Rep. Alan Grayson: An AR-15 Rifle Can Fire ‘700 Rounds In A Minute’

No, Rep. Alan Grayson—an AR-15 rifle cannot shoot 700 rounds per minute. And CNN’s Erin Burnett did nothing to press him on this outrageous claim during her on-camera interview with him Sunday. Now, the AR-15 wasn’t the rifle used in the Orlando attack, which left 49 people dead in the worst mass shooting in American history. It also was a likely terrorist attack, but let’s discuss these remarks by Grayson because it shows how the anti-gun Left has no clue what they’re talking about.

“If I may just say this one thing further, if he were who he was, and he was was not able to buy a weapon that shoots off 700 rounds in a minute, a lot of those people would still be alive. That’s exactly right. If somebody like him had nothing worse to deal with than a Glock pistol, which was his other weapon today. He might have killed three or four people and not 50. It’s way too easy to kill people in America today and we have to think long and hard about what to do about that.”

“You’re right about that. Thank you very much,” said Burnett.

Over at INJO, Joe Perticone aptly noted how a) the AR-15 rifle isn’t an assault rifle; b) AR isn’t short for “assault rifle"; and c) the AR-15 isn’t as powerful as a hunting rifle, though it can be chambered in over 30 calibers. Mostly, these rifles are chambered to fire .223/5.56 rounds.

1. An assault rifle has selective fire.

That means that the user can toggle between at least two settings, semiautomatic and automatic.

The AR-15 is a gas powered semiautomatic rifle, meaning one pull of the trigger corresponds to only one round being fired.

In contrast, the M16 and sometimes the M4, which are the United States military’s small arms rifle of choice, do fire automatically. The M16 and M4 also allow a three-round burst option, which is also not possible on an AR-15.

[…]

The AR-15 is not that powerful when compared to common hunting rifles. A .223 round is often too small to take down large game like deer and elk.

In many cases, the .223 is prohibited for hunting certain game. Because of its lack of power, it might not fully kill the animal, leading to suffering.

[…]

Another misconception is that the “AR” in AR-15 is an abbreviation for “assault rifle.” It is not. The “AR” is an abbreviation for “ArmaLite Rifle,” after the company that designed the firearm.

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The AR-15 isn’t new either. Its first iteration was seen in the late 1950s. In the video below, an automatic AR-15 (so, one that isn’t readily available for civilians, requires an ATF tax stamp for ownership, a lengthy background check, and your name and weapon added into federal database) is fired until the point of malfunction. The person in the video could get off 830 rounds before the barrel failed—and this is not even the rifle used in the attack. 

He warns that the heat from the barrel could set off rounds prematurely. The gas tube can be melted, pretty much this is one of the things you don’t want to do to your AR-15, which liberals don’t know because again—they have no clue what they’re talking about. It’s not the safest thing either.