A subway cleaner made an alarming discovery on a Lower Manhattan platform on Friday.
A deadly high-powered semi-automatic rifle was found in a garbage can, police told the New York Post.
The weapon was found at about 3.15pm at the Cortlandt Street Station for the R train line.
Police told the New York Post the gun was an unloaded AM-15 with no magazine.
Made by Anderson Manufacturing, an AM-15 is an ‘exceptionally lightweight, accurate and fully customizable’ rifle, as described on their website.
It is an AR-15-styled weapon, the difference is the manufacturer. The ‘AR’ stands for the company ArmaLite Rifle.
AR-15-styled weapons are frequently used in mass shootings. Several manufacturers have recreated their own version of the weapon, but they all are widely referred to as AR-15s.
Roughly 16 million Americans own a collective 22 million AR-15 rifles. They are the most popular rifle style sold in the country, according to Statista.
The model’s production has skyrocketed over the last three decades. In the 1990s, the gun made up just 1 percent of firearms being produced.
In 2020, they accounted for nearly 25 percent of firearms in production.
Statista reported that since 1982, there have been 65 mass shootings that involved rifles. Most of them were semi-automatic.
This terrifying subway discovery comes just over a month after a Florida middle school student was charged with making a written threat of a mass shooting.
Police found airsoft rifles, fake ammunition, swords, knives and throwing stars in the home of Carlo ‘Kingston’ Dorelli, 11, after a classmate tipped them off.
He had written a list of names and targets,’ Sheriff Mike Chitwood wrote on Facebook. ‘He says it was all a joke.’