Since it was in TIME, you know it’s a fact:
LOL that’s right… 45 rounds per minute with a semi-automatic AR-15. People are apparently capable of pulling the trigger once every 1.33 seconds. Impressive… OH WAIT…
When people spout scary facts about guns which are hilariously wrong, even if it makes guns look scarier, I correct them just to make them feel dumb. If you can’t pull the trigger at least 2 time per second, you probably have arthritis or some other finger/joint issue. So at 2 rounds per second that would be 120 rounds per minute.
The icing on the cake though is truly the silhouette of the AK-47 they used.
Bravo TIME on your accurate reporting. *slow clap*
Maybe the graphic artist knew exactly what he/she was doing though? Recall the subtle Glock Grenade troll in TIME’s special ops edition. Ladies and gentlemen we might have pro-gun a mole-troll inside TIME.
Thoughts?
Hat tip: Roger
Comments
50 responses to “Time Magazine Attempts To Scare With AR-15 Fact”
I’d forgotten about the Glock grenade. That would be awesome if TIME had a pro-gun troll! Good deduction.
Was just researching semi-auto rates of fire the other day for a rebuttal to someone saying AR-15s could fire 500 rpm. Found this on Wikipedia:
“The semi-automatic rate is the assault rifle/semi-auto only version on rapid fire. It is the maximum rate that a weapon can fire with any degree of accuracy in semi-auto mode, usually 45-60 rpm.”
While I agree with you that I can pull the trigger anywhere from 80-120 times per minute, would that honestly be accurate fire? They also mention sustained or effective rate of fire:
“In these weapons it (sustained or effective rate of fire) refers to the rate at which the typical rifleman can effectively engage targets in a combat situation. The rate is usually 12-15 rpm, except for barrel changes it considers most of the same factors as for the belt fed MGs.”
Not sure how accurate numbers off Wikipedia are anyway, but as a Desert Storm Veteran and current owner of a Colt M4, I’d say the fewer rounds they say one can fire per minute, the better for our side. We don’t want to scare them with too much “truth.” You know if they hear 120 rounds per minute, the uninformed will panic – even though no active shooter is going to carelessly spray bullets at that rate of fire if their objective is to kill people.
So you can chuckle at finding a “mistake” and make things worse by substituting another statistic, and do a bit more harm, or you can leave the rate of fire “inaccuracy” alone, make fun of the misused picture and “in semi-automatic mode,” and call it a day.
As you know an AR15 it’s not exactly a .50 BMG when it comes to recoil. I’m not saying I’d put 120 rounds in the same hole at 100 yards, but it wouldn’t be a total mess either.
If I wouldn’t have pointed out the mistakes someone else would have. I don’t think misinformation should be allowed on either side of the fight. My stance will always be, regular/sane people don’t go around shooting up theaters and schools whether the magazine capacity is 7 or 100, or if the rate of fire is 45 RPM or 120 RPM.
Amen!
No doubt some shooter will let them know the rate should be 120 a minute, then send them a video of himself bump firing an AR15. That is what I am waiting for, until the bump firing craze gets center attention among the gun grabbers. Then we can all say good bye to the semi-autos.
It already has got attention with the “slidefire” stock.
I have seen people bump firing without the slide fire stock. Wait till the gun grabbers get a hold of those videos.
I’m sure anyone can squeeze well beyond 45 rounds in 60 seconds.
I’d much rather they print the conservative numbers than the factually accurate but “spraying bullets all over everything carelessly” numbers the author espouses.
What is with this “bump firing” craze. That is just the thing to get semi-autos outlawed, people shooting like that and putting it on youtube. Bad mistake I think.
Not counting the wasting ammo to hit hardly nothing lol
Ah ha! Found where Time might have gotten the number from: “The official Bushmaster XM15 manual lists the maximum effective rate of fire at 45 rounds per minute.”
Back in the day, a brit would pull that off with his lee enfield =P
I’m surprised everyone missed the “600 round AR-15 magazines are avalible online for as little as $25.95” bit.
Both parts of that are absurd. Even if there was a 600 round AR mag available Cheaper than Dirt would be asking like $30k for it.
I was actually trying to explain to someone the other day that if you’re worried about mass shootings you shouldn’t want a magazine size limit because the huge magazines the media is so worried about rarely work and will just lead to the gun jamming.
As long as doctors keep giving these psychoactive drugs to teenagers there will be these terrible mass shootings. Even if they outlawed semi-auto guns it could still happen, and even if they outlawed guns all together there are so many guns out there that the government will never know about, it would take a century for all the guns to be out of the hands of Americans, just the people that obey the law to begin with would give their guns up.
Brian,
There was also a sentence in that article that said…”Banning all firearms would result in zero firearm deaths per year” or something along those lines. I don’t have the magazine with me anymore but it’s somewhere toward the end of the article. I honestly could not believe the filth written in that article.
I found a 600 round magazine for $25.95, but it is for an AK instead of an AR
It is also for airsoft pellets instead of bullets but I guess the difference doesn’t matter to them.
http://www.bing.com/shopping/echo1-ak-47-metal-600-round-high-capacity-airsoft-magazine/p/748E126D51280B165020?q=600+round+mags&lpq=600%20round%20mags&FORM=HURE
I thought for sure this was a joke in the comments section. Go and grab my TIME magazine, and sure as shit it is in there… Do they really think that is possible? 600 rounds in a single magazine? Imagine the weight! Imagine the spring pressure required to feed twelve feet of ammo! And all for less than the immensly popular (snicker) 40 rounder?
Maybe they sent it to the deuche at Red Jacket! “Rolls eyes.”
45 is a conservative number, it’s better that they put 45 than a more extreme number.
45 rounds per minute in semi automatic mode.
As opposed to what? What other modes are there? 0 rounds per minute in safe mode? 5 rounds per minute using lock-the-bolt-back-and-load-a-round-manually-like-an-animal mode?
SSAR-15 mode. Apprx 700 rpm! Give or take the stupidity of the end user! There’s also the SSAK-47…blah blah blah.
I’d be more afraid of the asshat with a bolt action remington 700 with a box of 50 rounds who sits on a hide than the dumbass with 30000 rounds in the trunk of his car.
“In semiautomatic mode” is there any other mode? stupid A-holes!!
If they keep us rebutting their technical mistakes the real agenda slips thru unchallenged. The average consumer of the media crap won’t understand anyway, we have to stick with the constitutional rights and civil rights side of the issue.
In Travis Haley’s adaptive carbine video, he demo’s shooting his AR as fast as he can from 10 yards or something close and gets 13 rounds in the effective zone in 2 seconds. Does the same with an AK in his adaptive kalash video. I can shoot several rounds per second at 25 yards accurately and I’m nothing to shout about. Yesterday at the range I was doing rapid fire bursts on my 25 yard target with an AK and I could easily do 120 accurate hits in a minute.
Lol at the AK icon to describe AR. Reminds me of when I picked up some plentifully stocked 7.62×39 at Cabela’s recently while the entire shelf of .223 was cleared out. The cashier was amazed I found the ammo I was looking for. I made the comment, “who’d have thought there’d be a day where the AK was no longer the most vilified gun of the day?” They lol’ed.
Well the average person can fire four shots a second from a double-action only hand gun with a longer trigger stoke/reset, and five to seven shots with an auto pistol with a shorter trigger stroke and rest. I don’t know about the AR-15 it depends on the quality of the trigger assembly; but it I bet its toward the seven to ten rounds a second. That’s about 420 to 600 rounds a minute.
Mad minute was a pre-World War I term used by British riflemen during training to describe scoring 15 hits onto a 12″ round target at 300 yd (274.3 m) within one minute using a bolt-action rifle (usually a Lee-Enfield or Lee-Metford rifle). It was not uncommon during the First World War for riflemen to greatly exceed this score. Many riflemen could average 30+ shots, while the record, set in 1914 by Sergeant Instructor Alfred Snoxall was 38 hits.[1] It was rumored that a company of assaulting German soldiers reported that they had faced machine gun fire, while in fact it was a rifle squad of ten men firing at this rate. Annually, a group of British owners meet for a mad minute competition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_minute
So in the end the Lee-Enfield bolt action or semi-auto AR doesn’t really matter, if you know how to use it (not very hard) you can deal out a lot of damage. As loss as you have the right to own a gun, there is the ability for someone to kill a large amount of people. No sort of any “gun-control” will make a bit of difference.
When you get older it takes more time to reload. Just sayin’
Ar users will have plenty of time to learn the mad feinstein minute when they have the choice of either bolt action conversion or destruction.
Whoever is shooting that can’t squeeze the trigger very fast.
With an 11-87 (12 ga semi auto), I can launch 164 .25 caliber projectiles in about 1.5 seconds. Load would be 3 inch #4 buckshot.
PS., Tiffany are you single? :)
:-), Al, I’m married. We’re both gun enthusiasts, too. When we met, I had my carry permit and a Glock 19 already. I pushed him to get his carry permit, and now we have 7 handguns, a shotgun, and 2 ARs between us. He bought me my AR for Christmas, before I got him his. He doesn’t buy me flowers or jewelry, he buys me guns. :-P
he sounds like a keeper.
The full article can be found starting pg 26 (above error on pg 32) of Jan 28, 2013 issue of TIME.
“…mole-troll inside TIME.”
That’s MOLLE-troll, if you please.
You can present in maybe .40 and rip splits at like .11-.13, so they are way conservative.
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AK BUILDERS SHIRT, NAO!
LOL that looked perfect in the email I got about the comment. Looks like a phaser on here though. I’ll start thinking about an AK builders club shirt soon!
requisite hammer and grinding wheel need to be in it though.
I would buy one. As they say, you do actually build an AK. An AR is just something you assemble.
I wonder if anyone has ever seen Jerry Miculek shoot a wheel gun. Perhaps they would ban speed loaders, too.
A bunch of media toolbags once again.
45 rounds per minute is the maximum RECOMMENDED sustained rate of fire. Seriously. If you shoot faster than that FOR TOO LONG, your barrel will sustain damage, and eventually, the handguards will light on fire.
Not that the geniuses at Time understand that distinction. Just saying.
Did anyone notice this? In the same TIME article. 600 round magazine for as low as $25.95 http://i45.tinypic.com/3093gpe.jpg
You guys are missing something. If the Bushmaster has a maximum semi-auto cyclic rate of fire of 45 rounds per minute, Lanza only had about 3 minutes to fire off 154 rounds, which is a cyclic rate of fire of 51.33 rounds per minute. The official story fails once again, even though Adam Lanza is supposed to be on a par with a Marvel comics superhero or something.
Not only that, but they have Lanza roaming around too much in the school, stopping to knock on doors and demand to be let in, and shooting some of the victims too many times when having to stroke the trigger with each shot. You put 11 rounds in one victim, the others are busy running around. This would have squeezed down the probability that even a supernatural being like Adam Lanza could have achieved a 13 or 14-to-1 Kill ratio, which most Navy SEALs have never achieved.
The story is incredible.
wonder if these are what they were referring to http://www.amazon.com/SRC-Airsoft-Round-AK-47-Magazine/dp/B0081L620C/ref=sr_1_3?s=sporting-goods&ie=UTF8&qid=1373513661&sr=1-3&keywords=600+round+magazine for airsoft rifles
Wow… you don’t take into account reloading at all eh? it takes more time to replace the magazine then it does to fire the rounds. it also takes a LOT more time when you only have a 10 round mag… learn to not be a moron. Thank you
Hello:
Viet Nam vet., class A carry permit, two hand guns, one long gun.
I doubt that “accuracy” is a factor for a coward with a high capacity magazine in a quality semi automatic used in crowds. I wager a small proportion of bullets are left in the woodwork. Think it through, high capacity mag=capacity for mass murder. An M1 Garrand in WWII was a great killer human or animal and with an 8 round clip had an effective fire rate much less than current units. In my opinion anyone needing more than 8 shots has something other than sporting use in mind.
L