Crenshaw Tells CNN that AR-15s Are ‘Not Weapons of War’ — ‘They’re More of a Self-Defense Weapon’

In the wake of a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school last week that left 19 children and two teachers dead, which has led to an effort to ban AR-15s, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) pushed back against the idea that AR-15s were weapons of war” that the nation’s founding fathers would be against.

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, advised that AR-15s were more so used for self-defense.

CNN’s Dana Bash asked Crenshaw, “The Second Amendment calls for a well-regulated militia. Do you really think the founding fathers, when they wrote well-regulated militia, intended for enough guns, weapons of war, that you are so highly trained in using should be used to massacre children?

“Well, there’s more to the Second Amendment than what you just read, right?” Crenshaw replied. “There’s a comma after that. So, there’s two different ideas in the Second Amendment. There’s the individual right to own a gun, and there’s the right of the people to have a well-regulated militia. Let’s talk about the weapons of war thing for a second because you brought that up.”

“So, having been to war and having used many, many weapons of war, I don’t really classify these rifles as weapons of war,” he continued. “We use them, but they’re more a self-defense weapon. I would say that if a SEAL team or an infantry team goes on offense, they’re using much, much bigger weapons that are not available to your common civilian. We use our M4s, which is an AR-style weapon, mostly for self-defense and close quarters type of combat. And by the way, they have capabilities that your civilian rifles do not. These are still semi-automatic rifles. In the military, we have automatic weapons. I would also say we never use them on full auto because they’re extremely inaccurate that way. So, they’re not useful in that sense. But, in any case, these are not the same.”

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