Gun-Rights Advocates Pounce on ‘AK-15’ Gaffe by Indianapolis Colts GM

Chris Ballard, general manager of the National Football League’s Indianapolis Colts, is being ridiculed online for misidentifying a firearm in his call for “common sense” on gun control at a press conference.

Speaking to reporters at a pre-training camp gathering Tuesday, Ballard brought up a shooting at a nearby mall and criticized elected leaders for not taking action to prevent gun violence. Ballard misidentified the type of rifle used in the deadly attack, which drew a biting rebuke online.

Ballard began his remarks by offering his condolences to the families of shooting victims at Greenwood Park Mall in Greenwood, just 10 miles south of Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Colts, in downtown Indianapolis. A 20-year-old with a military-style rifle opened fire in the mall’s food court, killing three and wounding others before being fatally shot by a bystander armed with a handgun.

“To me, it’s a lot of common sense, and we lack it right now in this country. It’s a shame,” Ballard said, also referencing other recent mass shootings in Highland Park, Illinois; Uvalde, Texas; and Buffalo, New York.

Chris Ballard, general manager of the Indianapolis Colts, was ripped by gun-rights advocates for misidentifying a weapon at a press conference Tuesday. Above, Ballard speaks to reporters during the NFL Draft Combine at the Indiana Convention Center on March 1, 2022, in Indianapolis. Michael Hickey/Getty Images

“I mean, when does some common sense come to play, and when does this end?” he said. “When do our elected officials actually do something about it instead of their own political gain? And both sides are completely wrong,” Ballard continued.

Ballard said he’s not anti-gun, but “anti-military-style weapons.” He added that it “blows my mind away that an 18-year-old kid can walk in and buy an AK-15 automatic weapon. It makes no sense, zero. I just wanted to open up and it’s a shame that we live in a country that can’t come to an agreement, because of politics, on doing the right thing for our country. … My prayers are with [the shooting victims].

“… Right now, we cannot remain silent on this issue. I mean [National Basketball Association’s Golden State Warriors Head Coach] Steve Kerr said it best: We can’t become numb. That’s what we’ve done, we’ve become numb to it [mass shootings] like it’s just OK. It’s not OK. People need to be held accountable and our politicians need to be held accountable. At what point are they going to put their own self-interest aside and do the right thing for the country?”

Stephen Gutowski, founder of gun news website TheReload.com, responded in a Tweet Wednesday: “I have good news for Mr. Ballard, an 18-year-old can not just ‘walk in and by an AK-15 automatic weapon.’ In part because there aren’t ‘AK-15s’ and in part because new sales of automatic weapons have been banned since 1986.”

AK-15 rifles are Russian firearms. Fully automatic guns fire continuously as long as their users squeeze the trigger. These guns have been tightly regulated and new sales of them were banned by Congress in 1986. Semi-automatic rifles, which require the user to squeeze the trigger for each shot, have been legal after Congress allowed a previous ban to lapse in 2004.

Police said that the gunman at the Greenwood Park Mall was armed with a Sig Sauer M400 rifle, reports WYFI. The long rifle is based on the AR-15, which was developed for the military. Semi-automatic versions of the AR-15 have become popular among the public and have also been targeted by gun-control advocates after the firearm has been used my multiple mass shooters.

Political strategist Greg Price reacted to Ballard by saying on Twitter, “What is an AK-15 automatic weapon?”

“This is the level of ignorance we battle daily in the fight to protect our 2nd Amendment rights,” Ryan Petty, a Florida tech executive and self-described school-safety advocate, said in a tweet.

“The loudest people on guns always know the least,” said writer David Hookstead in a tweet.

But Democratic Representative Yvette Clarke of New York defended Ballard in a tweet, saying gun-rights supporters “love to attack anyone who misidentifies their weapons of war—as though the name of the gun has anything to do with the argument at hand.”

She added that the gun “does not belong in our communities or our country. Don’t change the subject.”

Indianapolis Colts spokesman Matt Conti told Newsweek in an email that the team would allow Ballard’s comments to stand on their own.