President Joe Biden suggested during a White House South Lawn celebration of the most recent gun control package that it “makes no sense” that military personnel get stringent training but civilians buy AR-15s with no training at all.
Biden claimed, “We are living in a country awash in weapons of war.”
He added, “Weapons that were designed to hunt are not being used. The weapons designed, that they are purchasing, are designed as weapons of war to take out an enemy.”
Biden went on to point out that rifle rounds move faster than handgun rounds, described a “high-powered assault weapon” as extra deadly, and said such weapons are “why theses scenes of destruction resemble nothing like a weekend hunting trip for deer or elk.”
He then criticized a citizen’s ability to acquire an AR-15 without training.
Biden talked about our military and the background checks they go through and the weapons training they receive.
He said, “We require extensive background checks on them and mental health assessments on them. [We] require that they learn how to lock up and store these weapons responsibly. We require our military to do all that. These are commonsense requirements, but we don’t require the same commonsense measures for a stranger walking into a gun store to purchase an AR-15 or something like that.”
Rifle builder and Battle Tested Equipment owner George Urmston wrote a February 28, 2018, guest column for Breitbart News’s Downrange with AWR Hawkins in which he explained that an AR-15 is not an “assault rifle.” Rather, the “AR” in AR-15 stands for “Armalite Rifle,” as Armalite was the first producer of the firearm.
Moreover, Urmston noted that there is at least one more reason that an AR-15 is not an “assault rifle,” and that is because it is not capable of firing in either burst or automatic modes.
Whereas an AR-15 is a semiautomatic rifle, firing one round per trigger pull, rifles used in the military have a select-fire switch allowing them to be fired in full-auto mode or in three-round bursts of full-auto.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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