Seeing another comment about some other state firearms, I responded with how it's even stupider than I thought.

Ignoring the confusion between caliber and platform, .556 out of an AR-15 is still a great choice for anything roughly cat-to-human sized. Prairie Dogs, antelope, goats, sheep, foxes, coyotes, that sort of thing.

See my comment above. 450 bushmaster and 350 legend are both cartridges developed the for AR platform that are lower range, lower velocity, larger bore projectiles meant to limit effective range and still have deer stopping energy.

.223 / 5.56 is illegal to deer hunt with in Michigan because it isn’t a reliable caliber for a kill, and is more likely to wound. Your .308 or .30-06 flies way, way farther in the event of a miss, creating a concern of striking unintended targets far past your line of sight. Which is why it’s illegal to hunt with below the lower peninsula rifle line.

So I'm terms of popularity, an AR-10?

AR15 is very popular for wild boar hunting. Not in its original caliber, though. See, one of the advantages of the platform is that it's highly modular, and can put out 6.5 grendal just fine by switching the upper.

I mean, the actual answer is that this is just another "trigger the libs" exercise, and they are choosing the AR-15 because it is the favorite of mass-shooters.

They don't want to celebrate guns, obviously, or they would choose something native to Michigan like you say. They want to celebrate whatever the left opposes, even if it means celebrating the weapon of choice for mass murderers.

This just makes it even dumber. Some of these at least have some interesting ties to the state's history. Eugene Stoner isn't even from Michigan, and ArmaLite was based in California and now in Arizona.

If people REALLY gave a shit and just couldn't stand for not having a state firearm, I'd argue the M1 Carbine would be a far better choice given the historical ties to our automotive manufacturing base and its transition to wartime manufacturing, with General Motors being the single largest producer during WWII.

Alternatively, Hi-Point has some manufacting here, so I'd be willing to consider making the Yeet Cannon the official state firearm.

It pretty clearly has nothing to do with any sort of ties to manufacturers or state history though, and is 100% a "tRiGgEr tHe LiBs" move, which makes it incredibly frustrating as someone who is actually interested in firearms for their history and engineering, instead of as an inadequacy compensator.

Yep. That's a long rifle.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Was it designed by someone from Michigan or something?

That's what I was thinking, why the AR-15?

Shout out to California’s gun laws only existing because of the Black Panthers.

I'm also concerned why they want to pledge allegiance to a company (Armalite). Is Kansas going to have Coke as their state drink next?

Why, that's easy. They were voted into their roles of representation. Not by me, of course. I'm in a different district.