A surgeon explains why AR-15-style rifles are so deadly [View all]

Nicole Karlis - Yesterday 4:24 PM

The semi-automatic weapon known as an "AR-15-style" rifle has become synonymous with mass shootings in America. Indeed, this style of gun is often in the news for being the gun of choice for many mass shooters.

Most recently, the weapon used during the mass shooting at a suburban Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, was a Smith & Wesson M&P15 — an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle made by gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson. In Uvalde, Texas, an AR-15-style rifle was used to fatally shoot nineteen students and two teachers at an elementary school. An AR-15-style rifle was also used in the Sandy Hook massacre.

The "AR" in "AR-15" rifle stands for ArmaLite rifle, which is the name of the company that developed the weapon in the 1950s. The term "AR-15-style" is now used to refer to any rifle of that style. The original rifle was made for military use, but when the company failed to get buyers, it rebranded it for civilian use. Today, there are many different AR-15-style rifles on the market. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, there are an estimated 19.8 million AR-15 style rifles in circulation in the country — a significant increase from the 8.5 million that were circulating before the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004.

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"In a typical handgun injury, which I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ such as the liver," Heather Sher, a radiologist who treated victims of the Parkland shooting in 2018, wrote in The Atlantic. "To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, gray bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments."

More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-surgeon-explains-why-ar-15-style-rifles-are-so-deadly/ar-AAZvwLB