Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Survival Arms AR-7 emergency/"survival" .22 reclamation project.

.... The AR-7 was born in a program to design a survival arm for the USAF to arm pilots and other personal in survival situations.

The main survival guns of the time included the M-4, a .22 Hornet bolt-action made by H&R and the M-6, a .22/.410 over/under gun. Stoners’ contribution to the program was not actually the AR-7 but the AR-5. The AR-5 had the advantage of repeat fire over the then-standard M-6, using the same .22 Hornet cartridge. When the AR-5 was adopted as the MA-1, but not placed in issue because of the numbers of M-4 and M-6 survival weapons in USAF inventory, ArmaLite used the research and tooling for the AR-5 in developing the AR-7 for the civilian market.