Fact Check: New Mexico’s Democrat Gov. Claims an AR-15 Is an ‘Automatic Weapon’

CLAIM: During Friday’s airing of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) claimed an AR-15 rifle is an “automatic weapon.”

VERDICT: False. AR-15s are semiautomatic firearms.

Grisham made her comments during a discussion of the May 16, 2023, Farmington, New Mexico, shooting that left three people dead.

CNN identified the Farmington gunman as an 18-year-old male and noted his family had worried about his mental health. He used three different guns in the attack and was ultimately killed by police.

One of the guns was an AR-15, which Grisham described as an “automatic weapon.” She said:

Frankly, no one that isn’t in the military — this is a weapon of war — or a trained police department, in my view, no one in America who isn’t in one of those two situations should own an automatic weapon. There is no reason to own one of those.

Contrary to Grisham’s assertion, AR-15s are semiautomatic firearms. They fire one round, and one round only, per trigger pull.
The AR-15 has a safety on the lower that allows the owner of the gun to switch between “safe” and “fire.” Automatic weapons, on the other hand, have a select fire switch that allows the owner of the gun to switch between “safe,” “semiautomatic fire,” and “automatic fire.” (In some cases the choice is a three-round burst of auto fire instead of unlimited auto fire.)

M16s and M4s are exampled of automatic weapons with the select fire switch.

M16s and M4s are actual “weapons of war,” but the AR-15 is just a semiautomatic rifle that shoots one round per trigger pull.

Grisham’s claim that an AR-15 is an “automatic weapon” is false.

A conversation with constitutional attorney Stephen P. Halbrook

Four Reasons For The Crime Increase
Whenever Anyone Tells You Guns are the Reason for the Rise in Crime, Show Them This Article

Miss Swearer hits another home run

The entirety of the American system of government rests on two very simple yet profound premises—that every human being is endowed by our Creator with natural and unalienable rights, and that the only just end of government is to secure these rights for its citizens. Unfortunately, far too often, ill-considered progressive policies not only fail to adequately secure Americans’ natural rights from criminals who would undermine them, but actively worsen the problem by making it harder for peaceable citizens to defend themselves. Here are four specific policies that routinely make us all less safe and that, after crime rates predictably rise, are then used as excuses from gun-control proponents to further restrict our right to keep and bear arms.

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May 22

337 – Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus, otherwise known as Constantine the Great, the first ‘official’  Christian Emperor of Rome, dies at age 65 in Nicomedia, Bithynia province.

1176 – Hashshashins fail in their attempt to assassinate  Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, more well known in the west as Saladin, near Aleppo, Syria.

1520 – Conquistador and Deputy governor Pedro de Alvarado, on learning that the festival of Tóxcatl that Emperor Montezuma had requested, included a human sacrifice, has his troops interrupt the ceremony and in the process kill almost all the Aztecs in the temple of Tezcatlipoca.

1804 – With the arrival of William Clark and men from Camp Dubois, the Lewis and Clark Expedition departs from St. Charles, Missouri.

1807 – A grand jury indicts former Vice President Aaron Burr on a charge of treason for allegedly attempting to help Mexico overthrow Spanish control there.

1819 – SS Savannah, a hybrid sail/sidewheel steamship, leaves port at Savannah, Georgia on a voyage to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

1846 – The Associated Press is formed in New York City as a non-profit news cooperative.

1849 – Abraham Lincoln is issued a patent for an invention to lift boats, the only U.S. president to ever hold a patent.

1856 – Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina severely beats Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane in the hall of the  Senate for a speech Sumner had made regarding Southerners and slavery.

1858 –  The Confederación Granadina (now the separate nations of Panama, Colombia & parts of Brazil) is formed by the congress of the Republic of New Granada at Bogotá passing a change in the constitution

1866 – Buying and reorganizing the New Haven Arms Company, Oliver Winchester founds the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.

1872 – President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act into law, restoring full civil and political rights to all but a few Confederate sympathizers.

1900 – The Associated Press is formed in New York City as a non-profit news cooperative.

1906 – The Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their “Flying-Machine”.

1915 – Mount Lassen in northern California erupts, the only volcano besides Mount St. Helens to erupt in the contiguous U.S. during the 20th century.

1948 – Thomas C. Wasson, the US Consul General to Israel, is shot in Jerusalem by an unknown assassin, dying the next day.

1962 – Continental Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 707, crashes in Unionville, Missouri after what is determined to be a suicide detonating a dynamite bomb on board for an insurance payout, killing 44 of 45 crew and passengers on board with 1 passenger dying later at a hospital.

1964 – Lyndon B. Johnson launches the Great Society program.

1968 – The Skipjack class nuclear powered submarine USS Scorpion sinks  400 miles southwest of the Azores with the loss of all 99 men aboard.

1969 – Commander Thomas P. Stafford and Lunar Module Pilot John W. Young, flying the Apollo 10 Lunar Module Snoopy, separate from the Command Module Charlie Brown and descend to within 8.4 nautical miles of the moon’s surface before returning to rendezvous with the Command Module.

1998 – U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson rules that U.S. Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the Lewinsky scandal involving President Bill Clinton.

2002 – A jury in Birmingham, Alabama convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murder of four girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

2011 – An EF5 force tornado strikes Joplin, Missouri, killing 158 people and causing $2.8 billion in damage, the costliest single tornado in U.S. history.

2017 – President Donald Trump visits the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and becomes the 1st sitting U.S. president to visit the Western Wall of the temple Mount.

Michigan boy who used slingshot to save sister says he ‘was just lucky’

Andrew Burns, left, Owen Burns, center, and Margaret Burns pose with a slingshot Owen used to thwart an alleged kidnapping attempt of his sister, on Wednesday, May 17, 2023, in Alpena Township, Mich. The 13-year-old Michigan boy who used a slingshot to save his 8-year-old sister from an attempted kidnapping on May 10 said he was “freaking out” and simply reached for something that could stop the attack.

Alpena Township, Mich. — A 13-year-old Michigan boy who used a slingshot to save his 8-year-old sister from an attempted kidnapping said he was “freaking out” and simply reached for something that could stop the attack.

“So I grab my slingshot and open the window and I grab two things — a marble and a gravel rock or something,” Owen Burns told WWTV/WWUP-TV in Cadillac in northern Michigan.

Police said Owen struck the 17-year-old assailant in the head and chest, and his sister was able to get away.

“I was just lucky. He’s just a big target because he’s not like one Pepsi can,” Owen said.

The attempted kidnapping occurred on May 10 outside the family’s home in Alpena Township. Owen’s sister was outside looking for mushrooms.

“I say, ‘OK, be careful.’ … And then, boom, something happens,” he recalled.

“So I looked out the window and saw her being abducted by a person and I’m like freaking out,” Owen said.

That’s when he grabbed his slingshot. Police caught the suspect and said he had visible wounds. The teen has been charged with attempted kidnapping and other crimes.

State police 1st Lt. John Grimshaw said Owen’s actions were “extraordinary.”

He said the boy saved his sister’s life or at least prevented “something seriously bad happening to her.”

Owen said he had to act.

“If I wasn’t out there and I didn’t hear her scream, then she was gone,” he said

Gun Control: MORE GUNS, Not Less.

So the powers that be have made you terrified of a piece of metal and plastic that goes boom? Have you ever seen a gun jump up and shoot somebody all by itself? Of course not. What we should really be concerned about is the wrong people having guns, not taking guns away from people who will use them safely, responsibly, legally, and lawfully.

Aside from all the anti-gun propaganda, let’s look at the reality of things. First of all, there are not enough police officers to protect you and arrive on time. There is clearly no guarantee. And because these things are so sporadic, there is a greater guarantee that they will not arrive in time. We see in active shooter incidents that the police arrive after people have been killed at least 90% of the time. And that is based on a review of over 300 active shooter incident in the last 20 years in the United States. You can check the FBI data for yourself.

But before I leave this point, I would be remiss not to mention that 90% or more of the active shooter incidents have one thing in common. Nobody seems to have any firearm to protect themselves, or at least nobody fires back at the murderous active shooter. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude if people had firearms in such cases and they were trained to use them, the active shooters would not be able to do nearly as much damage.

Let’s look at another example. How many cases of police stations being robbed or shot up have you heard about? How many cases a police officers being car jacked have you heard about? Likely very few to none. But have you ever stopped to think about why that is? Let me tell you why. The primary reason is not because a criminal would be concerned about going to jail. The primary reason is because criminals know that police officers carry guns, and they are trained to use them. Therefore, a criminal attacking a police station has virtually no chance of getting out of there alive. That by itself is a huge deterrent to criminals.

Let’s look at another scenario. Out of incidents with 300 active shooters in America, less than 1/2 of one percent have happened on military bases in the United States. Why do you think that is? Partially because the military bases have tight security, especially entering the base. But a big reason for such low numbers of active shooter incidents on military bases is because these bases employ and house military personnel who are trained with weapons, and will not hesitate to use them to protect themselves and others. Armed and ready, or at least trained and prepared.

Let’s look at one more scenario before we get to the average citizen in America. Rewind back to the old west where at least practically every adult male capable of carrying a weapon did so in order to protect himself, his family and his home. Each man may not have been the fastest gun in the town, but maybe he was just fast enough in the right situation as he was prepared to protect his family. Or at least he was prepared to try.

Now let’s fast forward to today. Every major city in the United States from Miami to New York, Chicago to Atlanta, New Orleans to Dallas and so on has a severe shortage of law-enforcement officers on the streets. And even if these police departments were at full staff, there still would not be enough of them to protect anywhere near even 1/4 of the citizens, tourists and commuters.

Police officers, regardless of how much you hear “protect and serve”, are not bodyguards. As hard as many of them work, they are “law enforcement” officers, not public safety officers. And did you know that around 2008 the United States Supreme Court ruled by a majority vote that local law enforcement officers were not responsible for the individual safety of citizens unless you were in their custody or there were special arrangements that had been made? Furthermore, many of you have heroes (the good cops) confused with superheroes who always arrive on time. Police officers are neither Iron Man, nor Superman, nor Flash nor Wonder Woman. Thus they are not able to arrive on time, every time, all the time.

This brings us to the average citizen in the United States. Someone is walking toward you on the highway with a gun because they are a mental road rage case. This is a random incident and you were not even involved in the incident where he or she has the road rage. You have spoken out against guns and you don’t like them, so you don’t have one. What do you do? Clearly, the police cannot be expected to arrive in time unless they are sitting on the highway right near where you are and happen to see what is transpiring.

Someone is breaking into your house in broad daylight while you are home, a home invasion that the FBI says statistically happens more in broad daylight. They have just kicked in the door. But you are so afraid of guns that you don’t even have one. What do you do? You could dial 911 and then tell the home invader to leave because you have called the police, even though you don’t know when they will arrive. And the criminal invading your home just might turn around and walk out the door, but not likely. So what do you do?

You are in a department store bathroom when you hear gunshots and you see everybody running into the bathroom where you are. Terror on their faces. Fear and in their hearts. The gunman is coming to the bathroom as he shoots people. You are unarmed, so what do you do?

In each of these cases, you can pray and run, maybe duck and hide. But the only thing that will protect you from a gun in the hands of a maniac at that moment is you having a firearm to protect yourself and being trained to use it.

I don’t say these things just to promote guns. I say these things, because in a country full of crime, guns serve a purpose in you protecting yourself. I don’t say these things because I am a firearms instructor. I don’t see these things because I have guns, including …  I don’t say these things because I am a former detective, executive protection agent, security expert, criminologist and retired Director of Public Safety. I say these things because they are true and once you realize that YOU have the PRIMARY responsibility to protect yourself, maybe you will start doing it.

Yes, there is a way to arm school teachers (selectively) without having incidents where Miss Mary left a loaded gun in her drawer and a student found it. I know because I wrote a plan on exactly how to do it. You may say that teachers are not the police. My response? First wake up to the world that we live in. And second, every day, millions upon millions of parents trust the teachers and the school with their children for education and safety. So let them provide both in a strategic, organized, responsible manner. It can be done, believe me.

The bottom line, whether you like guns or not, is that you and your family are the first line of defense in your safety. So it only makes sense that you are prepared to protect yourself, your family and your home. Especially when you don’t know what will happen, when or where. It’s time to wake up and stop being afraid of plastic and metal that can do nothing by itself.

A disarmed population is a population of sitting ducks just waiting for criminals to go duck hunting. And out of all the legislators and soccer moms and pastors and businesses that want to demonize and take the guns away, none of them are going to protect you and your family. It’s up to you. But if the criminal has a gun and you don’t, it’s up to them. And I don’t think they are going to do what is in your best interest.

Barking mad Nebraska State Senator really wants you to know that she’s pro-trans.

I don’t know whether it is an overstatement to suggest people with “gender dysphoria” have a mental illness, or whether there is a social contagion at work (like the anorexia epidemic among young women a couple decades ago that ultimately faded out to a large extent), but scenes like this state legislator in Nebraska aren’t reassuring that there’s a rational defense of the trans-phenomenon. (Wonder what she will do when told that Trans World Airlines went bankrupt 30 years ago. Probably another screech about capitalism or something.)

This video is about one minute long, but it seems much longer.

May 21

1403 – Henry III of Castile sends Ruy González de Clavijo as ambassador to Tamerlane to discuss the possibility of an alliance between him and Castile against the moslem Ottoman Empire.

1758 – 10 year old Mary Campbell is abducted in Pennsylvania by Lenape indians during the French and Indian War. She is returned 6 1/2 years later.

1851 – The Colombian Congress enacts a law freeing all slaves on January 1, 1852.

1856 – Lawrence, Kansas, founded by abolitionists, is raided by pro slavery forces, with several buildings sacked and burned. The only casualty is one of the raiders who was accidentally killed. This begins the time of ‘Bleeding Kansas’.

1881 – The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton in Washington, D.C.

1917 – The Great Atlanta Fire causes $5.5 million in damage, destroying 2,000 buildings, but causing only 1 fatality due to a heart attack.

1924 – University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb murder 14 year old Bobby Franks in a “thrill killing”.

1927 – Charles Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris.

1932 – Amelia Earhart lands at Londonderry, Northern Ireland, completing  the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot.

1934 – Oskaloosa, Iowa, becomes the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens. No reason can be found for this.

1946 – During an experiment with the plutonium core that would have been the 3rd nuclear bomb dropped on Japan, if needed, physicist Louis Slotin is the second man fatally irradiated in the second criticality incident with the ‘demon core’ at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1972 – Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is damaged by a  mentally disturbed vandal.

1976 – A chartered school bus transporting 52 members of the Yuba City High School a cappella choir, crashes after running off an elevated ramp on the I-680 highway in Martinez, California, killing 28 students and an adult adviser.

1981 – Transamerica Corporation agrees to sell United Artists to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $380 million after the box office failure of the 1980 film Heaven’s Gate.

2000 – An East Coast Aviation Services chartered British Aerospace BAe-3101 Jetstream 3101, runs out of fuel and crashes into mountainous terrain in Bear Creek Township, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania after missing a landing approach to Scranton International Airport and circling to try again, killing all 19 passengers and crew aboard.

2005 – The tallest roller coaster in the world, the 456 feet tall, Kingda Ka opens at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey.

2011 – Radio broadcaster Harold Camping’s prediction that the world would end on this date fails to come to pass.

2012 – A suicide bombing killing more than 120 people in Sana’a, the capital city of Yemen, causes certain U.S. counter terrorist advisors to decide to exercise the better part of valor and relocate a forward post back across the Red Sea.

2017 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performs their final show at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.

He pulled a gun on a New Orleans store clerk. The clerk shot him in the chest.

Roderick Bennett got more than he bargained for when he pulled a gun on a clerk at a Central City retail store, judging from documents that New Orleans police filed in court.

Not only did the clerk also produce a firearm and shoot him, Bennett, in trying to drive to a hospital for treatment, crashed his car. And on Thursday, police arrested him on a charge of threatening the clerk in the first place.

They booked Bennett, 49, with aggravated assault with a gun and possession of a gun by a convicted felon.

Police said Bennett was arguing an item’s price April 11 with an employee at the Dollar General store in the 2800 block of South Claiborne Avenue. A witness told them that Bennett pointed a gun at the employee, prompting the employee to shoot him in the chest.

Bennett crawled to his car, but en route to a hospital, he crashed the vehicle, police wrote in documents filed in Criminal District Court. Someone picked him and drove him the rest of the way, and he was taken into surgery in critical condition, the documents say.

Six days later, detectives interviewed Bennett. He told them he didn’t remember anything, including the argument.

On April 26, police interviewed the store employee. He said Bennett started the argument and soon asked him to go outside to fight.

Surveillance video showed Bennett leaving the store by the front door, then pulling a gun and approaching the employee as they argued, police said. The employee, too, pulled out a gun and fired it, striking Bennett.

Magistrate Commissioner Jay Daniels set Bennett’s bail at $95,000 on Friday.

‘We Want You to Be a Hero’: Sen. Hawley Warns How Daniel Penny’s Fate Could Affect Young Men

WATCH:

 

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The rush by the Left to vilify former Marine Daniel Penny before Americans have all the facts of his case could have a negative effect on American males’ willingness to be heroes, Sen. Josh Hawley said Thursday.

The Missouri Republican discussed Penny’s case during an interview with The Daily Signal about his new book, “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs,” following news that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had charged Penny with second-degree manslaughter in the death in the New York subway of Jordan Neely.

The senator pointed out that the American people still don’t have all the facts and details necessary to understand the incident fully.

“This is a good example of the extremely confusing signals that the culture and the media and the Left send to young men, which is that you don’t hear much outrage on the Left … about the fact that New York subways and streets are extremely unsafe, and that if you are an everyday citizen walking or traveling, you may well be subject to violence,” Hawley said. “That’s just wiped away. We’re supposed to just live with that.”

But then, you’ve got a guy who actually puts himself in danger to try to help other people. You’ve got a subway passenger now saying, ‘He saved my life. He put himself in danger.’ That is automatically condemned before we even know all the facts. It’s like, ‘Oh, that must be wrong’ or ‘That must be crazy.’

Young men looking at this situation, Hawley said, will likely think, “Well, now, hold on. I thought that a man was supposed to be willing to put himself on the line. Isn’t that what we celebrate in the Greatest Generation, for example, a whole generation of young men who went out there and sacrificed for their country? But you’re telling me now, ‘If I do that, I’m going to be vilified, sued, charged, what have you.’”

As the criminal justice system plays out, Americans will learn the facts and the truth about what happened between Neely and Penny, Hawley said. But based on what is known?

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FULL IMPACT
ALMOST 11 MONTHS AFTER BRUEN, COURTS LAY DOWN LAW

It’s been almost 11 months since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a decision authored by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, which could be the most important Second Amendment victory in recent memory.

Bruen builds nicely on the groundwork already put down by the 2008 Heller ruling and the 2010 McDonald decision. Heller established decisively that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms in the home for self-defense. McDonald affirmed that local governments cannot outright ban possession of firearms and more importantly, incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment. Henceforth, whether a state has a right to bear arms provision in its state constitution, all states must comply with the Second Amendment.

Then, 12 years after McDonald, along comes Bruen, which declared New York State’s restrictive concealed carry law — designed more to prevent lawful carry than license and allow it — unconstitutional. And it has a critical section, which did away with what amounted to an invention by the lower federal courts to protect restrictive gun control laws by establishing “means-end” scrutiny in addition to the historical meaning and perspective.

In Thomas’ words, “In Heller and McDonald, we held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. In doing so, we held unconstitutional two laws that prohibited the possession and use of handguns in the home. In the years since, the Courts of Appeals have coalesced around a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny.

“Today, we decline to adopt that two-part approach,” Thomas continued. “In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.”

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Suspect in hospital, charged after Beaumont homeowner shoots suspected burglar

BEAUMONT, Texas — A 43-year-old burglary suspect is currently in the hospital, and Beaumont Police said a homeowner was well within his rights to shoot him.

The shooting took place early Friday morning in Beaumont’s North End. Officers responded to a call about a burglary in progress in the 5300 block of Wildwood Avenue just after midnight, according to a Beaumont Police Department release.

While police were on their way to the scene, dispatch told officers the homeowner had shot the suspect who was now inside the residence.

Police later identified the suspect as Jason Omar Cruz, of Beaumont.

Video from a neighbor’s Vivint camera showed the red and blue lights of Beaumont Police units and officers responding to the call.

“We have such friendly nice people in this area, and so, this must have been an intrusion as they say,” Doug Taylor, the neighbor said. “Because we are just so settled and quiet here.”

When police arrived, they found the Cruz on the bathroom floor in a large pool of blood. Responding officers were able to save his life by using a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

Cruz was taken to a Beaumont hospital by ambulance and is expected to survive his wounds.

Police said the homeowner acted under Texas law and will not face any charges.

“Even though they are the ones who shot the suspect, they are still the victim,” Beaumont Police Spokesperson Haley Morrow said. “The suspect is the one who broke the law and committed a crime and as a result, he was shot.” Legal experts agree.

“Some states refer to them as the castle doctrine, or stand your ground doctrines,” Criminal Defense Lawyer Ryan Gertz said. “In Texas, we call it self-defense, defense of others, and defense of property those are the three justifications.”

Police later obtained a burglary of a habitation warrant for Cruz. He is still in the hospital recovering from his injuries but once he is released, he will be relocated to the Jefferson County Jail.

Cruz’s bond has been set at $100,000, according to Beaumont Police Department release.

I have not often seen stupidity of this level. It’s like the concept of the black market doesn’t even enter the thought process since it might hash the narrative.

The ability for innocent people to have guns DIRECTLY allows perpetrators to purchase firearms as well. If you do not get to have one, a school shooter doesn’t get to have one as well.
— Lesser G