Dave Hannigan: AR-15 golf marks new departure in US fetishisation of rifle

The flyer advertising the Pierce Fire Department’s annual fundraiser at the town’s community golf course last Saturday seemed like pretty standard fare. Tee-times were at 8.15am, 11am and 3pm, entries cost $450 (€409) per twosome, and, oh, AR-15s, balls and blank bullets were provided by the organisers. No drivers, irons or putters were required because the object of this particular tournament was to, literally, shoot Titleists closest to the nine holes. With actual firearms.

“It’s about trajectory,” said Rich Lutz, inventor of AR-15 golf, sounding like a teaching pro advising a rookie with a pitching wedge in hand about their best course of action. “So, you control the length of your shot by how far you put the muzzle into the air.”

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Since this was the inaugural event in which participants used a weapon known colloquially as “the zombie killer” to shoot dimpled balls at a flag, Lutz provided a how-to video for all participants. Befitting Nebraska, a state where nearly half the population own a gun, the men and women who took up this very militaristic golf challenge seemed comfortable with rifles in hand. One proud player even posted a photo of a slightly damaged ball that had been sent “375 yards with an AR!” No word on whether it won the longest drive of the day.

Around about the same time the last batch of AR-15-wielders were gleefully tooling their way around Pierce Community Golf Course, competing for a first prize of a set of Henry Firefighter Tribute Rifles, Mauricio Garcia climbed out of his weapons-laden car at the Allen Outlets Mall in a suburb just north of Dallas, Texas.

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With black fatigues covering up his Nazi tattoos, and brandishing his own version of America’s best-selling rifle, Garcia opened fire on shoppers, killing eight people in a matter of seconds. The dead ranged in age from 61 to three, and, as always with the AR-15, the bodies were riddled with bullets. An all too familiar tale. This uniquely American horror story.

According to statistics, 10 of the 17 deadliest mass shootings since 2012 have involved AR-15s. There are 20 million of them in circulation in this country and an estimated two-thirds of those were purchased in the decade since Adam Lanza mowed down 20 children and six teachers at an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

Republican politicians proudly wear silver AR-15 pins on their lapels, pose with the weapons in family photos alongside their kids, and, in the case of Barry Moore, congressman from Alabama, recently introduced legislation to designate this rifle as “the national gun of America”.

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If nothing sums up a country’s troubled mental health better than the desire to acknowledge its own go-to weapon of mass destruction, the normalisation of something capable of wreaking so much instant carnage is widespread. Fans wear T-shirts of the rifle the same way other folk wear the merchandise of teams or rock bands. “And Jesus said, if you don’t have an AR-15, sell, sell anything and buy one!” reads the slogan on one such garment. Another offers a map of the weapon’s features including a trigger labelled the “Bad people go bye bye switch” and a magazine called the “Democracy Cartridge”.

Against this perverse backdrop, it’s perhaps not surprising that someone might seek to exploit its popularity by adapting it for use in a recreational sport. Not that everyone in the fire department of Pierce, a town with a population of under 2,000, was immediately on board with weaponised golf.

“As you can image, the reactions were very mixed,” said Lutz. “Some of them looked at me like I was not quite with it. The others were very well receptive to it. We did prove to all of our officers that this was a safe thing to do.”

Once the concept had been approved, more than a dozen local businesses got involved as sponsors of the day out. None, apparently, having any qualms about paying between $200 and $500 for the right to be associated with a competition trivialising the most infamous weapon in America. Some clever clogs even created a logo that read “AR-15 PGA – Shoot a round with us”. Hilarious wordplay unless you’ve been paying attention to the number of civilian lives destroyed by something whose inventor, Eugene Stoner, never envisaged being available to anybody outside the military.

“We will follow the same basic rules as best-ball golf,” went the explanatory pamphlet. “Both players will tee off then play the best ball of the two.”

There were 14 extra regulations not normally required by the USGA or PGA in that format, including a stipulation that “no players or spectators will possess any type of firearms or ammo not supplied” by the event. Other requirements included the Range Officer (RO) controlling all rifles, ammunition and balls in use, every group agreeing to obey the RO’s commands, and a ban on alcohol being drunk before or during the competition.

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Even in a country with as sick a gun culture as this one, devising this dystopian sport marks a new departure in the fetishisation of this rifle. In the build-up to the tournament, local television news ran a feature about it as if a group of people firing weapons around a golf course was the most normal thing in the world, something goofy, almost playful. Difficult for many of us to grasp that mentality. Par for the course around here.