To the editor:

While I appreciate Mr. Huth’s bringing facts to the discussion of firearms safety (“Preventing criminal gun use requires facts, not fiction,” May 25 Portsmouth Times), I must take issue with his assertion that the AR-15 is not an “assault-style” weapon.

When I was a member of an infantry rifle squad, we all had M16 rifles, the military version of the AR-15. Only one member of the squad had his weapon set to fully automatic; the rest of us were set to semi-auto, or one shot per trigger squeeze. That was how we “assaulted.”

It is true that you have to squeeze the trigger for each shot. But if you have two or three 20-shot magazines, you can put a great many shots down range in a very few seconds, even on semi-auto. (We used to tape magazines together so you could change them quickly; banana clips make it even easier.)

The third element that makes this an assault weapon is the nature of the bullet itself. It is made not to knock someone down, or to put a hole through meat as a hunting round would do; it is designed to rip flesh from bone. The goal is not to kill the enemy, but to wound really severely, so that you remove two people: one wounded, and another to try to keep him alive. It is a military round.

Even the civilian version of the AR-15 is accurately defined as an “assault-style” weapon.

Clay Commons 

22 Bayside Ave.

Portsmouth