Eugene Morrison Stoner (November 22, 1922 - April 24, 1997) is the man most associated with the design of the AR-15, which was adopted by the US military as the M16. He is regarded by most historians, along with John Browning and John Garand, as one of the United States’ most successful military firearms designers of the 20th century.

Eugene Stoner attended high school in Long Beach and afterwards worked for the Vega Aircraft Company installing armament. During World War II, he enlisted for Aviation Ordnance in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in the South Pacific and northern China.

In late 1945 he began working in the machine shop for Whittaker, an aircraft equipment company, and ultimately became a Design Engineer. In 1954 he came to work as chief engineer for ArmaLite, a division of Fairchild Engine & Airplane Corporation. While at ArmaLite, he designed a series of prototype small arms, including the AR-3, AR-9, AR-11, AR-12, none of which saw significant production. Their only real success during this period was the AR-5 survival rifle, which was adopted by the United States Air Force.

Jerry Miculek is a speed shooter and competition shooting instructor. He is renowned as one of the fastest revolver shooters in the world, emptying a five-shot revolver in 0.57 seconds in a group the size of a playing card.^{[citation needed]} Miculek currently holds five world records in exhibition revolver shooting.^{[citation needed]} He is married to Kay Clark Miculek, herself an accomplished shooter, holding numerous national and world titles.

In addition, Miculek is an experienced gunsmith who tunes and adjusts his own revolvers for optimum function.

He is endorsed by Smith & Wesson, who created the S&W Model 625JM model in honor of him.

An avid shooter, Jerry holds numerous national and world shooting titles:^{[citation needed]}

Miculek also demonstrated the ability to fire five shots from a revolver on target with a S&W Model 64 ported barrel revolver in 0.57 seconds on September 25, 2003. This nearly matches the record held by Ed McGivern of 0.45 sec (first shot on 9/13/1932, reproduced 4 times on 12/8/1932). Originally recorded as "two-fifths of a second", the resolution of the timing equipment in 1932 was only 1/20th of a second, so the actual figure could have been anywhere between 0.40 and 0.45 seconds.^{[citation needed]}