I build AR-15s for a living. I’m Lance Rankin, the gunsmith behind Western Sport here in Roanoke, Texas, and after years of assembling, repairing, and shooting this platform, I still think the story of how it got here is worth telling. Not the cable-news version. The actual history.
First things first, because I hear it in the shop constantly: AR doesn’t stand for assault rifle or automatic rifle. It stands for ArmaLite Rifle, after the company that designed it.
Stoner and ArmaLite
The rifle starts with Eugene Stoner, a firearms engineer working for ArmaLite, which at the time was a small division of Fairchild Aircraft. In the late 1950s the military was hunting for a lighter replacement for the M1 Garand, and Stoner’s answer leaned on aircraft-industry thinking: an aluminum receiver and polymer furniture instead of a walnut stock and machined steel everywhere.
His first design, the AR-10, was chambered in 7.62x51mm NATO. The military liked the concept but wanted it smaller, so ArmaLite scaled it down around the new 5.56x45mm cartridge. That scaled-down rifle was the AR-15. A soldier could carry more ammunition for the same weight, and the little cartridge hit harder than its size suggested.
ArmaLite couldn’t turn the design into sales, and in 1959 they sold the rights to Colt. Here’s a piece of trivia I enjoy: Colt’s first AR-15 sales weren’t to the U.S. military at all. They went to the Federation of Malaya.
Off to war
The Air Force moved first, ordering 8,500 rifles in the early 1960s. By 1963 the military had committed, Colt got the contract, and the select-fire version became the M16, which went to Vietnam and, in evolved forms like the M4, has armed American troops ever since. The early Vietnam years were rocky, mostly due to ammunition and maintenance decisions rather than Stoner’s design, but the platform outlasted its critics by a wide margin.
The civilian AR-15
Colt put a semi-automatic version on the civilian market in 1963 as the Colt AR-15 Sporter, chambered in .223 Remington with five-round magazines. It sold steadily for decades, and when Colt’s patents expired, everybody else jumped in. That’s when the platform really took off.
Why? Modularity. An AR-15 is a set of standardized parts, and that means you can configure one for almost anything. Swap the upper and your 5.56 carbine becomes a .300 Blackout hog gun. Change the stock, grip, trigger, and optic and the same lower fits a 5-foot-2 shooter or a 6-foot-5 one. No other rifle design lets an ordinary owner do that with basic tools on the kitchen table. I wrote a full guide to choosing an upper receiver if you want to see how deep that rabbit hole goes.
Today AR-style rifles are among the most commonly purchased firearms in America, with makers from Colt to Daniel Defense to small shops like mine turning them out. Somewhere along the way it picked up the nickname America’s rifle, and the numbers back that up.
What the evolution looks like from my bench
The rifles I work on today are recognizably Stoner’s design, but almost every component has been refined. Flat-top receivers replaced fixed carry handles so optics could take over from irons. Free-float handguards replaced plastic clamshells and tightened up accuracy. Barrels, triggers, and bolt carrier groups are all better than what left the Colt factory in 1965. Coatings alone have come a long way; I machine and coat my own bolt carrier groups under the Rankin Industries name, and the wear resistance modern finishes give you would’ve seemed like science fiction to a Vietnam-era armorer.
If you’re curious what’s worth changing on a stock rifle, my 15 best AR-15 upgrades post covers it. And for the long-running bar argument about the AR’s great rival, I put my honest take in AR-15 vs. AK-47.
Where it goes from here
I won’t pretend to predict legislation, and rules do change, so know the laws where you live. What I can tell you from the shop floor is that the platform keeps improving in small, unglamorous ways: better metallurgy, better coatings, tighter manufacturing tolerances at lower prices. A $1,200 rifle today outshoots what $3,000 bought when I started.
Sixty-plus years in, Stoner’s aluminum-and-polymer oddball has become the standard everything else gets measured against. If you’re ready to own a piece of that history, whether off the rack or built to your spec, browse the shop or email me at [email protected]. Talking people through their first AR is one of my favorite parts of this job.
Lance Rankin is the owner and Chief Gunsmith of Western Sport, a family-run Type 07 FFL and Class 3/SOT dealer in Roanoke, Texas, serving shooters since 2007. Born and raised in Texas with over 50 years of experience handling firearms, Lance purchased Western Sport in 2017 and turned his lifelong passion into his profession. He specializes in AR-15 and AR-10 platform rifles, manufactures Western Sport’s own AR-15 line under the Rankin Industries brand, and runs the shop’s in-house Cerakote coating operation. When he’s not behind the counter or the workbench, you’ll find him on his ranch deep into the night, hunting coyotes with an AR-15 and thermal optics. Lance holds an MBA and personally shoots and tests the products Western Sport sells.
