Last week in part 1 of this series, I discussed the most obvious feature that can make a weapon military-grade: full-automatic fire. I laid out how current law already well regulates full-auto weapons, or machine guns. This showed that if those pushing gun control want to define any firearm now on the civilian market as military-grade, they are going to have to define military-grade using some other feature other than full-auto fire. Here in part 2, we’re going to begin a deep-dive into the features of the most hated (and most loved) firearm in America, and the weapon those pushing gun control decry as military-grade: the AR-15. We’re going to see if we can find a feature, or combination of features, that helps us define military-grade reasonably and practically. This entire article will consider the most striking feature that makes the AR-15 attractive to mass shooters: semi-automatic fire.
Semi-automatic fire means simply one-shot for one trigger pull. It’s called semi-automatic because while it is not full-automatic, the action of the weapon still automatically loads another bullet into the chamber after the fired projectile leaves the barrel. This means the user can release the trigger and pull it again to fire another shot. But a user cannot fire successive shots by merely holding down the trigger.
Semi-automatic fire was first developed in the late 1800s. It was a vast leap forward in firearm capability over the single-action firearm. A single-action firearm required the user to perform a manual operation to place another round in the chamber after he had fired a shot.
While a user could fire a single-action firearm rapidly, such rapid-fire required quick and jerky motions of the action or even creative handling of the weapon.
Semi-automatic fire not only made rapid-fire a standard feature; it allowed a user to maintain rapid-fire with a firm, steady grip on the weapon impacted only by recoil.
It is common among those who have little experience with firearms to mistake the term semi-automatic with the burst-fire capability of some modern assault rifles. Burst-fire is a modification of full-automatic fire that allows a user to fire a proscribed number of shots with each trigger pull instead of maintaining the full-auto fire until the trigger is released. Burst-fire has no unique legal definition. The government considers it full-auto fire and regulates weapons capable of it as machine guns (see part 1).
It is the rapid-fire capacity of semi-automatic weapons that can make mass shootings so deadly. Most mass shooters use semi-automatic weapons, inviting the conclusion that this feature of an AR-15 is what attributes most to its lethal nature.
However, is it reasonable to assert that semi-automatic capability makes a weapon military-grade? Semi-automatic weapons make up the bulk of modern weapons used by civilians for over a hundred years. In families with hunting and firearms traditions, most kids get a semi-automatic .22 as their first rifle. Mine was a Ruger 10/22 when I was twelve years old.
Semi-automatic weapons are so common in America that even the Federal Assault Weapons Ban left large swathes of them untouched and fully legal (there were 650 firearm exemptions). This was because even those who designed the ban had to concede banning all semi-automatic firearms would ban almost every popular weapon on the market.
Clearly, the semi-automatic feature is far too common in civilian use for us to credibly use it as the feature that defines a weapon as military-grade. In fact, purely semi-automatic weapons are surprisingly rare in military use. They are virtually non-existent outside of sidearms and designated marksman rifles. This fact, combined with the vast civilian use of semi-automatic weapons, makes it the most consistent feature of civilian-grade weapons.
This means we are going to have to continue looking at the AR-15’s other features as we keep trying to define military-grade in a logical and usable way. In the next article, I’ll turn to the next most likely candidate of AR-15 features: ammunition capacity.
Justin Stapley is the owner and editor of The Liberty Hawk. As a political writer, his principles and ideas are grounded in the ideas of ordered liberty as expressed in the traditions of classical liberalism, federalism, and modern conservatism. His writing has been featured at the Federalist Coalition, the NOQ Report, and Porter Medium. You can follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.
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I would posit that any type of weaponry routinely and conventionally employed by military forces constitutes a “military-grade” weapon. The AR-15 is a military grade weapon not just because the military version has the select-fire feature, but because of its inherent design characteristics as an assault rifle: light-weight, easily broken down, easily cleaned in the field, and designed for use with large-capacity magazines. The absence of a select-fire option in a civilian version is but a minimal difference. Use of any military AR on full auto has its own design limitations. I can’t think of any instance where use of anything in excess of a 5-round clip would work an inconvenience in a hunting or sport-shooting context.
“The AR-15 is a military grade weapon not just because the military version has the select-fire feature, but because of its inherent design characteristics as an assault rifle: light-weight, easily broken down, easily cleaned in the field, and designed for use with large-capacity magazines.”
This is nonsense. Those design characteristics have nothing to do with military exclusivity. If I buy a blender I want it to be light weight, easily broken down, easily cleaned, and large capacity to blend whatever I want.
The semi/auto switch being called “minimal difference” doesn’t make sense. It increases the fire rate dramatically.
Also, are 5 rounds enough to deter or kill a home invader? Hunting and competition shooting are not the only public use/need of an AR.