Q: Should people have access to buy assault weapons?
A: Society should draw lines. What do you need an assault weapon for, if you’re going hunting? That’s overkill. But I don’t think that means you go to a total ban for those who want to use gun for skeet shooting or hunting or things like that.” — Michael Steele, in an October 16, 2006 Washington Post interview.
Sigh. Can’t the GOP do anything right? Surely they could find at least one leader who isn’t a constutituion-hating, gun-grabbing liberal fascist? (via Instapundit).
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I own guns that I use for hunting, but there is never a need for a assault rifle. I disagreed with my ex-husband on this issue and he insisted on having one.
Of course the scary part of this was he was a deputy in a small Colorado ski town where the only crime was dope smoking teens and ski theft, but he was allowed to carry it for work. Why?
Anyone who uses the weasel-words “assault rifle” without a trace of sarcasm or irony drops the mask a little, for those with eyes to see. Either that, or they’ve swallowed a large jug of the gun-grabber Kool Ade, and are begging for more.
I’d be willing to bet big bucks that you are using one of Steele’s “assault rifles” as your “hunting gun.”
Or are you so ignorant about the issues that you think the popular lefty concept of “assault rifle” has anything to do with a full-auto battle machine gun?
Oh, please…tell you what: If this isn’t just a silly-assed troll - define for us, if you will, the term “assault rifle” - in terms that do not amount to “scary-looking semi-automatic stuff that I don’t own/don’t want to own/don’t like to look at or think about.”
A. Because it’s entirely legal for him to do so (apparently); B. Because his boss (apparently) had no problem with it; C. Because the “only crime” may not always remain “dope smoking teens and ski theft” in that lil’ ski town. Choose any or all (preferably, all).
Allowing or advocating the banning of any sub-set of firearms based upon any sort of “definition/title” promulgated by anti-firearms and/or firearms rights people is how we ended up with the Brady-law bullshit.
yeah, I have an old Stevens .22 semi auto load that has a 16 round tubular magazine that is now considered an assault weapon.
Steele misses the point on the second amendment…it ain’t got one gotdam thing to do with hunting Bambi and everything to do with keeping government in line. And that is why government is dead set on coming after the guns.
Mike Mills, please read the above. Then learn, and never forget, that one of the key weapons of the Left is their debasement of language. George Orwell had them nailed on this decades ago, see “Newspeak” from 1984. They purposefully blur distinctions between things that are not the same, and frequently use words to mean their exact opposite. They have thereby made it impossible to express yourself clearly without first defining your terms, and who has patience for that? To them, words are weapons, and their lies are encoded in their language. “Assault rifle” is just one of the terms that they have corrupted, see “justice,” “freedom,” “tax,” and “peace” for other key examples. They do this with the explicit end of creating confusion and making rational thought impossible.
Once you realize that every single word these tyrannical bastards use is a lie, including “an” and “the”, you will be a long way towards freeing your mind.
For example, the $87B of “refundable tax credits” in the “stimulus” bill. Change “refundable tax credits” to “welfare” and “stimulus” to “pork” and you’re getting somewhere.
It’s not a silly-assed troll. It’s a silly-assed spammer. I’ve blotted out his URL; he was pimping an online pharmacy.
Jeebus Crispies - here I went and wasted some perfectly good ire (plus some bandwidth) on Bozo The Semi-Capitalist.
Oh, well…good to stay in practice, I guess…
Thanks, Clayton - too bad there isn’t any useful way to counter-spam the little buggers.
Sorry guys, but you’re confused here. “Assault Rifle” is the proper term for the category of rifle used by most modern armies. It is a shoulder fired, selective fire rifle, in intermediate caliber (between a pistol and traditional rifle caliber), fed from a detachable box magazine. The M-16 is an assault rifle. Your hunting rifle is not an assault rifle. A semi-automatic weapon is not an assault rifle. The BS lefty term is “Assault Weapon”, a redundant and meaningless phrase that can refer to any weapon. It was the Assault Weapon Ban, not the Assault Rifle Ban.
My local gun shop can’t keep ugly looking new semi-auto rifles on the shelves, so I just ordered myself a Barrett Rifle, the ugliest - or the most beautiful - semi-auto rifle available. Certainly the most powerful hunting rifle in the world, useful for hunting all types of varmints and nasty critters.
I hope that by the time it arrives I am still allowed to own it.
Um…kevinj, you appear to be a bit late to the party, here. I will elucidate:
To the extent that it exists, any confusion lies in the minds - and/or in the phraseology - of the anti-gunners, the “professional politicians” (to an unfortunate extent, a redundancy) and, sadly, a high percentage of the ordinary citizenry. Not many hereabouts are “confused” over this - nor deceived; anti-gunners, et.al., tend to use “assault rifle” and “assault weapon” interchangeably - sometimes to be deceptive, most times through ignorance.
And that title was deliberately/ignorantly (take your choice) deceptive - as is commonly the case with attempts to “politick” firearm issues, the devil was (and still is) in the details.
Your definition of “assault rifle” may be perfectly serviceable for a dictionary. However, no matter what the title of any regulation/prohibition regarding “Assault”-anything may be, the definition written into it will not have any such limiting phraseology. Simple reason why: Except for certain licensed and regulated dealers and collectors/users, the type of rifle you defined is already prohibited for sale/purchase/possession anywhere in the U.S. (and in most foreign countries, as well, AFAIK), and has been for many years. It’s that “selective-fire” thing, mostly - although other rules apply, as well.*
Once again: For purposes of definition/identification, based upon prior practices and current proposals of which I am aware, regulations attempting to ban “assault rifles/weapons” define said rifles/weapons in terms that amount to “scary-looking semi-automatic stuff that I don’t own/don’t want to own/don’t like to look at or think about.” Whether this is due to deception or ignorance doesn’t really matter - what matters is, it’s not useful except to anti-gunners and assorted politicians (but I repeat myself…).
The spam crap by “Mike Mills” at the beginning of this comments thread is the kind of silly, potentially-divisive quibbling that anti-gunners love to see or hear - don’t fall into that trap.
And don’t be deceived that legislation seeking to ban “Assault”-anything can be acceptable.
*Just as an aside: kevinj’s definition of “assault rifle” has a few holes in it, as well. For instance, the M14 (an older but still perfectly serviceable weapon), in its original form (selective-fire, detachable magazine, etc.) is very much an “assault rifle” - even though it’s a traditional rifle caliber, the 7.62 full-length NATO cartridge, equivalent to the .308 Winchester civilian cartridge. There are definitions, and there are definitions…
Don’t forget the most famous, most manufactured, and most used assault rifle in the world - the AK- 47. However, Wikipedia calls the 7.62 an “intermediate” cartridge.
JSB, too wordy. You could have left it at “You must be new here…”.
Damn’ straight. .50 BMG is large, 7.62 is medium, and .223 is small. These are all for shoulder-held rifles, of course; shift down a notch if you’re putting the rifle on a ’pod.
(Did I forget to mention that my criterion of goodness for a rifle bullet is its ability to crack an engine block at 500 metres?)
Bill, the AK-47 uses a shortened version (lower-powered, too) of the 7.62 cartridge - the ChiCom version, for instance, uses the 7.62 X 39 mm. That’s why I described the M14 as using:
You’ll no doubt be happy to know, for instance, that your most recent rifle acquisition will outrange/outhit any AK-47 by a comfortable margin - since it shoots a “traditional rifle caliber,” with ballistics (in its military form) quite similar to the aforementioned .308 Winchester cartridge.
The terms “intermediate” and “small”, “medium” or “large” are much too vague, in general, to use in reference to firearm calibers. For instance, one division of the corp where I work at present is dubbed “Medium Caliber Systems” - but the smallest cartridge that any of their products use is a 25-millimeter cannon shell; the biggest is a 40-mm. bore (there are proposals in the works, I am told, for a 45-mm. and a 54-mm.). Another division is called “Small Caliber Ammunition” - and their products range from 5.56 mm. (the standard .223-caliber military round) up through the 7.62 mm. full-length and including the .50-caliber BMG round. Large-caliber is anything from 105-mm. up to and including 120-mm.
Interesting stuff…
My point re: kevinj’s definition stands - “assault rifle/weapon,” for legislative/proposed banning purposes (or likely even otherwise), is not defined in anything like the manner he describes, in anti-gunner’s and politicians’ minds - and too many ordinary folks (other than around here, of course, and a few other places) fail totally to understand that.
Sounds good to me, Steve - and sorry about the “wordiness”; I tend to overdo it, I know, but that self-deceptive, divisive crap about “assault-this n’ that” gets to me sometimes.
I wasn’t actually complaining about the notional wordiness. There was some useful information there. I was, instead, commenting about wasting so much effort on someone who was attempting to instruct this blog’s readership about firearms and the political issues surrounding them. A dismissive put-down is the best he could reasonably hope for.
The dismissive put-down: not as much fun as a vitriolic rant, but a whole lot quicker.
(And now you see why I’m not in marketing: can’t come up with a catchy blurb.)
Point taken - don’t need to fire a cannon to squoosh a bug.
Dismissive Put-Down: Less fulfilling, still tastes great.
Yeah, I did know that. It was my point during all the reports about how the Indian cops, armed “only” with SMLE .303s, were so terribly outgunned by terrorists armed with (IIRC) AK-47s or 74s. (And, in fact, it was that incident that directly led to me picking up my .303 in the first place).
One of those cops, armed with a scoped .303 like mine, could have taken down those guys at 500 yards without breathing hard, while the bad guys were spraying those intermediate rounds like spit.
Agreed.
The AK-47 has a pretty fearsome reputation as a battle rifle, but it’s only partially deserved - at close range (say, maximum 150 - 200 yards), with a practiced shooter, it’s pretty effective against unarmored human bodies or similar relatively-soft targets. However, its only advantage versus, say, an AR-15 or even an M-16 (or the U.S.’s newest standard assault rifle, the M-4) is that its bullet will make 7.62 mm-diameter holes as opposed to 5.56 mm-diameter holes. Its ballistics at longer range, though, are inferior to just about any full-size “high-powered” rifle round, like the 7.62 NATO (equal to the .308 Win.), your .303 British/Enfield or the older U.S. standard round, the .30-06 (aka .30 U.S. Gov’t.). It will barely perform at the level of the old lever-action rifle caliber, the .30-30.
The AK will throw more bullets, when operated full-auto (and not all AKs have full-auto capability, BTW) - but it’s less accurate, in general, when fired that way.
Genuine assault rifles are close-in weapons - they depend on full-auto fire to try to overcome other limitations, such as light weight and relatively lower-powered ammo. Even with open sights, those Indian cops were better armed, if they had only had the will and ability to actually use their Enfields.