WAPO Senior Editor Claims AR-15, Designed in Mid-1950s, Was Invented for Nazis

Washington Post senior editor Marc Fisher tweeted on Thursday that the AR-15 rifle was “invented for Nazi infantrymen.”

The entire tweet says: “Invented for Nazi infantrymen, further developed by the US military, the AR-15 was the Texas school shooter’s weapon of choice….”

Fisher’s claim about the gun being designed is surprising, to say the least, as the AR-15 was not even designed until the mid-1950s, ten years after Japan and the Nazis had fallen to the U.S. and her allies.

Moreover, AR-15s did not see production until Armalite produced the Armalite Rifle, the abbreviation of which is “AR.” (The AR in AR-15 does not stand for “assault rifle”  but for Armalite Rifle.)

The Armalite Rifle was sold to Colt, which began producing the rifle in a full auto version called the M-16. That rifle was sent to Vietnam for U.S. troops to use in war.

The semiautomatic version of the rifle, which fires one bullet per trigger pull, retained the AR-15 nomenclature and continues to do so even today.

Back to Fisher’s claim that the AR-15 was “invented for Nazi infrantrymen.”

He may have said this because of his February 15, 2018, Washington Post article, which says, “The AR-15…is a descendant of the machine guns Nazi infantrymen used against Soviet forces in World War II.”

Odds are, Fisher is thinking more about the Sturmgewehr 44 (STG 44) than the AR-15, perhaps even conflating the two. The STG 44 was designed in 1938, nearly 20 years before the AR-15, and was used by Nazis from 1943 till the end of World War II.

The STG-44 was not an AR-15 and neither the AR-15 nor the M-16 were STG-44s.

The Nazi infantry was no longer around when the AR-15 was designed.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.