Man Goes Viral After "Destroying" AR-15, But Gun Expert Notices Something
If there’s a shooting involving an AR-15, or a gun like the AR-15, or even a gun with the letters “A” and “R” somewhere in its name, you can bet that the media is looking to use it to demonize the AR-15.
After the shooting at the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last week, the AR-15 again came under scrutiny.
That’s not because it’s more deadly than other guns if school shooters have free rein — the Virginia Tech shooting, which claimed far more lives, was committed with simple handguns — but it’s become almost a symbol to both shooters and gun-grabbers alike.
In the wake of the Parkland shooting, one AR-15 owner went massively viral by “destroying” his gun in response. However, our gun expert looked at what he did to it and noticed something the media should have looked at before reporting the story.
“Scott Pappalardo owned his AR-15 rifle for more than 30 years,” ABC News reported on its Facebook page. “He even has a Second Amendment tattoo on his arm.
“This weekend, he destroyed his gun ‘to make sure this weapon will never be able to take a life.’” Thus, he cut it in half:
That video has gotten over 2.3 million views on ABC News’ Facebook account alone in just one day. However, did you notice the one thing about his “destruction” of the gun that seems a bit suspicious?
Jared Harris, our resident gun expert here at Conservative Tribune, certainly did.
Harris, a former infantryman who has extensive experience in weapons, says that if Pappalardo thought he was really destroying the weapon, he did it so ineptly one could argue he probably shouldn’t have owned it in the first place.
“He only sliced the barrel,” Harris said. “Those are less than $100 and literally screw into the upper part of the receiver.”
To put that into context, low-end AR rifles start at $500 minimum and can go up to several thousand dollars.
“It’s like throwing a tire into the garbage and declaring that you’ve destroyed an entire car.”
If Pappalardo truly thinks he’s destroyed the weapon, in other words, he’s actually made it more dangerous by thinking it’s destroyed and therefore harmless. If one thinks a gun is harmless, one is more likely to let it fall into the wrong hands — and that makes the gun way more dangerous than it was before it was “destroyed.”
Of course, this could be a stunt, or Pappalardo might just be trolling the heck out of the news media. Maybe he went on and ran over the gun 20 times with his truck before blowing it up in his backyard. All of these are options.
However, when the media uncritically reports that this man has “destroyed” an AR-15, it shows they know nothing about a gun they’re so eager to villainize.
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