AR-15 Inventor Says HBO 'Misrepresented' His Views by Omitting 'Key Parts' of His Answers

AR-15 inventor Jim Sullivan is seeking to clarify comments he made about guns in a recent interview on HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel," saying the network "misrepresented much of what I said."

"They were apparently trying to make the AR-15 civilian model seem too dangerous for civilian sales," he wrote in The Federalist Tuesday. "They didn’t lie about what I said, they just omitted key parts, which changed the meaning."

Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Sullivan wrote that the moments in the interview he takes issue with are in regard to discussion about the AR-15 when he says he "appears" to say the civilian model is equally as effective as  the military-grade M16. According to Sullivan, HBO omitted when he clarified, "When firing semi-auto only" and "the select fire M16 on full auto is of course more effective."

Additionally, he objected to the discussion on military and hunting bullets, adding that, due to the Hague Convention, military-grade bullets cannot be hollow points like hunting bullets "that give up all of their energy in the target body instead of passing through with minimum wound effect."

Sullivan wrote that Armalite, a small arms engineering company, "went the small-caliber, high-velocity route and gave the bullet the right twist of 1:14 to be stable in air but unstable in tissue," which he said was in compliance with the Hague Convention.

"This gave us a small cartridge that was half the size, weight, and recoil of a 7.62 NATO," he wrote, "so the soldier could carry twice the ammo, fire controllable full auto, and be far more deadly out to 300 yards, the three characteristics that determine military rifle cartridge effect."

He also said the 5.56 "can't compete" with hunting bullets, which can legally be expanding hollow points that are more lethal than tumbling.

There was also a point in the interview that Sullivan said was made to look as if he was unhappy with the fact that AR-15 are popular in the civilian market.

"5.56 is only half as powerful as the 7.62 NATO (.308) hunting bullet. That doesn’t mean I’m not pleased to see AR-15s sell on the civilian market," he wrote. "It just means I didn’t realize they would 57 years ago."

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