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WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette has been the lead sponsor on a federal ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines in two Congresses, saying it’s one of her top priorities.

But Tuesday at a Denver Post forum on the gun control debate, the senior congresswoman from Denver appeared to not understand how guns work.

Asked how a ban on magazines holding more than 15 rounds would be effective in reducing gun violence, DeGette said:

“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available.”

What she didn’t appear to understand is that a magazine can be reloaded with more bullets. According to the Shooter’s Log, only early on were magazines for AR-15s designed to be disposable, but the military changed that and now magazines are used several times. In handguns, a magazine is designed to be reused hundreds of times.

After her remarks, the audience in the forum at The Denver Post building chuckled.

Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith, responding as the audience was laughing, urged people who hadn’t shot a gun to “get to the facts … Let’s be educated as we make this decision.”

The National Rifle Association was not quite as diplomatic Wednesday in response to DeGette’s comments.

“Two words — pretty stupid,” said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.

The Colorado GOP responded, too, on Wednesday.

“It’s extremely alarming that Rep. DeGette is running federal legislation to ban magazine clips, when she doesn’t even know what a magazine clip is,” said spokesman Owen Loftus. “Rep. DeGette’s comments show that Democrats are more concerned with appeasing their radical base, than standing up for responsible, law abiding citizens.”

DeGette’s spokeswoman Juliet Johnson issued a statement Wednesday, saying the congresswoman mispoke.

“The Congresswoman has been working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years, and has been deeply involved in the issue; she simply misspoke in referring to ‘magazines’ when she should have referred to ‘clips,’ which cannot be reused because they don’t have a feeding mechanism,” Johnson said. “Quite frankly, this is just another example of opponents of common-sense gun violence prevention trying to manipulate the facts to distract from the critical issue of keeping our children safe and keeping killing machines out of the hands of disturbed individuals. It’s more political gamesmanship that stands in the way of responsible solutions.”