AP Photo/Steven Senne, File

I don’t expect news people to be gun experts, by and large. I mean, they cover all kinds of stories, and there’s no way they can be knowledgable on everything. Hell, they’re often not knowledgable on most things. It’s not their job. Their job is to report what those who are knowledgable say and think.

Joe Scarborough, however, is a commentator. As one myself, we tend to speak our minds and our thoughts, which means it’s often important that we keep our mouths shut on things we don’t know anything about.

Joe never got that lesson, apparently.

Here’s an article from 1981 explaining how the Pentagon’s failure to use the AR-15 in Vietnam cost American lives. The AR-15 was proven to be lighter & more lethal than the M-14 or M-16. It was designed exclusively by Eugene Stoner to kill people in war. https://t.co/lAKA6USUlj

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 18, 2019

As a longtime gun owner and supporter of the Second Amendment, I agreed with the Supreme Court’s “Heller” holding that concluded Americans had the right to keep and bear arms. But that constitutional protection did not, and will not, extend to guns designed as weapons of war.

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 18, 2019

Scarborough needs to go back and re-read that piece from The Atlantic. The AR-15 was considered the better firearm, not because it was more deadly than the M-16, but because it was more reliable and a lighter. The M-16 was modified to have a manual bolt-closure, for example. Further, some of the Army’s “improvements” made the weapon less reliable.

The AR-15 was preferred over the M-14 for many of the same reasons. It was accurate, reliable, and light. That’s great if you have to carry a firearm around with you all day as soldiers do.

Or, you know, like many hunters.

Despite the claims by Scarborough, nothing in that article makes the AR-15 a “weapon of war,” and his claims of supporting the Second Amendment ring hollow after he parroted a noted anti-gun talking point in that. After all, show just one military that issues the AR-15.

Claiming that the M-16/M-4 is close enough to the AR-15 for the term to apply leads us down a very slippery slope. That same logic could label something like the Remington 700, a bolt-action rifle-as a “weapon of war” too. After all, it’s the chassis for the Marine Corps sniper rifles. Functionally, there’s little difference between the two, even less difference between one of them than between the AR-15 and the M-4.

And that’s what Scarborough is missing here.

Those differences are important. They’re key.

But when you’re pushing an anti-gun agenda, you don’t want those differences noted. You don’t want people to realize that those differences matter.

The AR-15 is light and reliable, but the same can be said of a lot of firearms. Is that grounds to ban them? Of course not. But that’s what Scarborough appears to be advocating for with these tweets.

None of that even touches to who Eugene Stoner first marketed the guns. Hint: It wasn’t Uncle Sam.

That’s right. Stoner sold the rifles to civilians first. They were made for the average American, and then he saw an opportunity to get a lucrative government contract and pitched them to the military. I don’t blame him. It was a smart move.

All of that destroys Scarborough’s point that these are weapons of war.

They’re not. Anyone claiming otherwise is flat-out wrong. Then again, what else do you expect out of an MSNBC anchor when it comes to the subject of guns? I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s contractually obligated to get gun facts wrong.