If there is another weapons designer for airsoft players to be familiar with apart from the late Mikhail Kalashnikov, it is none other than the late Eugene Stoner, the man who designed the AR that went up against his iconic AK. When they finally met in person in 1990, both became friends and shared their knowledge of each other’s designs.

Born on 22 November 1922 in Gosport, Indiana, Stoner served in World War II as part of the Aviation Ordnance of the U.S. Marine Corps and was deployed to South Pacific  and North China. After the war, he worked for an aircraft equipment company before moving to ArmaLite to work as the chief engineer. This is where he started working on the AR design, starting with the 7.62mm AR-10 then eventually scaling it down to fire .223 Remington round which became known as the AR-15. The AR-15 was eventually adopted by the U.S. military and designated it as the M16 rifle.

After ArmaLite, he then moved to Colt in 1961 where he designed the Stoner 63 Weapons System. By 1972, he co-founded the ARES Incorporated which was known for his Stoner 86 LMG or the Ares Light Machine Gun. He he joined Knight's Armament Company (KAC) 1990 and he then designed the Stoner Rifle-25 (SR-25), which is also in service in the U.S. Navy as the Mark 11 Mod 0 Sniper Weapon System.

He died in 1997 due to cancer, he was 74.

The IMT or the Institute of Military Technology has released a 30 minute video about Eugene Stoner. Called the "The Man Behind The Gun: The Eugene Stoner Stories" Stoner and his designs are presented using new digital camera technology and gives us an more intimate understanding of Stoner and some of the stories behind his designs. The IMT “focuses on ground breaking innovations as well as the technical advancements made throughout the history of armament” as written at the organisation’s website.

If Kalashnikov’s AK was the gun that wrote some of the world’s history in the last decades, it can be said that Stoner’s AR was the co-writer.