This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Thank goodness that we have gun fact-checkers like Avery Littlefield ("Stick to facts on military-grade weapons," Dec. 23) to inform us that the weapon used in recent massacres, the AR-15, is not high-powered (it is intermediate powered) and is not an assault rifle (because it is semi-automatic, not automatic).
But then such weapons don't need to be high-powered or capable of performing like a machine gun; they have proven their efficiency in killing large numbers of schoolchildren, theater-goers and Christmas celebrants.
Littlefield missed the point of Adam Monsen's letter to the Public Forum. Lightweight, compact, semi-automatic rifles capable of accommodating 30-, 50- or even 100-round magazines are unnecessarily dangerous to society and should be banned.
Steven H. Gunn
Holladay