But it isn’t because they inflict more grievous wounds than common hunting rifles or shotguns (they don’t). AR-15s and variants thereof are the choice of mass shooters because they’re lightweight, compact, low-power (low recoil), easy to operate, accurate, and changing their standard capacity 30 round magazines takes nearly no time at all.
Those are the characteristics that give them their extreme lethality, and that extreme lethality is why mass shooters pick them so often. But they’re not magic and their bullets do not defy the laws of physics.
I say this because it is far too common to see people inaccurately describe the wounds caused by ARs. Make no mistake, they can cause severe wounds, but any modern centerfire rifle is going to cause severe injuries, and most of them will cause injuries far more severe than what an AR chambered in .223 is capable of causing.
In order to craft effective gun control legislation we’ve got to understand the basic physics and functions of ARs. If we don’t, we are going to control aspects that don’t actually impact the lethality of the weapon.
And if we really want to reduce the epidemic of gun violence, we should be trying to ban handguns long before we ban AR rifles. All rifles combined, including ARs, account for just 3% of gun murders annually.
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