So, it wasn’t a rifle. It was a pistol.
https://ruger.com/products/ar556/models.html
Technically it would be a carbine - but it’s not a pistol.
It is semantics. It has an AR design and lower with a “wrist brace” that works just like a shoulder-stock if you use it that way. It is approximately the same size as a “patrol rifle” as described by the officers who saw him and engaged in the shoot-out and from the end of a grocery store aisle. It takes the same magazines as an AR rifle and the same caliber ammunition.
Hard to tell if the barrel is 16”, 12”, or 8” under those circumstances and realistically it changes nothing. The officer who said on the dispatch tapes that he had a “patrol carbine” was pretty accurate given what the responding officers were carrying.
The average person does not understand the difference nor do they care. It’s an “AR” to them. “Legally” it is a pistol. Realistically, it is an SBR. Don’t believe me? Go watch youtube and just about everyone firing an “AR pistol” is using it like a rifle with the wrist brace on their shoulder. Few understand the difference and in the end, what difference does this make? Would the results have been different with a 16” barrel and collapsible or fixed stock? Probably not.
The average person would call it a rifle. Rifle caliber. Rifle magazines. Rifle action. Rifle stock (collapse your Magpul down and its same size as “wrist brace”) if you fire it from the shoulder. The only true difference is the barrel length. Every other feature is the same to the point that you can put your rifle upper on the pistol lower or vice versa (which would be illegal).
I don’t see how “we” can win this argument if we frame it like they do. No offense intended, but we make a mistake playing their games. You and I understand the difference. We are in an extreme minority.
“So, it wasn’t a rifle. It was a pistol.”
But was it an “assault pistol?”
It’ll need to be banned as well . . .
Here’s what voters on both the left and right need to know, in my opinion.
Democrats are trying to pass more gun control that will disarm us and make us defenseless against terrorists and other criminals who would want to commit mass murders. At least some of those terrorists and criminals have taken advantage of places that were more likely to be frequented by defenseless victims (examples being mostly leftist Boulder or Arvada).
Joe Biden is trying to hurry legislators into passing more gun control laws, because he knows that voters will soon be better informed about what really happened.