Okay—so I guess we should give The New York Times credit for writing a piece about the AR-15 that distinguishes it from its military cousin—the M16—which has the ability to fire more than one round per trigger pull. It has the ability for automatic fire (selective fire), which the civilian AR-15 does not. A civilian can own an automatic firearm if they go through and pass a background check, pay the National Firearms Act tax stamp, and have their firearm catalogued into a federal database through the ATF. The process can take up to a year or longer—and the firearm being transferred has to have been manufactured prior to 1986. All new sales are banned. Oh, and did I mention that it’s exceedingly expensive to purchase such firearms. But that’s beside the point here. Where the publication goes off the rails is when they say that the AR-15 and the M16 fire high velocity rounds, so they’re similar.
Well, yeah—it’s a rifle. That’s normal. The “assault-style” moniker, which is nonsensical, isn’t moving the needle. Neither is “weapons of war.” The scary words that are meant to frighten us into pushing for a ban on so-called assault weapons is not catching on outside of Democratic bastions of the country. So, alas, we have this sad attempt to make the case for why the AR-15 should be banned. It’s because, like the military, it shoots a high velocity round. Oh, and it has a detachable magazine.
And I thought we were going to turn the corner here on the media’s serial and pervasive failure to grasp basic gun facts. They instead decide to throw credibility out the window for the sake to taking swipes at the AR-15, which is owned by millions of Americans (via NYT) [emphasis mine]:
I'm going to need the NYT to explain what a semi-automatic rifle looks like that DOESN'T have "firepower typically used by US infantry troops." https://t.co/3Q0BN45NK6
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 28, 2018
This headline is somewhat like stating, "The engine in your car uses the same mechanics as the engines in US military vehicles."
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 28, 2018
Like the military’s M4s and M16s, civilian AR-15s are fed with box magazines — the standard magazine holds 30 rounds, or cartridges — that can be swapped out quickly, allowing a gunman to fire more than a hundred rounds in minutes. That is what the police described the Parkland gunman as having done. In many states, civilians can buy magazines that hold many more rounds, including 60- and 100-round versions.
A New York Times analysis of a video from a Florida classroom estimates that during his crime the gunman fired his AR-15 as quickly as one-and-a-half rounds per second. The military trains soldiers to fire at a sustained rate of 12 to 15 rounds per minute, or a round every four or five seconds.
The small-caliber, high-velocity rounds used in the military rifles are identical to those sold for the civilian weapons. They have been documented inflicting grievous bone and soft-tissue wounds. Both civilian and military models of the rifle are lightweight and have very little recoil.
For the most part, these passages make the case for why AR-15s are a good buy for self-defense, target shooting, hunting, and the good old exercise of one’s Second Amendment rights. It’s an indirect attempt to give anti-gunners an avenue to argue for the banning of semiautomatic weapons, which Democrats overwhelmingly support. Handguns also have detachable magazines. This is why Democratic gun control proposals that deal with bans and limiting magazine sizes should be opposed. They don’t want to stop just at rifles; their base has proven that. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro also torched the Times for their AR-15 analysis, saying the headline reads somewhat as, "The engine in your car uses the same mechanics as the engines in US military vehicles."
Also, just food for thought, liberal media members. The AR-15 does not shoot a high caliber round; .223/5.56 is not a huge round. Hunting rifles, which shoot 30.06 and .308 Winchester, are much more powerful. The rifle has become one the biggest boogie men on the Left. It shouldn’t be.
Feinstein is incorrect on saying that the AR-15 began in the battlefield. It was first a civilian firearm that the military then modified to create the m-16 for their use.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) February 28, 2018
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