Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., claimed in an interview this weekend that an AR-15 rifle is capable of shooting 700 rounds per minute, an assertion that went unchallenged on the network.
“If he was not able to buy a weapon that shoots off 700 rounds in a minute, a lot of those people would still be alive,” he said. “If somebody like him had nothing worse to deal with than a Glock pistol … he might have killed three or four people and not 50. It’s way too easy to kill people in America today and we have to think long and hard about what to do about that.”
CNN’s Erin Burnett declined to ask about the congressman’s numbers, and responded instead by saying, “You’re right about that. Thank you very much.”
Grayson’s remarks come on the heels of a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., this weekend that claimed the lives of 49 people and left more than 50 injured. The shooter, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, was armed with a handgun and a semi-automatic AR-15-style rifle.
A semi-automatic like the Bushmaster AR-15 XM15-E2S has a maximum effective rate of fire of 45 rounds per minute, according to its manual.
Rifles like the one used in Orlando have a typical cyclic firing rate of 600 rounds per minute, but this figure accounts only for how fast the rifle is capable of cycling through rounds. It does not take into account magazine changes, or the fact that firing multiple rounds without pause will cause the rifle to overheat and jam.
Certain add-ons, including a “slide fire stock,” make it possible for one to increase an AR-15’s rate of fire. However, there’s nothing to indicate that Mateen modified his rifle prior to the attack this weekend.
It is also unclear whether Grayson was referring to a fully automatic rifle. Even if he was, though, a fully automatic rifle was not used in the Orlando slayings.
Grayson’s office did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
