AR15.com is a firearm-enthusiast

web forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

founded as a

mail list The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal syst ...

in 1996 and headquartered in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It migrated to a

bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...

, then finally a website which the owner called "the largest firearms website in the world", with 10 million users in 2013. The company that owned the website also manufactured

AR-15 An AR-15-style rifle is any lightweight semi-automatic rifle based on the Colt AR-15 design. The original ArmaLite AR-15 is a scaled-down derivative of Eugene Stoner's ArmaLite AR-10 design. The then Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation d ...

rifles and was founded in 1996 by Edward Avila, who moved it from

Farmington, New York Farmington is a town located in the northern part of Ontario County, New York, United States. The population was 14,275 at the 2020 census. History Farmington was part of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase. The town was formed along with its count ...

, to Texas after passage of the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act in 2013. The forum was described by ''

Politico ''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...

'' as a significant "cyberspace" forum for discussion of the

bump stock Bump stocks or bump fire stocks are gun stocks that can be used to assist in bump firing. Bump firing is the act of using the recoil of a semi-automatic firearm to fire ammunition cartridges in rapid succession. The legality of bump stocks in ...

controversy in 2014. The website was the subject of confusion over a 2020 Canadian government ban on an

airsoft gun Airsoft guns are replica toy guns used in airsoft sports. They are a special type of low-power smoothbore air guns designed to shoot non-metallic spherical projectiles (pb) often colloquially (but incorrectly) referred to as " BBs", which ar ...

, leading to a demand by 170,000 petitioners for an apology to gun owners. It was bought in 2019 by 2nd Adventure Group, a holding company owned by

Pete Brownell Peter Royce Brownell (born 1969) is an American businessman. He is the Chairman of the Board of Brownells, a supplier of firearm accessories, ammunition and supplies based in Grinnell, Iowa. He is also Chairman of the Board and CEO of Brownell's ...

and Frank Brownell that also owns the online retailer Brownells.

Removal from servers

The site's

Domain Name System The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...

(DNS)

registrar A registrar is an official keeper of records made in a register. The term may refer to: Education * Registrar (education), an official in an academic institution who handles student records * Registrar of the University of Oxford, one of the sen ...

GoDaddy GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and incorporated in Delaware. , GoDaddy has more than 21 million customers and over 6,600 employees worldwide. The co ...

, removed the site from its servers in 2021 following the U.S. Capitol attack. GoDaddy told ''

Axios Axios commonly refers to: * Axios (river), a river that runs through Greece and North Macedonia * ''Axios'' (website), an American news and information website Axios may also refer to: Brands and enterprises * Axios, a brand of suspension produ ...

'' that the action was due to the site's failure to moderate content "that both promoted and encouraged violence". The

National Shooting Sports Foundation The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is an American national trade association for the firearms industry that is based in Newtown, Connecticut. Formed in 1961, the organization has more than 8,000 members: firearms manufacturers, distri ...

, in a message from its president, condemned what it called the " de-platforming of gun sites" as a "dark harbinger" for discussion of controversial issues and an "indiscriminate silencing of opinion and debate". , the DNS registrar for the AR15.com domain is

Epik Epik is a right-wing American domain registrar and web hosting company known for providing services to alt-tech websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist materials. It has been described as a haven for the far-right because of i ...

References

{{Reflist 1996 establishments in New York (state) American websites Mass media in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex Internet forums Internet properties established in 1996