Military ‘Expert’ Witness Spouts Lies, Misinformation About AR-15s in Sworn Testimony Defending California’s ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

Are you one of America’s 25 million or so owners of what the NSSF likes to call modern sporting rifles? Yes, that’s an accurate term, but most of us know of these firearms by their colloquial names such as AR-15 or AK47. Anyway, those of us who own one — or a few — probably had no idea at all of their fearsome capabilities. Well, not until a true expert came along and laid out for us how fiendishly deadly these weapons are that we have lurking in our safes.

For that, we can thank an expert like US Marine Col. (Ret) Craig Tucker. He’s the man who California Attorney General Rob Bonta turned to when he needed an expert witness to help defend the Golden State’s ban on “assault weapons.” And we can thank our lucky stars that the legal eagles who work for AG Bonta found him.

Without Col. Tucker’s decades of first-hand experience and expertise, how would we have known that a single .223/5.56 round from an AR-15 can actually cleave a man in two?

Thanks to TTAG contributor Kostas Moros for spotting the relevant passages in Tucker’s affidavit for the court in Rupp v. Bonta . . .

One of the “expert” reports the state filed in Rupp last month is just….wow.

Read it at the link below, but I’ll also give you some excerpts. Starting with:https://t.co/zNEZTtQU93 pic.twitter.com/vpmV6oO4HL

— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) February 11, 2023

Imagine our good luck that the California Attorney General managed to find an actual military truth-teller, practically a whistle-blower who’s brave enough and willing to finally expose the true nature of the nefarious weapon of war that is the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

This is a design that includes horribly deadly features like…a rifled barrel. And a pistol grip! Don’t forget the pistol grip.

Reading through the Colonel’s affidavit, we were surprised he didn’t mention barrel shrouds, but that was probably just an oversight.

Col. Tucker was kind enough to translate all of this ballistic jargon and detail into language the average unsophisticated, non-military person can easily understand. Boiling it all down, he explained for the court that the AR-15 is strictly an offensive weapon, only used for killing as many people at a time as possible with little use at all as a defensive weapon. It’s basically useless as a defensive firearm.

As just about every battle-hardened member of the military brass knows, for your self-defense needs on the battlefield, you need an M9 handgun.

Remember, this was his sworn testimony given under penalty of perjury that it’s “true and correct.”

Given the “quality” of the information Col. Tucker provided for the court, you might question how much actual experience he really had with M4 and AR-15 platform firearms. But please, cut him some slack. It seems the Colonel spent a lot of his time in the military engaged in other extracurricular activities that might have kept him off the rifle range where he could have learned even more about that particular weapon platform.

After reviewing the Colonel testimony, the plaintiffs’ expert witness wasn’t really impressed with some of the “facts” that were provided . . .

Now you know where much of the garbage comes from that’s spouted by politicians and members of the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex, and then is regurgitated by ignorant, complicit members of the media.