The AR-15 is just popular because it's the honda civic of rifles and people fetishize it for the same reason highschool car guys fetishize honda civics. It's cheap, ubiquitous, and you can modify it to do basically anything you want. You can get an AR-15 chambered in anything from a .17 varmint round up to .50 Beowulf if you really want. You can slap basically any attachment or replacement part you can think of on it and it will just work. It's also fairly robust so maintenance isn't a huge concern. It's just a generic, cheap, and highly versitile platform. As far as "big bad guns" go the AR-15 isn't anywhere close to the top of that list. To anyone who actually knows about guns the AR-15 is basically the great value brand rifle. It's what you buy when you don't know what you actually want.

You also have a bit of the glock phenomenon going on. It became a thing a while back where a lot of people just started calling all handguns glocks even if they weren't actually Glock handguns. Similarly now you have people calling any black rifle with a handguard and a picatinny rail an AR-15 even if it's not even close to an AR-15.

Since I keep getting told that guns are tools, I'd feel the same if a bunch of people treated a certain brand of cordless drill with holy reverence.

I mean, people DO do that...

The time of the Stoner platform was coming, one way or another. It's effectively open source at this point and home manufacturing has exploded.

Since I keep getting told that guns are tools, I’d feel the same if a bunch of people treated a certain brand of cordless drill with holy reverence.

The AR-15 is the pickup truck of guns.

Most people don't use its capacities. A few have genuine appreciation for its finer details, a larger number just think it 'looks neat' and doesn't care beyond that, and a very large number just own it because it makes them feel like Big Men™.

The AR-15 was designed as a main battle rifle for light infantry. The rounds are designed to do a fair bit of extra damage. Other than that, it's only good for small game or target shooting. .22lr is just as capable for civilian use, rounds are cheaper, lighter and are used in more firearms.

Yes it has had a long life as the main battle rifle of the US, abd Canada uses a variant (I was trained on it when I was in the Navy) but it having the following that it does kinda confuses me.

I get your point but in the example the AR-15.. is the cordless drill, not a brand. Tons of brands make variants/parts for the platform.

The people who "fetishize" it most are all the terminally online antigunners. I seriously see daily posts on Lemmy about the evils of this particular weapons design. Meanwhile I own several and during an average week I don't think about them at all.

That article has many incorrect statements and assumptions. The original Colt/Armalite was marketed towards the public but it wasn't initially popular with consumers because it started off expensive and it was a design departure from what they were used to (polymer instead of wood). Today there are a bunch of reasons the rifle design is popular. Due to how patents work, it is effectively Open Source at this point. 100+ companies make versions of it, or compatible parts. Therefore it is cheap and widely available.

Same thing with the Glock 19. It isn't necessarily better or different than most other autoloading handguns on the market. Its patent expired so it became an "Open" design, cheaper and customizable.