Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) owns an AR-15 rifle, but he confessed in Congress today that he has shot it “only one time in my whole life, that was six years ago.”
Fallon also said that despite owning the powerful and controversial gun — the same weapon used by the shooter in the failed attempt on former President Donald Trump‘s life at a Pennsylvania campaign rally this month — the Congressman has “never had any long gun training in my life.”
But Fallon broke out the semiautomatic weapon this weekend in preparation for his chance to grill U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, whose job performance in protecting Trump is being hammered by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) asks for answers about the protected perimeter in the clip below.
An AR-15’s range is ~600yds, why was the Secret Service’s perimeter shorter than one of the most popular weapons in the US? —@AOC pic.twitter.com/I98Me2LUAR
— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) July 22, 2024
In the midst of his questioning of Cheatle, Fallon recounted how he “recreated” the assassination attempt over this past weekend, lying “prone” on a sloped roof and firing at a target 130 yards away, or approximately the same distance Trump was from the Pennsylvania shooter.
Not knowing which type of scope the shooter used, Fallon tried eight shots each with two different kinds, and reported that 15 out of his 16 tries resulted in “kill shots” — a 94% success rate.
Goldman: My colleague from Texas said he recreated the shooting with an AR-15 and he had a 94% success rate, 15 out of 16 shots, I don’t know why that doesn’t convince him that we should get rid of AR-15s. But clearly we need to do something about the prevalence of AR-15s and… pic.twitter.com/HYYh7cQX2L
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 22, 2024
Fallon’s re-creation of the assassination attempt was meant to illustrate just how dangerous a position the Pennsylvania shooter had secured in proximity to Trump — while the Secret Service utterly failed to do its job. (Ocasio-Cortez’s question, above, was meant to illustrate the same.)
Fallon also asserted that Trump’s shooter was a “better shot than me” — a conclusion the fortunate fact of Trump’s survival doesn’t bear out. Trump, miraculously, suffered on a superficial ear wound.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), a gun control advocate, saw Rep. Fallon’s claims of such successful shooting despite no practice and no training as powerful evidence of the outsize danger presented by AR-15s, saying of Fallon’s re-creation: “I don’t know why that doesn’t convince him that we should get rid of AR-15s. But clearly we need to do something about the prevalence of AR-15s and weapons of war on our streets.”