Fact Check: Biden Falsely Claims AR-15 Bullets ‘Blow Up’ Inside the Body

CLAIM: During his Tuesday gun control push, President Biden said that AR-15 bullets “blow up” once they get inside the human body.

Verdict: False. The AR-15 round is not designed to disintegrate in the body.

During a speech to union workers in Durham, North Carolina, Biden declared about AR-15 bullets, “It’s not just merely the weapon, in terms that it’s semiautomatic in effect, but the velocity with which it comes out of that muzzle, what it does when it hits the body, most bullets would go just straight through and out, but it blows up once its inside your body”:

Biden says that a bullet from an AR-15 "blows up when it's inside your body." pic.twitter.com/KMgz1JHGl0

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 28, 2023

In reality, the AR-15 round — a 5.56 bullet — is not designed to disintegrate in the body.

Breitbart News spoke with rifle maker George Urmston, owner of Battle Tested Equipment, about the AR-15 bullet. We recapped what Biden said about the bullet blowing up in the body and Urmston said, “The truth is quite the opposite. The 5.56 was actually designed to travel at certain speeds and pass through the body intact. It is actually by passing through the body intact at a certain speed that the round has its effect.”

Urmston noted that a person can buy frangible–ammo that breaks up on impact–for an AR-15s and other guns, and law-enforcement may choose such bullets at times in order to limit danger to innocents who may otherwise be hit by a bullet after it passes through a perp’s body. But the design and intent of the 5.56 is not to “blow up” in a body.

On May 30, 2022, Biden claimed a 9mm bullet will “blow the lung out of the body.”

His statement about 9mm bullets was false and his statement about AR-15 bullets is false.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com

AWR Hawkins: Here’s the Difference Between an AR-15 and “Assault Weapon”:

ahawkins