
Nah, she'll figure it out as soon as she NDs through the ceiling. And really, who hasn't had a desk pop once or twice, right? (Hopefully the /s is obvious.)
Most of the factual points are, well, facts. They exist whether you believe in them or not. I'm curious as to where you think they're incorrect.
One point that I don't cover is that, all other things being equal, using an AR-15 for a claim of self-defense is more likely to result in being convicted of a crime (source) because of the way that the average juror perceives the rifle, rather than due to any particular merits of this gun over that gun.
Cringe.
GQ had an article ages ago about how police try to track guns that have been used for murders and it was tragic. Everything has to be on paper, no computers.
the gop made sure of that.
Yes, that's the point. Registries are intended to make confiscation easier; that's precisely why NYS tried to mandate a registry on semi-automatic rifles in the years prior to Bruen. Lack of registries, and forcing agents to do legwork isn't much of an impediment when you're investigating a single homicide, but it's a huge impediment when you're trying to confiscate guns from 10M citizens.
I found it but there's a pay wall now
Inside The Federal Bureau Of Way Too Many Guns | GQ - https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns
A couple of points:
First, when they cite the number of deaths for 2014--33,599--about two thirds of those deaths were suicides. Keep that in mind; when someone says gun deaths they're almost always including suicide in that number. If they say gun homicides, that's the people killed by someone else, either intentionally or negligently.
Second, the article makes it seem like the idea of gun confiscations are a fever dream cooked up by the NRA. And yet, states like New York, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois have passed laws banning certain types of firearms entirely. A registry allows those firearms to be confiscated easily, and, if the law is overturned as unconstitutional, well, too late: your gun was already melted down,
Or, let me put this another way that hopefully seems more plausible to you, given the current political climate.
When you fill out a 4473, question 12.g. says, "Have you ever been adjudicated as a mental defective OR have you ever been committed to a mental institution?" Let's say that tomorrow congress passes, and Trump signs a law that says that anyone that has ever received any treatment for gender dysphoria, or who identifies as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth, is mentally defective. That means that instantly every single transgender person is now mentally defective, and any that have armed themselves for self-defense now illegally possess firearms. If you had a central database of registration information, it would be stupidly easy to see which trangender people had previously-legal firearm, and then both disarm them, and prosecute them for illegally owning firearms as a person that was mentally defective.
As it stands now, you can't even look up a person's name; you can only start with the serial number, and work your way down the chain from the manufacturer to the store that sold it. A crime has to have been committed first, and you need to know what the gun is first, rather than being able to directly look up who has what firearms.
1st. Dear Lord, I didn't think I'd agree with you about anything, but here's it is. Anyway... turd..