30 Year Shooting Veteran Debunks AR 15 Myths

The strident cries from the Left to ban the AR-15 rifle, I suspect, are partly bargaining chips to try and stop the concealed carry reciprocity bill that is currently stalled in the Senate.  For the Left, politics is a sport.  I don't think they expect to actually get a ban on the AR 15, but they certainly wouldn't turn it down if they did.  Still, the Left  lies when they claim that banning the AR 15, or for that matter, any of the other things they want to ban, would make any difference. But for that, we need to knock down the many myths surrounding the AR 15, and for that, we need to listen to Michael Filozof.

Michael Filozof has an article today at the American Thinker entitled  Cries to Ban the AR 15 Are Based on Ignorance and Hysteria. Filozof is particularly qualified to speak about the AR 15:

I've shot service rifle competitions for nearly 20 years and held the classification of "Master" for nearly eleven. I've probably put 20,000 rounds through AR-15 rifles. Though I've never been in the military, I have more familiarity and proficiency with the weapon than most active-duty soldiers. So I think I am as qualified as anybody to dispel the common myths about the AR-15.

Filozof debunks a lot of the myths surrounding what has become the All-American rifle. One of these myths is that the AR 15 is a particularly powerful weapon. I can't tell you how many times I have read that this rifle is extremely powerful. Yet anyone who writes such a thing is either lying through his teeth, or has no idea. The typical AR 15 rifle is chambered in 5.56 NATO or .223 Remington. This is a tiny bullet, .223 inches in diameter, weighing 85 grains. By comparison, most high powered rifles are .308 inches in diameter. A longtime standard is the 30-06 Springfield used during WWII in the M! Garand. The diameter of the bullet is .308 inches and weighs 165 grains. This is a powerful round, though not the most powerful.  Indeed, the low recoil of the rifle make it ideal for target shooting, especially for women.

I mentioned that the Left plays politics as a game, a sport.  But it is also for the Left a deadly serious.  The Left plays politics to win and they play for keeps.  While they are calling for a ban on the AR 15,  most know the truth: that banning the AR 15 won't stop crime because so few are used in crimes.  And, as Filozof points out:

Banning AR-15s is not the answer to school shootings. Neither the Columbine killers nor Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, nor University of Texas shooter Charles Whitman, used AR-15s, and all of them managed to commit terrible crimes.

It would have been entirely possible in, say, 1875 to murder 17 schoolchildren with 19th-century technology, such as a brace of Colt revolvers and a Winchester lever-action rifle – or, for that matter, with a broadsword or double-bladed axe. Why didn't it happen then? Probably a couple of reasons. As the Supreme Court ruled in 1892, back then, the U.S. was a Christian nation. It isn't any longer, and today we're dealing with the negative consequences of our 21st-century neo-paganism. And back in 1875, children were not compelled under penalty of law to attend government schools (where self-defense is legally forbidden, ensuring that they will be sitting ducks) until late adolescence.

School shootings are absolutely unacceptable. But banning modern firearms is equally unacceptable. Nor would it be effective: Norway's stringent gun control failed to stop Anders Breivik from killing 77 people; France's ban on "assault weapons" didn't stop the Bataclan shooters from killing 130; and Egypt's rifle ban didn't stop the massacre of 305 worshipers at a Sinai mosque last year. Britain's total confiscation of handguns and semi-automatic rifles failed to prevent Derrick Bird from shooting 23 people (12 fatally) with a bolt-action .22 in 2010