“The AR-15, the military’s weapon of choice for 50 years, is a killing machine designed specifically to inflict mass carnage on a battlefield…”

I feel a great degree of sympathy for Nicole Hockley and the many other families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in December of 2012.

That won’t keep me from calling her out for being a bald-faced liar when she asserts she’s trying to ban “military weapons.” She most clearly is not.

She’s instead going after the entire Second Amendment in revenge for her personal tragedy.

Here’s a fuller account of the context of her lies in USA Today.

The families of several first-graders and adults murdered at Sandy Hook School, including my 6- year-old Dylan, are trying to hold the maker, distributor and seller of our shooter’s weapon accountable for their role in the Newtown massacre. Our goal is to prevent the next Sandy Hook from destroying innocent lives, families and communities.

Unfortunately, political rhetoric has obscured the basis of our case. We are not asking that the law providing immunity for gun companies be repealed or even modified; rather, we ask simply that it be enforced. The bill includes six scenarios in which gun companies can be held liable; creating but then ignoring an unreasonable risk of harm is one of them.

The AR-15, the military’s weapon of choice for 50 years, is a killing machine designed specifically to inflict mass carnage on a battlefield, unleashing 30 rounds in under 10 seconds. Soldiers require mental health screenings and more than 100 hours of training before using AR-15s.

Tragically, the AR-15’s brutal capabilities make it the weapon of choice for mass murderers, including our shooter. Since 2001, there have been 11 mass shootings in America using an AR-15. There are many kinds of guns but few, if any, enable as much carnage.

The AR-15 has never been the general issue rifle of the United States military.

Not the Coast Guard.

Not the Air Force.

Not the Army.

Not the Marines.

Not the Navy.

No branch of the United States military has ever issued the semi-automatic (one shot per trigger pull) AR-15 to servicemen and women as a general issue firearm. They have instead all used some permutation of the selective-fire (capable of fully-automatic or “machine gun” fire) M16 rifle or shorter M4 carbine.

Such firearms have been outlawed for commercial manufacture in the United States for 30 years.

Yes, you heard that correctly. There are no selective-fire “military weapons” being manufactured or imported into the United States, and there haven’t been since 1986.

Nicole Hockley no doubt knows that she’s lying to the American people. She has to know that the lawsuit her disgusting attorneys have filed will outlaw virtually every firearm in the United States if it is upheld.

She doesn’t care.

The M1903 and M1917 were military-issue firearms. Their kin are widely copied (in basic form) to make modern bolt-action hunting rifles, including those made by Remington, just as the Bushmaster AR-15 used at Sandy Hook bears a passing resemblance to the military M16.

“Oh Bob,” you might say,” you’re really pushing it.”

Really?

Here are several more military-issue firearms that American civilians use in large numbers that would be affected if this lawsuit succeeds.

These and virtually every other firearm sold in the United States today has a basis as military firearm that was converted to civilian use, or was first a civilian firearm that was later converted to military use.

Those picture above are all semi-automatics, the same as the Bushmaster AR-15 at the heart of this lawsuit. The best selling rifles and handguns in the United States are all semi-automatics.

This lawsuit is nothing more or less than an assault on the most common firearm action type sold commercially in the United States for the past 100 years.

After all, the one-shot-per-trigger-pull Colt AR-15 Sporter was sold commercially as a sporting rifle in .223 Remington for six years before the U.S. Army adopted its selective-fire cousin, the M16A1, in 5.56 NATO.

Nicole Hockley and the other Sandy Hook families suffered horrible loses in December of 2012, and harbor pain that will only dim slightly with time.

That pain does not excuse their blatant and overt lies, nor their attempts to undermine the Second Amendment itself through backdoor subterfuge in an activist court.

The lawsuit resumes tomorrow, and with it, the fate of the Second Amendment and arguable the nation itself.