ArmaLite AR-7 & Explorer II

The survival rifle that packs into its own floating stock — from the Air Force AR-5 and Fairchild's ArmaLite through Charter, Survival Arms, AR-7 Industries and Henry, with the Explorer II pistol, the blowback action and its magazine-borne feed ramp, upkeep from the makers' manuals, the look, the screen record and the collector market.

Firearms

ArmaLite AR-7 & Explorer II · Deep Dive

ArmaLite AR-7 & Explorer II

Its 16-inch barrel became legal for an ordinary rifle on 1 June 1960, a month before the first AR-7 shipped — and the Star Wars blaster built from one was a cut-down rifle, not the Explorer II pistol, which did not yet exist.

The survival rifle that packs into its own floating stock — from the Air Force AR-5 and Fairchild's ArmaLite through Charter, Survival Arms, AR-7 Industries and Henry, with the Explorer II pistol, the blowback action and its magazine-borne feed ramp, upkeep from the makers' manuals, the look, the screen record and the collector market.

Photo: ArmaLite AR-7 Explorer, pilot and aircrew survival weapon by CynicalMe · CC BY 2.5

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    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 The Brief — Aircrew Survival Rifles, Fairchild's ArmaLite, and the AR-5 Why the U.S. Air Force wanted a rifle that packed into its own stock and floated, what it had before, the aerospace company that answered in weeks, and the adoption that bought almost nothing
    2. Vol 2 From AR-5 to AR-7 — the Design, the Law It Waited On, and the ArmaLite Years Who designed the AR-7 and what it was made of, the 1960 change in federal law that made a 16-inch barrel a rifle barrel, how ArmaLite sold it, the 'Air Force survival rifle' that the Air Force never adopted, and what happened to it by 1973
    3. Vol 3 The Makers, and How to Tell Them Apart — Charter, the Explorer II, Survival Arms, AR-7 Industries and Henry The maker sequence checked source by source, what each company changed, the Charter pistol and why its barrel will not fit the rifle, the copies abroad, and a photographic key to whose AR-7 is whose
    4. Vol 4 How It Works, and Why It Jams — Blowback, the Magazine That Is the Feed Ramp, and the Record by Maker The AR-7's cycle part by part, the design decisions that make it fussy about ammunition and magazines, and what the sources actually support about which makers' rifles work
    5. Vol 5 Keeping It Working — Takedown, Detail Strip, Maintenance and Repair The makers' own takedown and stowage sequences, the bolt strip Henry publishes and the fire-control strip nobody does, cleaning and inspection, a malfunction table that starts with the magazine, and where parts still come from
    6. Vol 6 The Look — a Rifle Shaped by Its Own Packing Case Why the AR-7 looks the way it does, argued from how it was made: the stock that is a container, the missing fore-end, the aircraft alloy and moulded plastic, the swirled colours, and why a pistol built on the same receiver had to look like a ray gun
    7. Vol 7 On Screen and at Auction — Bond, the Star Wars Blaster That Was an AR-7, Values, and the Law Every screen appearance the Internet Movie Firearms Database records, the prop-builder claim tested and replaced by a better-documented one, dated auction results by maker, and the legal lines between the rifle, the pistol and a short-barrelled rifle