8 ms·

Mainstream journalism being fast-and-loose with weapon definitions again. I'm not sure if the NY times can't get it right, or they don't want to. "Assault-styl

Mainstream journalism being fast-and-loose with weapon definitions again. I'm not sure if the NY times can't get it right, or they don't want to. "Assault-style rifle" has no definition from what I can tell, other than getting used repeatedly by the news when "assault rifle" is technically incorrect but it looks like an assault rifle and they want to use the word "assault" near the word "rifle". And "semiautomatic AR-15-style assault rifle" is just wrong. Semiautomatic-only rifles are not considered assault rifles.

ScottBurson 9y ago
Okay, but why are these distinctions important to this situation? Are you saying that there's been no legislation proposed that could have reduced the number of rounds per second this shooter could fire?
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  The distinctions aren't important for the Las Vegas shooting, but they are important for the national discussion around gun laws. I would much rather have laws created through processes that don't abuse language to create fear in the wake of tragedy.
  - sidlls 9y ago
    I don't think the language is what's creating fear, here. It's the guns. More specifically the casual, easy availability of guns and the numerous mass murders that happen annually with them. It's not like calling them "just guns" or whatever diminishes the fear. Or maybe it would diminish the fear--and I think that's a bit insidious to be honest. We (collectively) should fear a tool having as its only purpose to seriously injure or kill things, including (especially) people.
- Merad 9y ago
  I suppose that depends on your POV. There are a variety of currently legal accessories that one can buy to make a semi-automatic rifle fire more rapidly. Primarily these are trigger cranks, bump fire stocks, and binary triggers. You can make these devices illegal, but out of the three trigger cranks are trivially easy to make, and bump firing is fairly easy to do with no accessories. And honestly, with hand tools and a basic amount of mechanical knowledge, it isn't very difficult to (illegally) modify most rifles to fully automatic fire.
- unethical_ban 9y ago
  Bump stocks or trigger cranks are legal, and perhaps could be made illegal. That would only deter some people, and as 3D printing becomes easier, these things will be producible at home. Banning semi-automatic rifles may help, but if you want chaos and civil strife, you'll get it. There are millions of those rifles in circulation and the people who have them (many, anyway) won't want to give them up. At the least, you'll make criminals of hundreds of thousands of people, and put lots in jail for previously legal and safe ownership of a weapon. But let's say you ban them. Now you'll have a black market with plenty of them anyway. In theory, if we could snap our fingers and have all semi-auto rifles gone, it could help with some of the known mass shootings. But it won't stop it. And here's my last point: It will still go on. Killings and horrors will continue, and those who don't like firearms will continue to demand their confiscation and restriction until they don't exist. And they (the anti-gun left) will do that with or without the repeal of the 2nd amendment.
  - cwkoss 9y ago
    Already producible at home by people with fabrication skills. Heck, a wooden or plastic crank could be built with tools most people have in their houses already. Also, 'bump stocks' aren't strictly necessary. Applying forward pressure with your stabilizing hand on a rifle as you fire can cause it to bump.
  - heedlessly2 9y ago
    you actually think the Vegas shooter cared about the legality of bump stocks when firing into crowd of over 20,000 people?
ardit33 9y ago
Let me google that for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle It is clear. Assault Rifle, is a automatic, or semi-automatic rifle with a handle and a large magazine/bullet capacity. It has a fast fire rate, and semi decent range (less than a standard rifle, but more than a pistol). First assault rifle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedorov_Avtomat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedorov_Avtomat The one that was made famous during WW2 (which was used to assault enemy positions at slightly closer range than a normal rifle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44 The most famous one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  Please re-read the first sentence of the "let me google that for you" you linked: >An assault rifle is a selective-fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. Semi-automatic rifles are not selective-fire rifles.
minkzilla 9y ago
So normally when people are talking about assault rifles they think they are talking about assault weapons (or vice versa), which is a almost meaningless term used by the government and gun control groups. Just read the intro paragraph on Wikipedia to see what I mean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon If we want an actual intelligent conversation about gun control we need to stop using stupid terms such as assault weapon, and maybe even assault rifle. We need to talk about concrete attributes not some abstract class of weapons a said gun belongs to.
RealGeek 9y ago
I always see gun promoters trying to divert the discussion from the real issue (read: mass shootings and terrorism) towards the technicality of the term "assault weapon". Would calling these guns "weapons of mass murder" be more accurate? Does that distinction really makes a difference? Why does a law abiding citizen of America needs mass murdering guns with thousands of rounds?
- ams6110 9y ago
  If they are law-abiding, what's the problem?
  - RealGeek 9y ago
    This terrorist was a law abiding citizen until yesterday. If your law abiding neighbor is building bombs in his garage, is that a problem?
  - mariallery 9y ago
    Because any of these law-abiding people owning a gun could snap some day and go rogue? I'd say that's a really good reason to reduce the guns availability.
    - abhi3 9y ago
      removed
      - RandVal30142 9y ago
        >Because any of these law-abiding refugees Taking your garbage edit of the parent comment and setting it totally aside: Legal firearms routinely become illegal, most often when they are stolen by people who are already criminals. Unlocked cars are a great source of 'legal' pistols as it turns out. The problem of small arms proliferation is real and it is one of the reasons U.S. and other modern nations regulate them so much.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
throwaway97991 9y ago
This is totally disingenuous. You want an exact legal definition of what an assault rifle is, and then you'll just come up with a gun that does the thing that the government is trying to prohibit in a slightly different way. That's exactly what the article is about. We prohibited automatic weapons, and so people come out with cranks and bump fire stocks that allow for automatic fire without violating the legal definition of more than one bullet per trigger pull. I bet you know the history of assault weapons, but for those that don't, it makes this all understandable. In WWII, Germany's infantry primarily carried Mauser rifles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karabiner_98k https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karabiner_98k) These were bolt action, meaning you had to pull the bolt back and forth between each shot. It shoots a high powered round, and it has a reasonably long barrel, which means that it can be accurate and deadly from a few hundred meters, but it also means that it has a fair bit of recoil. It has a ten round magazine, which is somewhat cumbersome to reload. This type of rifle works fine for hunting, and for firing from one trench to another or across an open field. When Germany found itself doing a lot of house to house fighting with the Russians, this was not a suitable weapon. These firefights tended to be over very quickly and at very close range. There wasn't time to aim, and often soldiers shot from the hip while advancing. What was needed was a weapon that was fully automatic, handy, with a short barrel, fireable from the hip, with a large ammunition capacity and quick to reload with not too much recoil. The result was this: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP_40 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP_40), a submachine gun. Later, the Germans realized that although the MP40 was great for house to house fighting, for longer range engagements, it wasn't accurate enough for longer ranged engagements. They needed a compromise weapon: The StG 44 (Assault Rifle 44). The StG 44 had an intermediate power round and a medium length barrel to not create too much recoil, and be easy enough to handle close in, but have enough power and accuracy to fight at medium distances. It could fire either in semiautomatic or fully automatic mode, fully automatic for a close assault, and semi for long range accurate shooting. It had a pistol grip so that it could be fired from the hip, and an easily changeable 30 round box magazine, so that it could be reloaded quickly in a fast firefight. The AR-15/M16, AK47, and virtually all general purpose military rifles from the second half of the 20th century follow this basic concept. This is all to say, that the basic design concepts of the assault rifle, intermediate power cartridge, selectable semi/fully auto fire, medium length barrel, pistol grip, and detachable, high capacity box magazine, make this a weapon designed for war. You can argue until you're blue in the face that none of these "evil features" make it any different than a bolt action hunting rifle, but they all exist to make it more suitable as a weapon of war, and you know it. The very same features that make it useful for soldiers to kill enemy soldiers make it more lethal in the hands of a mass shooter. The pistol grip makes it easier to shoot on the move or from the hip. The high capacity box magazine gives a lot of firepower without reloading, and makes reloading fast. The less than full power cartridge makes rapid fire (semi or full auto) more manageable, and the medium length barrel makes it accurate at medium distance while not being unwieldy in close quarters. You can't tell me that what happened Sunday, or what happened in any of the recent mass shootings would have been any where near as deadly if the shooter had showed up with a Remington 700.

ScottBurson 9y ago

Okay, but why are these distinctions important to this situation? Are you saying that there's been no legislation proposed that could have reduced the number of rounds per second this shooter could fire?

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
The distinctions aren't important for the Las Vegas shooting, but they are important for the national discussion around gun laws. I would much rather have laws created through processes that don't abuse language to create fear in the wake of tragedy.
- sidlls 9y ago
  I don't think the language is what's creating fear, here. It's the guns. More specifically the casual, easy availability of guns and the numerous mass murders that happen annually with them. It's not like calling them "just guns" or whatever diminishes the fear. Or maybe it would diminish the fear--and I think that's a bit insidious to be honest. We (collectively) should fear a tool having as its only purpose to seriously injure or kill things, including (especially) people.
Merad 9y ago
I suppose that depends on your POV. There are a variety of currently legal accessories that one can buy to make a semi-automatic rifle fire more rapidly. Primarily these are trigger cranks, bump fire stocks, and binary triggers. You can make these devices illegal, but out of the three trigger cranks are trivially easy to make, and bump firing is fairly easy to do with no accessories. And honestly, with hand tools and a basic amount of mechanical knowledge, it isn't very difficult to (illegally) modify most rifles to fully automatic fire.
unethical_ban 9y ago
Bump stocks or trigger cranks are legal, and perhaps could be made illegal. That would only deter some people, and as 3D printing becomes easier, these things will be producible at home. Banning semi-automatic rifles may help, but if you want chaos and civil strife, you'll get it. There are millions of those rifles in circulation and the people who have them (many, anyway) won't want to give them up. At the least, you'll make criminals of hundreds of thousands of people, and put lots in jail for previously legal and safe ownership of a weapon. But let's say you ban them. Now you'll have a black market with plenty of them anyway. In theory, if we could snap our fingers and have all semi-auto rifles gone, it could help with some of the known mass shootings. But it won't stop it. And here's my last point: It will still go on. Killings and horrors will continue, and those who don't like firearms will continue to demand their confiscation and restriction until they don't exist. And they (the anti-gun left) will do that with or without the repeal of the 2nd amendment.
- cwkoss 9y ago
  Already producible at home by people with fabrication skills. Heck, a wooden or plastic crank could be built with tools most people have in their houses already. Also, 'bump stocks' aren't strictly necessary. Applying forward pressure with your stabilizing hand on a rifle as you fire can cause it to bump.
- heedlessly2 9y ago
  you actually think the Vegas shooter cared about the legality of bump stocks when firing into crowd of over 20,000 people?

ardit33 9y ago

Let me google that for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle It is clear. Assault Rifle, is a automatic, or semi-automatic rifle with a handle and a large magazine/bullet capacity. It has a fast fire rate, and semi decent range (less than a standard rifle, but more than a pistol). First assault rifle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedorov_Avtomat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedorov_Avtomat The one that was made famous during WW2 (which was used to assault enemy positions at slightly closer range than a normal rifle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44 The most famous one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
Please re-read the first sentence of the "let me google that for you" you linked: >An assault rifle is a selective-fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. Semi-automatic rifles are not selective-fire rifles.

minkzilla 9y ago

So normally when people are talking about assault rifles they think they are talking about assault weapons (or vice versa), which is a almost meaningless term used by the government and gun control groups. Just read the intro paragraph on Wikipedia to see what I mean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon If we want an actual intelligent conversation about gun control we need to stop using stupid terms such as assault weapon, and maybe even assault rifle. We need to talk about concrete attributes not some abstract class of weapons a said gun belongs to.

RealGeek 9y ago

I always see gun promoters trying to divert the discussion from the real issue (read: mass shootings and terrorism) towards the technicality of the term "assault weapon". Would calling these guns "weapons of mass murder" be more accurate? Does that distinction really makes a difference? Why does a law abiding citizen of America needs mass murdering guns with thousands of rounds?

ams6110 9y ago
If they are law-abiding, what's the problem?
- RealGeek 9y ago
  This terrorist was a law abiding citizen until yesterday. If your law abiding neighbor is building bombs in his garage, is that a problem?
- mariallery 9y ago
  Because any of these law-abiding people owning a gun could snap some day and go rogue? I'd say that's a really good reason to reduce the guns availability.
  - abhi3 9y ago
    removed
    - RandVal30142 9y ago
      >Because any of these law-abiding refugees Taking your garbage edit of the parent comment and setting it totally aside: Legal firearms routinely become illegal, most often when they are stolen by people who are already criminals. Unlocked cars are a great source of 'legal' pistols as it turns out. The problem of small arms proliferation is real and it is one of the reasons U.S. and other modern nations regulate them so much.
- maxerickson 9y ago

throwaway97991 9y ago

This is totally disingenuous. You want an exact legal definition of what an assault rifle is, and then you'll just come up with a gun that does the thing that the government is trying to prohibit in a slightly different way. That's exactly what the article is about. We prohibited automatic weapons, and so people come out with cranks and bump fire stocks that allow for automatic fire without violating the legal definition of more than one bullet per trigger pull. I bet you know the history of assault weapons, but for those that don't, it makes this all understandable. In WWII, Germany's infantry primarily carried Mauser rifles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karabiner_98k https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karabiner_98k) These were bolt action, meaning you had to pull the bolt back and forth between each shot. It shoots a high powered round, and it has a reasonably long barrel, which means that it can be accurate and deadly from a few hundred meters, but it also means that it has a fair bit of recoil. It has a ten round magazine, which is somewhat cumbersome to reload. This type of rifle works fine for hunting, and for firing from one trench to another or across an open field. When Germany found itself doing a lot of house to house fighting with the Russians, this was not a suitable weapon. These firefights tended to be over very quickly and at very close range. There wasn't time to aim, and often soldiers shot from the hip while advancing. What was needed was a weapon that was fully automatic, handy, with a short barrel, fireable from the hip, with a large ammunition capacity and quick to reload with not too much recoil. The result was this: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP_40 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP_40), a submachine gun. Later, the Germans realized that although the MP40 was great for house to house fighting, for longer range engagements, it wasn't accurate enough for longer ranged engagements. They needed a compromise weapon: The StG 44 (Assault Rifle 44). The StG 44 had an intermediate power round and a medium length barrel to not create too much recoil, and be easy enough to handle close in, but have enough power and accuracy to fight at medium distances. It could fire either in semiautomatic or fully automatic mode, fully automatic for a close assault, and semi for long range accurate shooting. It had a pistol grip so that it could be fired from the hip, and an easily changeable 30 round box magazine, so that it could be reloaded quickly in a fast firefight. The AR-15/M16, AK47, and virtually all general purpose military rifles from the second half of the 20th century follow this basic concept. This is all to say, that the basic design concepts of the assault rifle, intermediate power cartridge, selectable semi/fully auto fire, medium length barrel, pistol grip, and detachable, high capacity box magazine, make this a weapon designed for war. You can argue until you're blue in the face that none of these "evil features" make it any different than a bolt action hunting rifle, but they all exist to make it more suitable as a weapon of war, and you know it. The very same features that make it useful for soldiers to kill enemy soldiers make it more lethal in the hands of a mass shooter. The pistol grip makes it easier to shoot on the move or from the hip. The high capacity box magazine gives a lot of firepower without reloading, and makes reloading fast. The less than full power cartridge makes rapid fire (semi or full auto) more manageable, and the medium length barrel makes it accurate at medium distance while not being unwieldy in close quarters. You can't tell me that what happened Sunday, or what happened in any of the recent mass shootings would have been any where near as deadly if the shooter had showed up with a Remington 700.