This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

The AR-15 rifle is the world's most popular firearm. It's used for target shooting, hunting and uncounted numbers are kept in closets across America for self-defense.

And now the Washington Post has labeled it the "radicals' rifle," even while explaining that more and more, it's becoming the choice of – leftists!

The article, with some 20 names as writers, editors and photographers, explained how "D," a "nonbinary community organizer," fired the rifle, then with "voice trembling and eyes brimming with ears," said he didn't want to, but over time decided that it was reasonable to buy a semiautomatic rifle.

"D's reluctant embrace of the AR-15 adds one more foot soldier to the volatile mix of armed movements that have proliferated over the past decade," the report said, blaming the desire for a "far-left 'community defense'" on "right-wing mobilization."

The report explained how leftists in multiple states have armed themselves with long guns to "protect LGBTQ gatherings." Of course the ideological essay described those who trigger the desire for protection as "armed right-wing agitators who baselessly smear trans people and drag-show artists as 'groomers' and pedophiles."

The Post described how the rifles have been used against "elderly congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, the deadliest anti-Jewish attack in U.S. history; Jewish families on the last day of Passover in Poway, Calif., in 2019; and, last year, black customers at a supermarket in Buffalo, to name a few."

It also has been used, the report claimed, "to intimidate voters and local officials, harass Muslims outside of mosques, and stand as self-appointed guards at pro-Donald Trump rallies."

Kathleen Belew of Northwestern University said, "The AR-15 remains the emblematic cultural weapon."

Now there are "armed groups" on both the "far right" and the "far left," and the Post interviewed both sides.

But their views overlap in one area, the report said, that "Civilians with rifles — and specifically, AR-15s — provide an important check on federal powers."

However, the report claims that "far-right extremists" are a "domestic terror concern" without labeling gunshot-happy leftists the same way.

It claimed "attacks by militant leftists are almost never deadly." And it alleged that "violent rhetoric" now is entering the "Republican mainstream."

The government repeatedly has launched assaults on right-wing organizations over the Jan. 6, 2021, events at the Capitol, even though evidence now is revealing that many times, it was a federal agent, or federal informer, who was acting as the provocateur.

The report notes that it's impossible "to count" the number of far-right or militant left groups, but then alleges the leftists are a "tiny fraction of armed movements."

But the report noted leftists are acquiring guns for the same reasons anyone else does.

"Paper," a pseudonym for a 33-year-old anarchist organizer, said, "We deserve to be able to defend ourselves, and whether that is against the state or against other folks that would come at us, it’s defense."

He owns two AR-15s.

"It took us awhile to get appropriately militant on this issue," a Connecticut-based John Brown group tweeted in December, according to the report. "Folks wrung their hands over ‘optics’ and we came to realize they didn’t want community defense, they wanted us to die first. We don’t always open carry, but we no longer go out just to be martyred."