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Ret. Major General explains the difference between an AR-15 and the military's weapons of war

Major General Paul Eaton was the commander in charge of training Iraqi troops during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He knows his weapons.

Public Domain, @PaulDEaton/Twitter

Retired Major General Paul Eaton shared his thoughts on whether the AR-15 is a "weapon of war."

A common criticism gun rights activists levy toward gun legislation advocates is that many people who push for stricter gun laws don’t know a lot about guns themselves. That’s not wholly accurate—there are plenty of gun enthusiasts who support reasonable gun laws—but it’s true that many people who are horrified by our nation’s gun culture are not well-versed on the specifications of our nation’s 393 million guns.

Not every American is an active part of American “gun culture." Some of us have never shot a firearm, for fun or otherwise. Some of us really are ignorant about guns themselves.

That can’t be said for anyone in the military, however. And it definitely can’t be said for a former Major General of the U.S. Army.


That’s why an explanation of the difference between an AR-15 and military-style firearms from retired Major General Paul Eaton has gone viral. Major General Eaton was the commander in charge of training Iraqi soldiers during Operation Iraqi Freedom, so he definitely knows what he’s talking about when it comes to weaponry.

He wrote:

“As the former Commanding General of the Infantry Center at Fort Benning and Chief of Infantry, I know a bit about weapons. Let me state unequivocally — For all intents and purposes, the AR-15 and rifles like it are weapons of war. A thread:

Those opposed to assault weapon bans continue to play games with AR-15 semantics, pretending there’s some meaningful differences between it and the M4 carbine that the military carries. There really aren’t.

The military began a transition from the M16 to the M4, an improved M16, some years ago. The AR-15 is essentially the civilian version of the M16. The M4 is really close to the M16, and the AR-15.

So what’s the difference between the military’s M4 and the original AR-15? Barrel length and the ability to shoot three round bursts. M4s can shoot in three round bursts. AR-15s can only shoot a single shot.

But even now, you can buy AR-15s in variable barrel lengths with Weaver or Picatinny rails for better sights and aiming assists like lasers. Like the military, but w/o the bayonet.

But our troops usually use single shot, not burst fire. You’re able to fire a much more accurate (deadly) shot, that way. Note: you can buy our Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight on Amazon. So troops usually select the same fire option available on AR-15.

That is why the AR-15 is ACCURATELY CALLED a ‘weapon of war.’ It is a very deadly weapon with the same basic functionality that our troops use to kill the enemy. Don’t take the bait when anti-gun-safety folks argue about it. They know it’s true. Now you do too."

Eaton is not the only former military leader who has spoken out in support of gun legislation. In 2019, a group of 13 influential retired military leaders wrote a letter to Congress, pushing it to pass the Bipartisan Background Check Act.

"Each of us has, at some point in our lives, made the choice to risk our lives for our fellow citizens and place ourselves in harm’s way," they wrote. "We were trained, we were coached, and we were prepared for the dangers that we chose to face. This is not the case for most Americans, yet they continue to face danger on the sidewalk, in their homes, at school, and at work. It is in the same spirit that led us to serve in the armed forces that we ask you, our elected leaders, to help protect the American people from gun violence here at home. We urge you to support this legislation."

Police leaders have also voiced strong support for gun legislation, which makes sense considering how much harder and more dangerous our free-for-all gun culture makes their jobs. The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the largest professional association of police leaders in the world, has a position paper that outlines the gun safety laws it supports, including firearm offender registration, waiting periods, closing the gun show loophole, banning semiautomatic assault weapons, armor-piercing ammunition, bulletproof body armor and more. The IACP states that these are “common sense policies that would assist in reducing gun violence, while upholding the second amendment.”

Yep, the largest police leader association supports banning semiautomatic assault weapons like the AR-15. Here’s what it has to say about that:

“First passed in 1994, the assault weapons ban required domestic gun manufacturers to stop production of semi-automatic assault weapons and ammunition magazines holding more than ten rounds except for military or police use. While the ban was in place, it was remarkably effective in reducing the number of crimes involving assault weapons. In the period of the ban, (1994-2004) the proportion of assault weapons traced to crimes fell by a dramatic 66 percent.”

If those who oppose gun legislation don’t want to listen to people who don’t know enough about guns to speak authoritatively on them, that's fine. Perhaps they should listen to these military and police leaders who not only know guns inside and out, but who also have the firsthand experience on both sides of the barrel to speak authoritatively on what can help minimize America’s gun violence.


This article originally appeared on 06.04.22

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A man told me gun laws would create more 'soft targets.' He summed up the whole problem.

As far as I know, there are only two places in the world where people living their lives are referred to as 'soft targets.'

Photo by Taylor Wilcox on Unsplash

Only in America are kids in classrooms referred to as "soft targets."

On the Fourth of July, a gunman opened fire at a parade in quaint Highland Park, Illinois, killing at least six people, injuring dozens and traumatizing (once again) an entire nation.

My family member who was at the parade was able to flee to safety, but the trauma of what she experienced will linger. For the toddler with the blood-soaked sock, who was carried to safety by a stranger after being pulled from under his father's bullet-torn body and ended up losing both of his parents in the massacre, life will never be the same.

There's a phrase I keep seeing in debates over gun violence, one that I can't seem to shake from my mind. After the Uvalde school shooting, I shared my thoughts on why arming teachers is a bad idea, and a gentleman responded with this brief comment:

"Way to create more soft targets."

Soft targets. That phrase gets me every time.

As far as I know, there are only two places in the world where children in school or people gathering for enjoyment are referred to as "soft targets"—active war zones and the United States of America.

Never in a million years would I think to use the words "soft targets" to refer to schoolchildren—or parade-goers, or people enjoying a live concert, or grocery shoppers or people in a bible study. I wouldn't even use the term "unarmed civilians" unless I were in the military and actively involved in a military operation.

They're not targets, they're people. People just living life.

That's what freedom is supposed to be, isn't it? The ability to just live life?

Instead, we are being held hostage by a militarized monster of our own making, one that says the answer to America's gun violence is more guns. (The irony, of course, being the fact that we already have more guns than people.) We see it in the weird worshipping of weapons, the Christmas cards with the whole family carrying, the bizarre fetish with one interpretation of one constitutional amendment to the exclusion of all others. It's in the language being used not only in reference to guns, but in reference to people just going about their daily lives—that is, "soft targets."

The truth is we should be "soft targets." No, really. That's what freedom is. We should be able to go to school and the store and our houses of worship without fear of being shot. We should be able to peaceably assemble per our First Amendment right without being scattered and shattered by gunfire.

We shouldn't feel the need to arm ourselves simply to go about our daily lives. Feeling compelled to carry a gun at all times isn't freedom. Living like we're living right now, with mass shootings on the regular, isn't freedom. And adding more guns won't make us more free. It won't. It hasn't.

If the Highland Park parade shooting proved anything, it's that even an event with a police presence in an idyllic, upscale, objectively "safe" suburb isn't safe from mass gun violence. There were good guys with guns there. There were good guys with guns in Uvalde, too. There were good guys with guns in Buffalo. So many good guys with guns. And yet, here we are.

It's time to look in the mirror and recognize how ridiculous we've become. Other civilized nations don't refer to children as "soft targets." They just don't. While we're debating whether the U.S. is a gun violence outlier because of doors or video games or mental illness, which the rest of the world has as well, our peers in other developed countries live their daily lives with freedom that we do not have—the freedom to gather without worrying that a whack job with a weapon of war is going to open fire, the freedom to go to school without rehearsing for a mass shooting event, the freedom to not ever think about carrying a gun to defend themselves against other guns.

Gun violence can happen anywhere, yes. But it happens far, far more often here than in other developed nations. There's a reason for that. Perhaps when we finally accept that our culture's dysfunctional relationship with guns is the problem, the idea of referring to people simply living their lives as "soft targets" will be as disturbing here as it is everywhere else.

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Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas bestow 'Bronze Cross' on slain fourth grader after Uvalde massacre

Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas/Twitter

Amerie Jo Garza was one of 19 schoolchildren killed by a gunman at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Fellow Americans, it's long past time to take a good, hard look in the mirror.

The fact that we just had yet another horrific school shooting, with 19 children and two teachers being massacred in their classrooms by a guy with military-style guns that he easily and legally obtained, is maddening. The fact that we've seen this same story play out in schools across the country over and over and over again is enraging. The fact that too many of our lawmakers refuse to take any legislative action whatsoever to try to curb the constant carnage, completely ignoring the vast amounts of data that show gun laws do work to reduce gun violence, is disgusting.

Sandy Hook should have been enough. Parkland should have been enough. Columbine should have been enough. Every single school shooting should have been the end of it. But here we are.

As the individual stories of the children killed at Robb Elementary School come to light, we can't turn away. We must bear witness to what they experienced, to the terror they and their surviving classmates endured, to the anguish and heartbreak of their loved ones.

But as we do that, let's not embrace "brave hero" narratives for these children the way we do with soldiers on the battlefield. Please. Let's just not.

The Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas posted a tribute to Uvalde fourth grader Amerie Jo Garza on Twitter, sharing that the organization had posthumously bestowed upon the slain 10-year-old the Bronze Cross, one of the highest honors in the Girl Scouts, and it was like a punch right in the gut. I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything so well-intentioned feel so dark.

"The Bronze Cross is awarded for saving or attempting to save life at the risk of the Girl Scout’s own life," the tweet thread read. "On May 24, Amerie did all she could to save the lives of her classmates and teachers. It was our honor as Amerie’s council to present the Bronze Cross to her family, and Girl Scouts will continue to pay tribute at her funeral services today with a Presentation of Colors."

"We will carry her story with us always and ensure her brave actions will endure for generations," they wrote.

I'm sorry, what fresh hell dystopian reality did I just fall into? As a parent, I cannot even begin to fathom how I would process being handed a Girl Scout honor for my daughter for her bravery during a school shooting. Only in America, right?

To be clear, I'm not faulting the Girl Scouts for doing something to honor Amerie Jo Garza. She was a Girl Scout. To say nothing and do nothing would be wrong. But this also feels wrong. Everything about this situation feels wrong, because it is wrong.

The Girls Scouts shouldn't have felt the need to posthumously awarded Amerie a Bronze Cross, because they shouldn't have had to figure out what to do in light of her death, because she shouldn't have had to try to save her classmates before being shot to death in her classroom, because the 18-year-old who murdered her should never have been able to obtain two AR-15 rifles and 1,657 rounds of ammunition. It simply shouldn't have happened. Period.

The Uvalde gunman had more ammunition than soldiers carry into war. Let that sit for a second. There is zero—absolutely zero—reason for any civilian to have access to that much killing power.

And the result of our insistence on repeatedly doing nothing about this reality is that we talk about fourth graders—who should be doing fractions, not hiding from gunfire in their classrooms—with the same heroic language we use for soldiers who make the ultimate sacrifice. It's unbelievably disturbing.

This is it, America. This is the bottom. And it's not like we just got here. We've been dragging ourselves along the bottom for decades now. Are we going to stay there or are we going to finally snap out of our delusion that our country's gun culture equals safety and freedom? Because all signs point to that being a complete and total myth.

When our kids and teachers can't go to school without worrying about being gunned down at their desks, it's clear that we are not free. When little Amerie Jo Garza's parents are handed a Bronze Cross for their 10-year-old's brave actions in a school massacre—when there were armed and trained officials at the scene—it's clear that we are not made safer by guns.

Enough is enough, and enough came and went a long time ago. Our lawmakers need to borrow a backbone and pass the gun legislation most Americans agree on before our kids start earning scout badges for successfully surviving a mass shooting.

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A 1996 school massacre led the UK to gun reform. They haven't had a school shooting since.

Dave Coustick/Wikimedia Commons, @GalwayGirl2505/Twitter

Dunblane Primary School was the site of the last school shooting in the U.K. in 1996.

On March 13, 1996, a man walked into Dunblane Primary School in Scotland with four legally purchased handguns and 734 rounds of ammunition, and proceeded to shoot and kill 16 children—5 and 6 years old—as well as their 45-year-old teacher before killing himself. It was Britain's worst school shooting—and its last to date.

Unlike in the United States, where school shootings have become routine with basically no legislation being enacted to try to stop them, the British government took decisive action. After a petition campaign demanding more stringent gun laws, Parliament passed laws banning private ownership of most handguns.

"We had a tragedy that made people think, as a matter of common sense, that this needs fixing," Rebecca Peters, director of International Action Network on Small Arms, told the Washington Post in 2007. "It should never have been possible for someone to buy, legally and easily, guns that could be concealed in his pocket. That is not possible anymore in Britain."

Such a sentiment is practically blasphemy in the U.S., where millions of Americans not only own handguns, but carry them around on their bodies daily. Our Second Amendment being interpreted to mean we can possess any and all the guns our hearts desire means a blanket ban of handguns is unlikely in this country.

But there's no question that the U.K.'s strict gun laws appear to be working. Cause and effect are always tricky to measure, but in the 26 years since Dunblane, there have been no school shootings in the U.K. And there has been just one mass shooting in general since then, in 2010.

Compare that to 27 school shootings and 213 mass shootings in the U.S. so far in 2022, and we're not even halfway through the year.

It appears that making it harder—but not impossible—to get guns could be an effective way to limit not just mass shootings, but gun deaths in general. According to data shared by the BBC, in 2019, 73% of homicides were committed with a firearm in the U.S., whereas in England and Wales it was just 4%.

Considering the fact that guns are now the leading cause of death for children and teens in the U.S., decisive gun legislation might be a smart thing to consider.

“Here in the U.S., we have this broken record cycle of what responses to mass shootings or school shootings look like," Jaclyn Schildkraut, a mass shootings expert at the State University of New York at Oswego told Smithsonian magazine. "Everybody demands action, and then absolutely nothing gets done. Whereas in Great Britain, they actually were able to get stuff done.”

After the Parkland, Florida school shooting in 2018, survivors and families of those killed in the Dunblane massacre wrote a letter of condolence to the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on the anniversary of their own tragedy. It's a reminder of the horror we've seen far too many times in our own country, as well as a beacon of hope that things actually can change.

"Dear Students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas School,

On the most poignant day of the year for us we wanted to reach out and offer our deepest and most heartfelt sympathy to you and your teachers and to all the families and friends of those who died at your school on 14th February. We have watched and listened with tremendous admiration as you have spoken out for what you believe should happen now, a significant change of attitude towards the availability of guns in your country.

Twenty-two years ago today our own lives were devastated when a gunman walked into Dunblane Primary School in Scotland and shot dead sixteen 5- and 6-year-old children and their teacher and injured many more. The children who were killed or badly injured were our daughters and sons, our grandchildren, our sisters and brothers, our nieces and nephews, our cousins. The teacher was our wife, our sister, our mother. Five of us are survivors. The gunman owned his four handguns legally, and we knew it had been too easy for him to arm himself with lethal weapons. Like you we vowed to do something about it. We persuaded British lawmakers not to be swayed by the vested interests of the gun lobby, we asked them to put public safety first and to heed what the majority of the British people wanted. Most politicians listened and acted. Laws were changed, handguns were banned and the level of gun violence in Britain is now one of the lowest in the world. There have been no more school shootings.

We want you to know that change can happen. It won’t be easy, but continue to remind everyone of exactly what happened at your school and of the devastation caused by just one person with one legally-owned gun. Never let anyone forget. There will be attempts to deflect you, to divide you and doubtless to intimidate you, but you’ve already shown great wisdom and strength. We wish you more of that wisdom and strength for this toughest of tasks, one that will be so important in order to spare more of your fellow Americans from having to suffer the way you have. Wherever you march, whenever you protest, however you campaign for a more sensible approach to gun ownership we will be there with you in spirit.

Tonight we will be lighting 17 candles for those who died in Dunblane and will be remembering the 17 who lost their lives in Parkland. Our thoughts will also be with every other victim of gun violence.

We offer you our total support for the March for Our Lives and sincerely hope you achieve success. It can be done. #NeverAgain."

​We don't have to live like this. We can make another choice. We can at least try to do something different so that we don't have to keep offering the same thoughts and prayers for tragedies that never should have happened in the first place.

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