#Ergonomics

In what perhaps many fanboys of the two platforms are viewing as the ultimate sacrilege, photos of a proposed design incorporating an AK-style safety onto an AR-15 have been setting the forums ablaze with voices of dissent the loudest while those of reason are largely ignored due to the passions aroused.

Honestly, I’m a little tired of seeing the cult of the AR-15 preach its superiority as an “ergonomic” platform. While the AR-15 is an excellent weapon, and lord knows I own many of them, it’s not the superior choice for a weapon platform in a sea of continuously expanding alternatives. A weapon designed mid last century for right-handed operation only cannot hold a candle to other later generation platforms.

The bullpup rifle tends to be – when it comes up – a pretty divisive subject among “tactical” rifle shooters. Bullpup detractors dismiss the layout as clunky and awkward, while its proponents cite the advantage of longer barrels and shorter overall lengths. Both camps are often correct in their criticism, but there is another aspect of the bullpup that I think often goes poorly addressed – if it is addressed at all. That is the subject of balance.

The AR-15-style combined safety/selector thumb lever has become a hallmark of modern assault rifle and carbine design, proving to be an ergonomic and simple design for fire control management. However, it wasn’t always that way. The AR-15’s selector lever goes all the way back to the Johnson Light Machine Gun‘s selector, which was mounted on the right side of the gun, with “AUTO” at the rear, “SAFE” at the vertical, and “SEMI” in the forward positions. In the Johnson, the current setting is indicated by the checkered end of the selector itself, and in the very earliest AR-10 prototypes this design was retained, even though by this point the lever had been moved to the left side of the gun. By the production AR-10s, though, the selector markings were flipped to the opposite side, and indicated by a pointer on the selector, opposite the lever, which remains today. However, as Ian of Forgotten Weapons explains below, the actual positions of the selector were retained from the Johnson LMG all the way through the initial development of the AR-15:

How many people really are “average”? Is it possible to design a system to fit the average person, and if not, what’s the alternative? A recent article published on thestar.com examines this question, excerpting the work of L. Todd Rose from his recent book The End of Average. Rose’s narrative is somewhat massaged, but the central thesis about averages and their relationship (or lack thereof) to the individual user is well-developed and quite pertinent. We will explore these ideas through excerpts from the article, beginning with the one below: