The AR15 is a military weapon

This post will be re-posted every time I hear about a mass shooting using an AR-15.

Reposted on November 20, 2022 after 5 queer patrons of a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs were murdered by a 22 year old wearing body armor and carrying an AR-15.

Reposted on May 24, 2022 after both the Buffalo supermarket murders and the school shooting of multiple children at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The Uvalde murders may not have been committed with an AR-15 (the information is not public as of this update), but the Buffalo mass murder was.

Reposted on March 24, 2021 after a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, CO was attacked by an immigrant with a history of serious mental illness using an AR15 he’d purchased legally only days prior.

Re-posted on April 8, 2019, after the Congregation Chabad synagogue in Poway, CA was attacked by an anti-Semite weilding an AR-15 style rifle.

Re-posted on October 27, 2018, after the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA was attacked by an anti-Semitic white supremacists wielding an AR-15.

Originally posted on Scholars & Rogues on March 25, 2018

With the March for our Lives yesterday, I’ve been thinking a lot about guns. So I did a bit of research on the M4 carbine vs. the M16 rifle vs. AR15-style rifles. Here’s what I found:

M4A1 carbine: 5.56x45mm NATO calibre, ~550 yd effective range, ~3000 ft/sec muzzle velocity, semi-auto/burst/full-auto. From what I’ve heard from vets, soldiers are trained not to fire in burst or full-auto except as suppression fire because it’s too inaccurate.

M16 rifle: 5.56x45mm NATO calibre, ~550 yd effective range, ~3000 ft/sec muzzle velocity, semi-auto/burst/full-auto. From what I’ve heard from vets, soldiers are trained not to fire in burst or full-auto except as suppression fire because it’s too inaccurate.

AR15-style rifles: 5.56x45mm NATO calibre, ~550 yd effective range, ~3000 ft/sec muzzle velocity, semi-auto only.

The M4A1 (and variants), the M16 (and variants) are military only. The AR15 may be owned by civilians.

From what I can tell, the three weapons are essentially the same with respect to lethality. The semi-auto only for the AR15-style rifle is a distinction without a difference given the military trains soldiers/airmen/seamen/marines to fire semi-auto anyway.

We regulate military weapons in the US, legally, under the Second Amendment (which does have the words “well-regulated militia” right there in it). The AR-15 is, for all intents and purposes, a military weapon, even according to veterans.

So why do we allow civilians to own a military weapon again?