Obama Claims AR-15 is a "Fully Automatic" Rifle

It has been widely reported that the killer in the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut last year was a semi-automatic AR-15 stolen from its rightful owner. In fact, it was for precisely that reason that President Obama said that gun control will be a "central issue" of his last four years in office.

But on Thursday, reports began circulating that at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday, Obama claimed that the AR-15 used in the Connecticut crime was a fully-automatic firearm. At first, we wondered if the reports were accurate, or whether the president might have had a slip of the tongue.

The president was quoted as saying: "Now, over the next couple of months, we've got a couple of issues:  gun control.  I just came from Denver, where the issue of gun violence is something that has haunted families for way too long, and it is possible for us to create common-sense gun safety measures that respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country and hunters and sportsmen, but also make sure that we don't have another 20 children in a classroom gunned down by a semiautomatic weapon – by a fully automatic weapon in that case, sadly."

However, that is precisely what Obama said, as verified by the transcript of his speech, posted on the White House's website.

On top of Rep. Diana DeGette's (D-Colo.) claim the day before (see related article above), that once rounds are fired from a magazine, the magazine becomes inoperable, and similarly foolish statements by other anti-gun legislation sponsors, we are left wondering whether anyone at the core of the anti-gun campaign in Washington, D.C., knows which end of a gun is up.