Tapsearch Com EditorPlease, please learn the term "assault rifle" before using it
March 4th 2007 03:49
That's a note to The New York Times which, as John Lott points out, screwed it up again:
"Everyone knows what a prairie dog is: a chubby North American rodent that lives in a communal burrow and grows to be about a foot long. 'Assault rifle' is a much touchier term. It is generally understood to be the kind of gun that soldiers use in wars and terrorists use on the evening news. But the gun lobby despises 'assault rifle,' considering it a false, scary label tacked onto perfectly legitimate weapons by people who want to take away others’ rights."
Unless you're rather ignorant regarding gun terms, and only hang out with those who are similarly ill-informed, "assault rifle" is not "generally understood" to mean a gun for wars and terrorism.
Those would be machine guns, i.e. fully automatic weapons like a military-issue AK-47. If you hold down the trigger, they fire rapidly.
"Assault rifles," on the other hand, are semi-automatic guns that fire once per trigger pull (such as the civilian AK-47 you often read about being too easily available). They are no different functionally from hunting rifles; they just often have military-looking features like pistol grips, bayonets, etc.
By Robert VerBruggen.
"Everyone knows what a prairie dog is: a chubby North American rodent that lives in a communal burrow and grows to be about a foot long. 'Assault rifle' is a much touchier term. It is generally understood to be the kind of gun that soldiers use in wars and terrorists use on the evening news. But the gun lobby despises 'assault rifle,' considering it a false, scary label tacked onto perfectly legitimate weapons by people who want to take away others’ rights."
Unless you're rather ignorant regarding gun terms, and only hang out with those who are similarly ill-informed, "assault rifle" is not "generally understood" to mean a gun for wars and terrorism.
Those would be machine guns, i.e. fully automatic weapons like a military-issue AK-47. If you hold down the trigger, they fire rapidly.
"Assault rifles," on the other hand, are semi-automatic guns that fire once per trigger pull (such as the civilian AK-47 you often read about being too easily available). They are no different functionally from hunting rifles; they just often have military-looking features like pistol grips, bayonets, etc.
By Robert VerBruggen.
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