Thank you for the illucidation. yes High Standards wen site has changed since I purchased their rifle way back in 2003 or so.
I clearly remember their description of CAR-15 as the civilian version.This was long before we had so many manufacturers of the AR-15 and its components. There were only six or seven companies that produced the entire rifle from scratch at that time, and several of those required a custom order bnack then. Now you can order components from several producers and assemble your own rifle. And the idea of a civilian version available only to the public has been somewhat lost.
I still contend that no military AR-15 has ever been made available to the public, and that in the beginning there was a clear delineation between the two in the description of the rifle, which has been left behind because of the evolution of the availability of components. The civilian version could not be called a “military rifle” or an “assault rifle” It was simply a semi auto rifle that had the appearance and feel of the military item. This allowed many military personnel to own these rifles they could have at home and use for their own purposes.And so the rifle became popular with the civilian population.
Mine still works like a top. She drives tacks at 100 yards.
“I still contend that no military AR-15 has ever been made available to the public”
Why?
Because, except for very early on when Colt still had the patent for the AR-15 (bought from Armalite - ARmalite, get it?), NO AR-15s were full auto.
The first version of the rifle adopted by the military was the M16A1, adopted in 1964.
The AR-15 was always sold to civilians after that, always in semi-auto form.
Note that prior to May 19, 1986, it was possible for civilians to get M16 rifles (in whatever variants existed then), provided that they went through the NFA process and got the $200 tax stamp. No civilian has gotten one for individual use legally since then (though Class 3 dealers can get them with a purchase order from a police department, federal agency or the DoD - but they can NEVER transfer them to any civilian, even themselves, as their business owns the rifle).
I know that this is a complex area, made more so by the early designation (in the 1960s only) of the full auto rifle as an AR-15. But now, and for several decades, no newly-sold AR-15 has legally been a full auto rifle.