Minneapolis Mayor Flubs Basic Gun Facts While Demanding Weapons Ban

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday to demand a sweeping federal ban on assault one day after the tragic school shooting in his city, but the basic errors he made in articulating how firearms work were quickly seized on by gun-rights activists.

“I’m a mayor and I operate in the reality business. And the reality is, is that we have more guns in America than we have people,” Frey said.

He continued: “The reality is, is that we have these assault rifles that can reel off 30 clips in conjunction with a magazine before the person even needs to reload. The reality is, is that these guns make their way into cities across America by the truckload, and it’s terrifying. And so, look, we need an assault weapons ban nationwide.”

Frey’s description does confuse basic gun mechanics. The mayor appeared to confuse clips (which hold ammunition together before it is loaded into a gun) and magazines (which actually feed ammunition into the gun’s chamber), erroneously treating them as components of one another.

The claim that a rifle could “reel off 30 clips in conjunction with a magazine” was criticized by his conservative critics, who argued it was evidence Democrats misunderstand the very weapons they seek to restrict.

The clip went viral on X, pushed by one gun rights account boasting almost 500,000 followers:

​​https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1961058568712393107

Others jumped on board to mock the error. One user lambasted the mayor’s gaffe as “embarrassing,” and wrote: “If Jacob Frey can’t get past cartoon-level gun talk, he has no business making real-world policy.”

Still, Frey’s broader message places him squarely in line with many Democrats, including Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), for whom a fight over technical terminology matters less than the urgency of the mayor’s call for a ban in the wake of Wednesday’s attack.

Watch above via MSNBC.