An Assault rifle is -

assault rifle as any of various automatic or semiautomatic rifles with large capacity magazines designed for military use.

The prototype AR-15 rifle was designed by ArmaLite as a selective fire weapon for military purposes. Armalite sold the design to Colt due to financial difficulties. After some modifications, the rifle eventually became the US Army's M16 rifle.

After the Colt Armalite AR-15 rifle was purchased by the US military it was released to the public as a semi-automatic rifle The first military version was the M16, a selective fire full or semi automatic rifle. The M16 has evolved through several variations. It has largely been replaced by the M4 carbine.

Please actually do some research before you just downvote my comment because you disagree. Firstly, it says on both the AR-15 website and the wikipedia that it's an assault rifle and that it was made primarily for military use. The semi-automatic version that you know off is a civilian version that was eventually released to the public, the original AR-15 that the military currently use today is fully automatic.

And we both live on other sides of the world, it may not be used by your military but I've physically seen soldiers standing with SA80s and AR-15s in my country. So where I live, it's primarly used for the military. Well, I mean we can't even own pistols, let along machine guns, so there's no way in hell that the AR-15 was made for personnal protection.

The only difference is that an M16 is fully automatic and an AR-15 isn't. And the military use fully automatic versions of the AR-15, so they're practically identical.

This guy has made a hybrid kind of gun, he has put an M16 lower part of a gun and then used the AR-15 as the upper part. It's extremely easy to make this gun fully automatic if you want because it was made fully automatic originally.

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I downvoted your comment because it was wrong. The military does not use the AR-15, what the US military did was used the design to come up with the M16. The AR-15 was designed by ArmaLite for military purposes, yes, however ArmaLite never got it there before they had to sell the design to Colt. I don't know how many times I have to say this, not just to you, but to others. The AR-15 was meant to replace the M14 (from the eyes of ArmaLite) however it never did. The US military adopted the AR-15 design, changed up just about everything in the lower receiver, and shipped the new design off to Colt to be manufactured as the M16.

Since you clearly don't like facts out of other people's mouths, let's go back to Wikipedia.

Colt marketed the AR-15 rifle to various military services around the world. After modifications (most notably the relocation of the charging handle from under the carrying handle to the rear of the receiver), the redesigned rifle was adopted by the United States military as the M16 rifle.

Meaning they marketed the design, however no one took it UNTIL they changed the design of the AR-15 to relocate the charging handle. If you look at an AR-15 lower, and an M16 lower, they are COMPLETELY different rifles, the only similarities is the look when everything is assembled. The AR-15 is NOT a military rifle and was attempted to be marketed to be a military rifle however that failed so they had to change the design. The US started putting the M16 in service in 1964, but did not replace anything until 1969 when it replaced the M14. The AR-15 was on the streets in civilian hands by 1964.

I love how you say you see soldiers walking around with an AR-15 and think that's why it was made. Were you around in the 1950's? No, you can't think of what you see 50 years later and say that's why they were made.

You keep saying an M16 and an AR-15 are the same with the only difference being semi auto vs full auto. While this is true on the outside to someone ignorant to guns, it couldn't be further from the truth. As I keep trying to tell you, the lowers of each rifle are completely different, using all different internals. The only similarity they share is what they look like when fully assembled, past that they are different rifles. When they were first made, the M16A1 was designed to shoot a 5.56x45 round (still does), and the AR-15 was designed to shoot a .223. While you theoretically can shoot the 5.56 out of a .223, you'll regret it. Of course now the civilian AR-15 can be chambered in whatever you want, we had one chambered in 7.62x39 (same round as the AK-47) before we sold it for a PS-90.

Your "facts" keep getting worse and worse.... It is not "easy" to make a semi auto rifle full auto. Yes you can put a full auto lower on a semi auto upper because the uppers are the SAME. You can't just run out and buy a full auto lower. Hell, a 5 year old can buy an AR-15 upper, because it's just a bolt and barrel. The lower is where all the mechanisms are. Now, to you "fact" of saying it was designed to be full auto. It wasn't. The AR-15 was never designed to be full auto, infact the military kept the M16 as select fire for a while because they had issues with controlling the M14 in full auto so they wanted to make sure they could control the M16. They wanted to make sure they could control it so they had a semi auto feature, but they also wanted to make sure they could provide cover so they made it select fire between full and semi with the intent of only using semi auto. Infact, early ideas were to make it semi auto and burst shot instead of full auto.







Also, just a fun fact for anyone wandering, the M16 was made strictly for the air force, the contract the was signed in 1963 was for 19k of them. The army and marines got the XM16E1 (what we know as the M16A1), the contract was for 85k of them. The original M16A1 has changed many times after multiple redesigns, going to the M16A2 to the M16A3 (which is actually the M4A1), and the M16A4.