Left unaddressed in the controversy over Walz’s military service is the suggestion that our soldiers carry special ‘weapons of war’ that civilians at home can easily buy.
Left unaddressed in the controversy over Walz’s military service is the suggestion that American soldiers carry special ‘weapons of war’ that civilians at home can easily purchase.
T im Walz, Minnesota’s governor and Kamala Harris’s choice as her vice-presidential running mate, declared in 2018, “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is [sic] the only place where those weapons are at.”
It is now clear that Walz lied when he claimed to have carried any weapon “in war.” The Washington Post “fact-checker” found it to be “false.” Walz never got near a combat zone during his military service. The Harris-Walz campaign finally admitted that the claim was untrue but tried to spin it by saying that Walz “misspoke” — as if the fraud was inadvertent.
But left unaddressed in this controversy is the suggestion that American soldiers carry special “weapons of war” that can easily be purchased by civilians at home. Presumably, Walz was advocating a ban on civilian ownership of AR-15s and similar semiautomatic rifles, on the rationale that they look like the real M16 “assault rifles” issued to our military when both Walz and I served. (I was issued M16s during both of my Army tours in Vietnam.)
Despite similarities in appearance, the military M16 and the civilian AR-15 are in reality very different firearms. Both share a much less powerful cartridge than our military has traditionally used for its main battle rifles, and that is because the M16 was designed to fire more than 500 rounds per minute with a single pull of the trigger when the selector switch is set to “Auto” — and virtually no one can control a handheld full-auto rifle (think “machine gun”) loaded with 30-06 cal. (used from 1903 until 1957 in the 1903 Springfield and the M1 Garand rifle) or 7.62mm NATO (used briefly during the early days of the Vietnam War in the M14). The recoil from the first shot raises the muzzle so subsequent bullets fly far above the heads of the enemy.
The 5.56mm (.223 cal.) round fired by the M16 and AR-15 launches a projectile one-quarter to one-half as heavy as 30-06 bullets, with far less than half of the muzzle energy (and just over one-third of that energy at 200 yards). It was chosen so the M16 could be controlled when fired full automatic and also so soldiers could carry more of the smaller (and 50 percent lighter) ammo into the field. Indeed, the round is so weak that it is banned for hunting deer in Virginia and many other states to avoid unnecessary suffering for the animal. (There are handgun rounds that fire bullets more than seven times heavier with twice the muzzle energy of the 5.56.) It was a reasonable choice for firing “full auto” through an M16, but the AR-15 has no full-auto option. Indeed, part of the appeal of the 5.56 AR-15 to civilian shooters is that the recoil is far less than most hunting cartridges and the price of ammo much lower.
In reality, not a single country in the world has ever issued the AR-15 as its primary infantry rifle. Calling it a “weapon of war” is as disingenuous as Governor Walz’s claim to have been “in war.” Indeed, reports that enemy soldiers in Iraq were continuing to fight even after being hit multiple times with 5.56 bullets led the American military in 2022 to shift to a new round that would provide “greater energy on the target.”
The campaign to conflate civilian AR-15 rifles and real military assault rifles was intended by the Violence Policy Center (VPC) to trick the American public into believing that civilian AR-15s are “machine guns.” A 1988 VPC policy paper explained: “The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons — anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun — can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”
The scam clearly worked. After the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, President Obama incorrectly described the weapon used as “a fully automatic weapon.” The VPC understood that AR-15s were not, in fact, a major factor in homicides. A study by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services of 600 firearms murders between 1989 and 1991 reported that “assault rifles” — by which they meant semiautomatic rifles that looked like military assault rifles — were used less than 1 percent of the time, and annual FBI data show that rifles of all kinds account for less than 5 percent of homicides — far less than half the number murdered by “personal weapons” such as “hands, fists, and feet.” But getting the public to accept banning “black rifles” would increase the likelihood that Americans eventually approve of the VPC’s real goal, which is banning all handguns.
AR-15s cannot be banned from private ownership without amending the Constitution or violating its Second Amendment. The first major Second Amendment case to reach the Supreme Court was United States v. Miller et al., which challenged the constitutionality of the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA). In this case, decided in 1939, SCOTUS overturned both the district court and court of appeals, which had ruled that the NFA was an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment. SCOTUS upheld the NFA as constitutional on the rationale that the gun in question — a shotgun with a barrel shorter than 18 inches, or a “sawed-off shotgun” — was not intended for military use and that there was therefore no constitutional right to possess it.
We cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
In other words, the Second Amendment protected military weapons above all else.
In reality, as I have explained elsewhere, Miller was not a strong case. Jack Miller was in prison when the case was argued before the Court and could not afford a lawyer to present his case. And the justices clearly were unaware that shotguns with shorter (18- to 20-inch) barrels (called trench guns) — which made them “more maneuverable in confined spaces” — had played an important role for the U.S. military during World War I. They were later used extensively in World War II and Vietnam.
In the 2008 D.C. v. Heller case, the Supreme Court declared: “We . . . read Miller to say only that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Does the AR-15 even arguably fall into that unprotected category? In recent years, manufacturing data reveal that almost 25 percent of all firearms made are AR-15s or clones. Under Heller, they are clearly protected by the Second Amendment.
AR-15s and similar rifles have been demonized because they have been used in several highly publicized mass public shootings. But more than 75 percent of weapons used in such shootings are handguns, and mass shootings account for less than 1 percent of firearms homicides. By far the deadliest school shooting in American history involved a Virginia Tech student armed with two handguns who mostly used ten-round magazines. It is very uncommon for anyone to fire more than ten rounds in a shooting, but outlawing so-called high-capacity magazines would leave homeowners unable to defend their families in the event of a home invasion involving multiple criminals. It would also incentivize criminals to use higher-caliber weapons.
Since Walz never actually went to war, we cannot be certain what “weapon of war” he might have carried. He served in an artillery unit, but presumably he does not pretend he “carried” an artillery howitzer weighing more than 1,000 pounds. Most enlisted members of his unit would have been issued M16s, but the most senior NCOs might instead have carried the 9mm Beretta M92 pistol used by the Army between 1985 and 2017.
It is true that most law-abiding adults can purchase 9mm pistols like those used by our military since 1985 (although nine states and D.C. limit magazine capacity to ten rounds). Indeed, four of the top five best-selling handguns in America today are 9mm semiautomatic pistols — all offering high-capacity magazines — and the civilian version of the military’s M17 is the second-most-popular handgun sold in America. Thus, trying to outlaw the primary handgun carried by the modern American military would be equally futile under Heller’s “weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes” test.