4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 October 2023
⏱️ 37 minutes
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In the United States, AR-15s grace bumper stickers, mugs, and politicians’ Christmas cards. They’re also the weapon used in some of the deadliest mass shootings in modern American history. Wall Street Journal reporters Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson trace the rifle’s rise in their new book, American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15. They spoke with Apple News In Conversation host Shumita Basu about how this weapon became a symbol of both gun rights and horrific tragedies.
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0:00.0 | This is in conversation from Apple News. I'm Shemeetha Basu. Today, how the AR-15 became America's gun. |
0:13.0 | For over a decade now, |
0:15.0 | for over a decade now, Las Vegas has been home to the largest annual gun trade show in America. |
0:29.0 | This is not necessarily, shall we say, an improvement over Stoner's design. |
0:33.3 | This is an addendum to it to help, I think, |
0:36.0 | that got more shootable for more people. |
0:38.8 | In 2020, two Wall Street Journal reporters |
0:41.4 | found themselves walking the floor of the shot show, |
0:44.4 | Zusha Ellinson and Cameron McWhorter. |
0:47.4 | It was for research, a reporting trip. |
0:50.2 | After the event, they decided to visit the site of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting |
0:55.2 | where a gunman opened fire on a crowd at a country music concert, killing 60 people |
1:01.4 | and injuring hundreds more. |
1:03.7 | It's still the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. |
1:07.8 | Here's Zusha. |
1:08.9 | It was very haunting because what we saw when we went there was just this empty field, just this emptiness. |
1:17.0 | There was a little like makeshift memorial on the side of a fence commemorating all the people who had died and that's all we saw. |
1:26.0 | It was jarring, to say the least, for these reporters to be standing on this site where a shooter had once reined bullets down using several AR-15s. |
1:36.7 | After coming from this massive gun show, where it seemed like the AR-15 had completely |
1:42.3 | taken over and inspired a whole class of assault-style |
1:46.1 | weapons. |
1:47.1 | Here's Cameron. |
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