I found an article about a Liberal reporter who actually tried to understand why over 3.5 million households own at least one AR-15. In trying to understand, he traveled to Philadelphia (first mistake) and asked a gun shop owner who's an expat from Europe about weapons and gun control in the United States (second mistake).
The Internet is ablaze with how this reporter thought an AR-15 was "It’s horrifying, menacing and very very loud." He also reported that:
The recoil bruised my shoulder. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary form of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.
You would think I would be critical of the reporter for being a "girly man" because of his takeaway of the experience as many pro-Second-Amendment people were.
I would like to commend this reporter because he got way out of his comfort zone to do try and report objectively. Not everyone can leave their comfort zones. Not everyone likes the experience of shooting a weapon and you know what? That's okay.
Just as a side note, with the exception of the "explosion" of the rifle report and the shell casings, it sounds like he took his first drag on a cigarette.
I do blame the gun shop owner for probably making it rough on the reporter. It seems from the pictures that he shot the AR-15 in an indoor range. That alone will make a rifle report significantly louder (and the smell more intense), especially if it was only 5 or 6 lanes. If the reporter bruised his shoulder, that means that most likely he was not holding the butt of the weapon firmly against his shoulder or standing correctly. Either the owner didn't tell the reporter to hold the weapon firmly against his shoulder, or the reporter didn't listen, I don't know and the article does not elaborate. If the brass was flying across his face, he was either shooting a right-handed weapon left-handed or the brass was bouncing off the lane divider and back into his field of view. As a Patron member of the NRA and an avid firearm enthusiast for over 25 years, if my second experience firing a weapon (the reporter had fired a handgun before) had been as unpleasant as this, I might have been turned off by that kind of experience.
I also want to criticize all of the people who posted hateful comments to this reporter. He actively and with no pre-conceived notions tried to understand the attraction this weapon has on so many people. If we as Pro-Second Amendment activists had been supportive and instructive rather than critical, we might have ended up with one person in the Liberal-dominated media who might have been sympathetic to our side.
Remember, John Lott started out his seminal study on firearms as a member of the anti-gun camp. He started out with the intent to prove gun-control worked. After his study showed that firearms in law-abiding citizens prevented over a million crimes a year, that's when he switched sides and became pro-Second Amendment. We, you and I, had that chance here with this reporter and we blew it.