President Biden insists on misleading the public about the AR15, which he misrepresents by labeling it as an
Weapon of War or an Assault Weapon
He may be a slave to partisanship, a liar, or an idiot.
But he is most certainly wrong.
* Modern sporting rifles are among the most popular firearms being sold today.
* The AR15 rifle stands for ArmaLite rifle, after the company that developed it in the 1950s. AR does NOT stand for assault rifle or automatic rifle.
* AR-15-style rifles are NOT assault weapons or assault rifles.An assault rifle is fully automatic, a machine gun. Automatic firearms have been severely restricted from civilian ownership since 1934.
* If someone calls an AR-15 style rifle an assault weapon, then they have been duped by an agenda. The only real way to define what is an assault weapon is politically, as in how any given law chooses to define the term this is why the states that have banned this category of semiautomatic firearms have done so with very different definitions.
*AR 15 style rifles can look like military rifles, such as the M 16, but by law they function like other semiautomatic civilian sporting firearms, as they fire only one round with each pull of the trigger.
* Versions of modern sporting rifles are legal to own in most states, provided the purchaser passes the mandatory FBI background check required for all retail firearm purchasers.
* Since America s founding, civilian sporting rifles have evolved along with military firearms. The modern sporting rifle simply follows that pattern.
* These rifles accuracy, reliability, ruggedness and versatility serve target shooters and hunters well. They are true all-weather firearms.
* These rifles are used for many different types of hunting, from varmint to big game.
They are commonly owned , with more than 16 million modern sporting rifles owned by civilians by 2018.
None of which contradicts him by evidence.
All of which ignores the readily effected adjustments to take it from semi-automatic to full automatic. There are multiple versions of the instructions on line, both text and video versions.
And it ignores that the bolt action version is used in GB because the semi-automatic function of the AR15 is forbidden there - and it effectively slows down operation.
It's still fast enough to allow shooting wild boors (spelling intentional).
The effective fire rate of an AR15 is 45-60 rounds per minute, assuming a large enough magazine to make that viable.
Of course, a 60 round magazine for that type of weapon is available for about $120. 100 rounds cost about 50% more. I can't speak to how smoothly the latter works, but the former functions very effectively and swaps out for replacements in just a few second.
But it isn't enough to ban the 60 and 100 round magazines.
It's pretty trivial to buy and install a join between two 30 round magazines.
IOW, as usual, Ward is playing "lie, deny, and obfuscate" games, rather than trying to deal with the truths of the matter:
1) An off-the-shelf AR-15 style weapon is plenty dangerous.
2) The simple off-the-shelf modifications (like a larger magazine or a joiner) make these more deadly.
An analysis of mass shootings between 1990 and 2017 found that attacks involving large capacity magazines resulted in a 62% higher death toll.
3) The slightly modified AR-15 can get off shots far faster than off-the-shelf:
Using an assault weapon and a drum magazine that held 100 rounds, the assailant in the 2019 Dayton, Ohio mass shooting, was able to fire at least 41 rounds of ammunition in less than 30 seconds, killing nine people and wounding 26 others.
The shooter in the 2017 Las Vegas massacre was able to fire 100 rounds in just 10 seconds - without having to pause and reload - because he used a large capacity magazine, bump stock, and an assault rifle in his attack which killed 50 and injured hundreds
Quibble over the term "assault rifle" all you want, but add the large magazine and the bum stock, and if it wasn't an assault weapon before, it was by the time it was used.
Without those large magazines, more people are able to escape, as with the Douglas High School shooting.
There is NO valid reason to support the 60 or 100 round magazines except the killing of masses of people.
There are no animals that require it and no peaceful civilian uses for it.
If you want it at a range, make a law that keeps them locked securely at the range and disables them if somebody tries to remove them.
Quotes are from giffords.org, but the info about the occasions referred to are from CNN and ABC News respectively.
https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/policy-areas/hardware-ammunition/large-capacity-magazines/
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