Cameron McWhirter is in Los Angeles for the upcoming Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend. He decided to take some time to visit the site of the first offices of ArmaLite, the small weapons developer where inventor Eugene Stoner and his staff began the work on what would become the AR-15 rifle. As McWhirter and coauthor Zusha Elinson describe in American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15, it was an invention that would alter the course of American history and become the icon of our political and cultural wrangling over the role of guns in our society.
Stoner had no idea where it would all lead when he came to work in this nondescript section of LA in the 1950s. The offices are long gone. Today it's a veterinary clinic. In the distance, you can see the Hollywood sign.
