I bow to your superiority of knowledge on the topic.
But I still say that no military AR-15 has ever been sold to the public.
“... in 2003 or so. ... I clearly remember [Hi Std’s] description of CAR-15 as the civilian version. ... The civilian version could not be called a ‘military rifle’ or an ‘assault rifle’ ...” [Candor7, post 132]
“I bow to your superiority of knowledge on the topic.
But I still say that no military AR-15 has ever been sold to the public.” [Candor7, post 133]
Now it’s my turn.
I hasten to defer to Candor7’s personal experience with High Standard’s product line. Gunmakers change marketing strategies and sales policies all the time: they introduce new items and drop old ones.
The public space where official military nomenclature, manufacturer naming and marketing, gun magazine palaver (including advertisements from manufacturers), and chats between members of the gun-owning public is a murky, confusing locale. Few rules apply, and it’s not unknown for one subgroup to steal terms used by another, then toss them around indifferently. One reason names and graphics come to be protected by trademark, while patents cover physical objects like parts, or even manufacturing processes.
I spent more than half my active-duty career performing operational tests across all the armed services, and with allied countries too. After leaving active duty, I worked more than a decade for a small family-owned gun dealership that also sold parts and offered gunsmithing & repair services. Clarity of communication and precision in nomenclature were of central importance in both endeavors - to sell gun parts over the phone successfully, we had to hone our verbal skills most carefully, to elicit what firearm the customer owned, and just what part they truly needed.
All of it pushed me in the direction of obsessing on the topic. Apologies to both Candor7 and the forum.
Before May 1986, federal law did not forbid sales of new-made full-auto guns to the general public, but prospective buyers had to apply to the regulating agency (now called BATFE) in writing, submit to a background check, furnish photos and fingerprints, obtain approval from their local sheriff or police chief, and pay a $200.00 fee for the proper tax stamp (procedures apply to any transfer of any full-auto gun, and other registered devices like suppressors). Each manufacturing company had their own policy concerning sales to private citizens.
Numbers of full-auto guns were brought back from overseas by military personnel, and some US armaments were themselves “liberated” from military armories. Occasionally, BATFE allowed these to be legally registered during amnesty periods; the last was held about 50 years ago.
Additionally, municipalities, states, and other official government entities below the federal level purchased various full-auto weapons for their own uses. Some were registered with BATFE and became legally transferable to the public. Last year, one city made headlines in the gun-collecting community when it announced it would put its Thompson submachine guns up for sale by public auction.
The military did allow a small number of M14 rifles to be transferred to civilians: prizes for marksmanship competitions. If memory serves, their full-auto function was disabled permanently.
The result has been that some quantity of full-auto guns made their way into the hands of the public. I’ve handled German MP-40s and Stg-44s, Soviet DP-28s and PPS-43s, British STEns and Brens and Vickers guns, US M1A1 Thompsons, M3A1 “Grease Guns,” M1918 BARs, M1919 and M1917 belt-fed machine guns, Lewis guns, S&W M76 submachine guns, M2 Carbines, M14s, M16s, Uzis, and others. Fired most of them.
All were privately owned, legally possessed with full approval of BATFE. Couldn’t speak to the origin of any, nor their history.