Custom AR-15s in the future of movies

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

I'm just saying that we live in a world were the use of terms can change how people view them and movies and fiction in general have done a lot of disservice to the gun community by portraying firearms usage and availability incorrectly like full auto guns being so common in gangster movies and how easy it is to actually get them or that no common civilian in movies own guns. Hollywood, while promoting the entertaining value of gun fights have also been anti-gun in how it tells us that guns are cool to look at but you shouldn't own one and we show you why with cool movies. It's a double standard.

No argument there. Alas, as I have often emphasized in the past, we are fundamentally not a political site, so trying to fight that battle on IMFDB does not seem like a good use of our collective time and energy. There are other, better (dedicated) venues for that purpose.

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Because we are a site meant to accurate tell our readers what gun is used and how it is used, it should be part of our "job" here to correctly inform the readers what they are looking at.

Hell, we nitpick different lowers on "M4s" and at least 1 time, the recent Siege of Jadotville pointed out the FALs were correctly portrayed as full auto. We are a site of nitpickers. We tell people if an MP5 is an actual MP5 or an HK94 that has the paddle release missing.

Hell, the Blackhawk Down page points out the one Ranger character firing his rifle in burst and says a Ranger wouldn't use the burst feature in combat.

Again, no argument that our job is to inform viewers of inaccuracies where we see them, or to provide as much detail as possible on the guns. (i.e. if there is visual evidence that an AR-pattern rifle is a semi-auto civilian model, or was converted to full-auto from a rifle that was originally semi-auto only, I see no reason we can't point it out.)

This is fundamentally not probative to the issue at hand, which is the proper term of reference for an AR-15-pattern rifle, and whether usage of said term should be discouraged. My attitude is that it does not need to be, for reasons I have stated earlier.

Originally Posted by Excalibur

The AK has a different history in America and name recognition than the AR-15 that had a very complicated start as "America's rifle". The AK started out with the common name "AK" because of it's creator but the AR-15 went through brand name changes, copy rights, etc. Even with AKs, we point out differences and will use correct names if we can properly ID it.

Again, if you can ID it, then sure.

But the issue you brought up is whether we are misleading viewers by calling everything "AR-15", vice "AR-15" for civilian models and "M16/M4" for mil models. My point is that in practice, this is no different than calling all select-fire and civilian AK-pattern rifles just plain "AKs." If we accept the latter, we can accept the former.

[SPEMack618]

For the record, as a guy with a Ranger tab and a CIB, a lot of the commentary on the "Blackhawk Down" page real makes my teeth grind.

[Excalibur]

Originally Posted by MT2008

But the issue you brought up is whether we are misleading viewers by calling everything "AR-15", vice "AR-15" for civilian models and "M16/M4" for mil models. My point is that in practice, this is no different than calling all select-fire and civilian AK-pattern rifles just plain "AKs." If we accept the latter, we can accept the former.

I understand the double standard there.

Originally Posted by SPEMack618

For the record, as a guy with a Ranger tab and a CIB, a lot of the commentary on the "Blackhawk Down" page real makes my teeth grind.

Well, I didn't put any of the commentary there so I definitely mean no offense when referencing it.

[SPEMack618]

Oh no. No worries bud. What I was getting at is that pedantic remarks such as what's on the Blackhawk Down page are really obtrusive and unnecessary.

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by SPEMack618

Oh no. No worries bud. What I was getting at is that pedantic remarks such as what's on the Blackhawk Down page are really obtrusive and unnecessary.

If there's anything offensive in there, please feel free to edit the page accordingly.

[Excalibur]

We could just change it to "fired his rifle in burst" and leave the context up to interpretations. But military doctrine does train troops to only fire their rifles in semi and never in full auto/burst unless they're using a machine gun.

[commando552]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

But military doctrine does train troops to only fire their rifles in semi and never in full auto/burst unless they're using a machine gun.

I would be surprised if that was true. In the British military you are taught to use full auto in a load of different circumstances. Suppressing fire, breaking contact, clearing rooms, fighting in trenches or other confined/close spaces, all of these are situations where even regular infantry are trained to use full auto with their rifles or carbines. If it is true that the US military tells soldiers never to fire in full auto then that is a waste of a capability of the weapon, like telling somebody that they can only use the long range aperture on their irons and are not allowed to flip to the large aperture.

[Excalibur]

Correction. The US military doctrine trains troops to not shooting rifles in full auto or burst in most situation. Today it's a little different from 20 years ago.

I don't know of the modern British military training. We have seen historically post WWII, the adoption of a semi-auto only FAL tells a bit of the MOD's mindset for their troops but what the bureaucrats want their troops and what the troops actually did is not the same.