I think the big change in gun magazines and interest in "battle" weapons came as a result of the "sand box" wars we have been in for the las 20 plus years. That has spawned a new way to look at rifle styles, optics and tactics. We now have thousands of young men on our streets with combat experience. Not all of them are messed up and suffering from some combat related disorder. Many are working functional family providers and patriotic. I hope they all have a couple of AR's and a bunch of ammo and mags. We may need them again, we have unprotected borders.
^^^^^This is it, almost 20 years at war and Hollywood and TV making film after film, tv series after tv series has made the tacticool angle well.... cool. Add to that the fact that active shooters using these weapons have made them high profile in the media and then we had a president that tried to go after them. I remember being at a shooting range in San Antonio months after the Newtown CT shooting and the number of people there with a brand spanking new AR and no clue in the planet how to operate it was astonishing.
