Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
CLAIM: During Friday’s airing of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) claimed an AR-15 rifle is an “automatic weapon.”
VERDICT: False. AR-15s are semiautomatic firearms.
Grisham made her comments during a discussion of the May 16, 2023, Farmington, New Mexico, shooting that left three people dead.
CNN identified the Farmington gunman as an 18-year-old male and noted his family had worried about his mental health. He used three different guns in the attack and was ultimately killed by police.
One of the guns was an AR-15, which Grisham described as an “automatic weapon.” She said:
Frankly, no one that isn’t in the military — this is a weapon of war — or a trained police department, in my view, no one in America who isn’t in one of those two situations should own an automatic weapon. There is no reason to own one of those.
Contrary to Grisham’s assertion, AR-15s are semiautomatic firearms. They fire one round, and one round only, per trigger pull.
The AR-15 has a safety on the lower that allows the owner of the gun to switch between “safe” and “fire.” Automatic weapons, on the other hand, have a select fire switch that allows the owner of the gun to switch between “safe,” “semiautomatic fire,” and “automatic fire.” (In some cases the choice is a three-round burst of auto fire instead of unlimited auto fire.)
M16s and M4s are exampled of automatic weapons with the select fire switch.
M16s and M4s are actual “weapons of war,” but the AR-15 is just a semiautomatic rifle that shoots one round per trigger pull.
Grisham’s claim that an AR-15 is an “automatic weapon” is false.