So what’s exactly the difference between the M16 or AR15? There’s a lot of misinformation out there, or just information that has been repeated so often that it’s taken as fact. The easiest way to look at it is this: Every M16 is an AR15,
but not all AR15s are an M16.Many people will tell you that an AR15 is semi-auto only, and the M16 is full-auto. While this may help for differentiating between the two for civilian purposes, this isn’t at all true. The original AR15 (before it picked up a military name) was fully-automatic, as well as plenty since then. And what most people don’t realize, is that the military has also tested semi-automatic M16s as well, which later earned designations as the famed Mk12 Mod 0.
Thanks.