Interview with Reed Knight on Eugene Stoner and the AR-15
BY Herschel Smith
1 year, 9 months ago
My regular readers know that in these parts, we speak the names of John Moses Browning and Eugene Stoner with hushed reverence. As an engineer, I have a special appreciation for fine engineering as was performed by both of these men, as well as by Jim Sullivan.
There have been indications in the past that Eugene Stoner’s family was opposed to civilian ownership of the very weapon he designed and built. This article points to that.
“Our father, Eugene Stoner, designed the AR-15 and subsequent M-16 as a military weapon to give our soldiers an advantage over the AK-47,” the Stoner family told NBC News late Wednesday. “He died long before any mass shootings occurred. But, we do think he would have been horrified and sickened as anyone, if not more by these events.”
But their comments add unprecedented context to their father’s creation, shedding new light on his intentions and adding firepower to the effort to ban weapons like the AR-15. The comments could also bolster a groundbreaking new lawsuit, which argues that the weapon is a tool of war — never intended for civilians.
Eugene Stoner would have agreed, his family said.
Of course, this is supposition and hearsay, with his family attempting to leverage the reputation of their father for their own political ends. But you see why nerves are sometimes a bit on edge when someone like Reed Knight speaks about these issues. Reed knew him better than virtually anyone else and worked with him at KAC before Stoner passed away.
Along with (on the same day as) the shooting in Tennessee, no less than four hit pieces came out in the legacy media on the AR-15. It’s not my intent to rehearse the details of the shooting (nor to tackle every hit piece). That has been done elsewhere, from the rapid response of the police (versus in Uvalde), to the need to harden schools, and finally to the fact that she chose this school because it was a soft location whereas other potential targets had too much security.
My intention is to fisk one of the hit pieces from The Washington Post. In this piece, Mr. Knight is quoted.
Eugene Stoner, a World War II veteran who invented the AR-15 in the late 1950s while working at Armalite, a small engineering firm in Hollywood, had no interest in civilians using his invention, said C. Reed Knight, who owns a Florida gunmaking company and considers Stoner his mentor.
“He looked at this thing as only for the military side of the house,” Knight said. Stoner, who died in 1997, thought his invention was past its prime by the mid-1990s, Knight said. He added that Stoner would have been horrified by the idea that “he invented the tool of all this carnage in the schools.”
I figured that this was a response to a very specific chronological question, and so I contacted Mr. Knight for clarification. He graciously allowed me to spend some time with him over the telephone. Since there is no transcript (I didn’t do this interview via email), I’ll try faithfully to reproduce some of the things he conveyed to me. You’ll have to trust that I got it right.
First of all, Reed began a rundown of the history of Eugene’s work on the AR platform. I knew all of this anyway, but it was nice to here Mr. Knight reminisce about his relationship and Eugene’s work. He began in the late 1950s on the design. It is of course correct to say that Eugene didn’t design the rifle for civilian use, since his work was targeted towards the military, and it was a military contract under which he worked. He was paid to work on a rifle for the military.
There is a great gulf between saying that his work was done for, and financially supported by, the U.S. military, and asserting that civilians shouldn’t own the rifle, or that Eugene would have been opposed to such ownership. That’s what’s being implied in The Washington Post. Both Mr. Knight and I agreed on this point, and Mr. Knight made it clear that he was answering a very specific question on chronology, not politics or liberty and rights.
As an editorial point, I’ll observe that what Mr. Reed stated to me and what I recalled as the next events dovetail together. Eugene sold the patent for the AR platform rifle to Colt in the early to mid 1960s. Reed said to me, “… and colt immediately wanted to market the rifle in the civilian community, which of course is their right.”
Also as an editorial point, for more evidence of both the timeline here, and ATF malfeasance, my friend and colleague David Codrea sent me this article (which I had read before but forgot), in which Len Savage worked with Stephen Stamboulieh to obtain original classification letters through FOIA. The results are interesting.
“Colt sent a pilot model rifle (serial no. GX4968) to the BATF for civilian sale approval on Oct. 23, 1963. It was approved on Dec. 10, 1963, and sales of the ‘Model R6000 Colt AR-15 SP1 Sporter Rifle’ began on Jan 2, 1964,” one critic of the article contended. “The M16 wasn’t issued to infantry units until 1965 (as the XM16E1), wasn’t standardized as the M16A1 until 1967, and didn’t officially replace the M14 until 1969.”
Civilians had this rifle before the troops in the field did.
“There are several things that are interesting,” Savage told AmmoLand News about the classification letter. “One, it shows pre-Gun Control Act ATF policy on the AR-15 system,” He noted. “It also shows why the most likely reason an AR lower is considered a ‘frame or receiver’ is that from 1962-1968 Colt marked the lower receivers with the information (flat surface as the upper is round). Meaning the regulatory scheme used by ATF 1968 to present is based on what Colt marked pre-1968 and not the statute. Willfully and knowingly.”
“Len hit the nail on the head,” Stamboulieh weighed in. “The current notice of proposed rule-making reads as if there was just no way the ATF could have known that the AR-15 split modular design was a thing. Back in 1968, the agency promulgated the definition of frame or receiver, post-dating the classification letter of the AR15, and that shows why they should have originally known what they were making a definition for.”
He and Savage also cleared up a point of potential confusion on why the classification letter refers to the AR-15 as an “automatic rifle.”
“It is because (my thoughts) that they sent two rifles,” Stamboulieh offered. “One was an automatic rifle, and the other was the modified rifle made to be not a machinegun (a semi-automatic version). So the ATF said, yes, this modified ‘automatic rifle’ is not a firearm under the NFA (therefore, not a machinegun and in other words, a semi-auto).”
“Bingo!” Savage replied. “They sent an ‘Unserviceable’ M16 so ATF could compare it and the new rifle and were told it was still considered an MG even if unserviceable since it was not properly destroyed. I laughed when Colt was told ‘file a Form 2’ in order to get it back… Wonder if it is still in National Firearms Collection?”
“In 1968 firearms industry terminology ‘automatic rifle’ means the same as ‘auto-loading rifle,’ i.e., a rifle that loads itself for the next shot,” he recalled. “Even in 1979-1980 when I took my hunters’ safety course the State of Michigan used the two terms interchangeably throughout the course.”
Thanks to David for reminding me of this article, and to Len and Stephen for the work on the FOIA.
Returning to Reed Knight, I continued with him on what Eugene thought about firearms ownership by civilians. He told me that Eugene had a large collection of firearms and was a strong supporter of the second amendment. Just to close the loop on all of this, I asked Reed if he believed that the rifle he currently builds at Knight’s Armament should be prohibited from civilian ownership?
I was met with an unequivocal ‘NO’. He did opt to clarify that he firmly believes that, but most of the work they do at KAC is for the military since they focus their efforts on military contracts. But that doesn’t change his beliefs about and support for the 2A.
Reed went on to discuss the current state of affairs concerning schools, shootings, etc. We both believe in firmer security including armed resource officers and armed teachers, and he mentioned cultural changes that might have led to the situation we see today, including video games (I don’t happen to agree with that assessment concerning FPS gaming), unaddressed mental health issues, and other things. I mentioned that my own readers might strongly add spiritual and moral problems as the primary cause, and he agreed with me that those issues play a role.
I’ll close my interview report by conveying two quotes by Reed: “I can’t blame the thieving that goes on in the jewelry store on the hammer that broke the glass.” “It’s terrible to piss on Eugene’s grave because of what evil people do.”
That’s common sense, but not so common today.
I’ll also leave a few more editorial remarks. If we’re going to consider chronology, it’s a fact that the Remington .223 was designed before the NATO 5.56mm, and in fact, Eugene based the 5.56mm on the .223, making a few minor changes to the casing before adoption as the standard NATO round. So civilians had both the cartridge and the gun before the U.S. military did. I won’t go into detail on the minor differences between the .223 and 5.56mm cartridge. That’s not within the scope of this article.
I’m left wondering how writers like Philip Bump continue to be employed, who stated flatly that …
It is estimated that there are 20 million AR-15-style rifles in the United States at this point — a powerful, deadly type of weapon that didn’t exist as a consumer product two decades ago.
First, I think this estimate is quite low. But note that he puts the commercial availability as 2023 – 20 = 2003. How on earth do these writers get paid unless the pay master knows they’re writing pure bunk and wants it that way?
Now, one might criticize Mr. Knight for even agreeing to interviewed by The Washington Post. But that’s his business, not mine. But it must be noted that there are two ways to write things: truthfully and with the complete story, or twisted so that every remark, every comment, every [partial]fact, every half-truth, and every quote feeds a narrative, that narrative being the one the publisher wants to push.
That’s what you see when you read The Washington Post and similar publications. Legacy media indeed. I repeat: there is a world of difference between making observations and statements in response to questions of chronology (even if the writer is too stupid to know that’s what the question and answer is really about), and world and life views concerning liberties and rights. It’s easy enough to string hearsay together with false implications of chronology and make a narrative. It appears to be much harder to tell the truth.
I’ll say the same thing I did to Reed Knight. Over these pages, we value the truth above all else.
