The rifle type used in the deadly Bend shooting on Sunday has enjoyed a popularity boom among millions of gun owners, while it is reviled by gun control advocates as an icon of mass murder.

Police say a gunman fired more than 100 shots at The Forum Shopping Center with an “AR-15 style” rifle, killing two men in the Safeway supermarket. Officers found the shooter dead at the back of the store from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, next to his rifle and a shotgun.

AR-15 slow to catch public attention

The police description of the rifle as AR-15 “style” hints at the rifle’s convoluted history.

Touted for its modern, military look, the AR-15 design is 66 years old. It inspired the design of the M-16 rifle used since the Vietnam War, but the AR-15 itself is very rarely used by U.S. Armed Forces.

The AR-15 has been called “America’s Rifle” by the National Rifle Association. It’s been dubbed “Baby Killer” by gun control advocates for its use in mass murders of elementary school children in Connecticut and Texas.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms and ammunition industry trade group says there are about 20 million AR-15 “style” rifles in the United States. The group refers to the variants as “modern sporting rifles.”

“They’re popular for home defense, recreational target shooting, and hunting,” the foundation website says.

There’s some misconception that “AR” stands for “Assault Rife. It’s actually “ArmaLite Rifle,” named after the company that first introduced the rifle in 1956. Colt firearms bought the patents for the AR-15 in 1959 from ArmaLite and used the design as a template for the M-16 it sold to the U.S. military beginning in 1964.

The patent for the AR-15 ran out in 1977, allowing companies to build generic knock-offs. But Colt retained the AR-15 trademark, so each of the more than two dozen gunmakers who sell copycat variants has had to come up with a new name.

There’s the Smith & Wesson M&P15, Lead Star Arms Grunt, Rock River LAR-15 R3, Daniel Defense DDM4v7, Faxon ION – and many, many more.

With the type’s “modular” construction, it can add optional elements, including different butt stocks, handgrips, scopes, and more. The AR-15 models can cost as little as $499 or more than $1,800. Most come in a variation of black, but AR-15 variants are also sold in camouflage or even bright pink.

Police call the alphabet soup of brands, names, and numbers “AR-15 style.”

Automatic vs. semiautomatic

The AR-15 is not a “machine gun.”

Automatic weapons, such as machine guns, are capable of firing all the bullets in an ammunition magazine by pulling the trigger and continuing to hold it back.

Once relatively easy to buy, the widespread sale of automatic weapons was suppressed by the 1934 Federal Firearms Act. The law targeted a weapon with a notorious image – the “Tommy Gun,” a .45 caliber Thompson submachinegun that had a drum ammunition clip.

The Thompson’s staccato rat-a-tat-tat sound and its frequent use by Chicago mobster Al Capone’s gang earned it the nickname “the Chicago typewriter.” It was used in the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” when seven Irish gangsters were lined up against an auto garage wall on Feb. 14, 1929, and killed by Capone’s gang.

When the federal ban was proposed, even the National Rifle Association supported the drive to license, regulate, and tax automatic weapons in civilian hands.

The AR-15 is semi-automatic. One bullet is fired with each pull of the trigger. But unlike bolt- or level-action rifles, the semiautomatic rifle loads the next bullet into the gun’s chamber as soon as the previous shell is discharged.

The AR-15 usually weighs under seven pounds and can fire a .233 caliber bullet at a speed of 3,300 feet-per-second – more than twice as fast as round fired by a police-issued Beretta 9mm handgun.

An aluminum or carbon fiber-bodied AR-15 absorbs the recoil of each round reducing the “kick” of each shot to about one-fourth of a 12-gauge shotgun blast.

The AR-15-style rifle is designed to easily handle the exchange of ammunition clips, with a 30-round magazine the rifle’s standard size.

Bullets fire as fast as a shooter can pull the trigger.

From ban to booming sales

The AR-15 was first associated with mass shootings in 1982.

George Emil Banks, a former convict and prison guard from Wilkes-Barre, Penn., used a Colt AR-15 rifle to kill eight people in his home, including five of his children, then killed five others. He is currently in a high-security psychiatric hospital.

Congress effectively banned new sales of the AR-15 in 1994 under the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act – better known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Democrats controlled the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, and the bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

The legislation had a 10-year “sunset” clause that would remove the law after a decade unless Congress acted. Several attempts by gun rights groups and their political supporters to overturn the legislation in the courts failed.

But by 2004, Congress had flipped to Republican control and George W. Bush, a Republican, had won a contentious presidential election in 2000. The federal ban was allowed to run out in 2004.

Having emerged from the decade-long prohibition, the AR-15 became a symbol for opponents of firearms restrictions.

The Oregon Firearms Federation, which describes itself as “Oregon’s only no-compromise gun rights organization” has an AR-15 on its logo.

Sales of the once-forbidden firearm rose as enthusiasts sought to buy the rifle before any new embargo made it off-limits again.

State “open carry” laws allowed gun rights advocate to carry their AR-15-style rifles to rallies, including across the street from the Oregon state capital in Salem.

It’s been the prize in Republican rifle raffles — known as “Rif Rafs.” Multnomah County Republicans have raffled an AR-15 style rifle at four fundraisers over the past decade, including a 2014 Lincoln Day dinner that also honored civil rights leader Martin Luther King – both of whom were shot to death.

Few but famous

Despite its popularity and high political profile, the AR-15 is a niche market in the American gun collection.

The 333 million Americans collectively own 400 million guns. The AR-15 is about 5% of the total. Most Americans own pistols, which also are used in over 60% of crimes involving firearms – including murder.

But the AR-15 rifle has played an outsized role in the highest profile mass shootings.

After the federal firearms ban was lifted, the first reported major mass murder was carried out using an AR-15-style rifle. A gunman killed six people and himself in an apartment building in Crandon, Wisconsin in 2007.

In May 2022, a gunman using an AR-15 “style” rifle killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

In the 15 years between the Wisconsin and Texas mass shootings, the locations and death toll changed, but a version of the AR-15 was often the weapon of choice. The roll call of mass murders includes:

• 2012: Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut: 27 killed.

• 2015: San Bernardino, California: 14 killed at a Christmas party for healthcare workers.

• 2016: Orlando, Florida: 49 killed at The Pulse nightclub.

• 2016: Sutherland Springs, Texas: 26 killed at a church.

• 2017: Las Vegas: 58 killed at an outdoor country music concert, shot by a gunman firing from a high-rise hotel room.

• 2018: Parkland, Florida: 17 killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

• 2022: Buffalo, N.Y., 10 black people were killed by a white gunman at a grocery store.

Other mass shootings have featured civilian semi-automatic versions of the Soviet-era AK-47. That rifle was used in the 2019 mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas that killed 23 people and wounded 23 others.

The military version of the AK-47, which can be fired automatically, was exported to revolutions in Africa and elsewhere. Its role in rebel victories was deemed so crucial that the rifle appears on the flags or national seals of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, East Timor, and Burkina Faso.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a sharp rise in semi-automatic rifle purchases.

Since 2020, an estimated 2.8 million semi-automatic military-style rifles have been sold, according to Forbes magazine.

Mass shootings have also surged over the same period.

There have been 450 mass shootings in the United States so far in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit group that has tracked shootings and gun deaths since 2014. The total includes incidents involving all types of firearms.

The attacks are on track to break the record of 692 mass shootings recorded last year. A pistol is the most common weapon, but use of firearms of all types are on the rise.

Oregon voters will be asked in November to vote on Measure 114, a gun control initiative that backers say would include requiring a gun safety course before the sale of a firearm and would ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

Police say the Bend shooter had four 30-round magazines with him when he died.

A investigation shows the “AR-15 style” rifle and other firearms were legally purchased.