The Washington Post Misfires—AgainIts series on the AR-15 is error-ridden propaganda.
By Kevin D. Williamson
Mar 31, 2023
When it comes to the AR-15, the Washington Post keeps getting it wrong. A piece headlined “The Blast Effect” makes various claims about the rounds fired by AR-type rifles, some of which are untrue, the rest of which are common to almost all centerfire rifles. The Washington Post’s claim that the AR-type rifle is “uniquely destructive” is categorically false. The journalistically responsible thing to do would be to retract these claims, but the Post is not engaged in journalism—it is engaged in culture-war propaganda.
I have been annotating some of the errors in the Post’s hysterical and error-ridden series on firearms and firearm-enabled violence, and today I will look at the claim that AR-pattern rifles are especially dangerous because the 5.56mm bullet moves so fast:
“What makes the weapon so deadly is the speed of that bullet,” the Post claims.
(If you will forgive a little prologue: I will set aside, for the moment, the fact that there are lots of firearms that fire the 5.56mm NATO round and its fraternal twin, the .223 Remington. The bullet does not go extra fast when fired from an AR-style rifle; in fact, it typically will be going a bit slower than when fired from a traditional hunting rifle, because AR-style rifles usually, though not always, are outfitted with shorter barrels. ...
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