• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

What exactly makes an Assault Weapon an Assault Weapon in the first place?

Mudcat

Man of a Thousand Memes
Mudcat
Joined
Apr 6, 2011
Messages
6,474
Save your gun debates and rhetoric for the next "[insert name here] shoots and kills [insert name here] at [insert place here]" thread, because this isn't the thread for it.

I started this thread as gun illiterate person who's legitimately interested in what exactly qualifies an Assault Weapon, but it doesn't exactly get defined. How come combat knives aren't considered Assault Weapons, for example. They're clearly designed to kill, disarm, or severely injure others and their name makes it quite clear that they are designed to be a weapon used for combat.

Why must it be only guns? Is it only certain calibre of guns, using certain magazines and munitions? Is it only semi-automatic and/or fully automatic that get considered? Scoped? What, exactly, is an Assault Weapon?
 
Because if you take on someone with an assault weapon, and you have only a combat knife, you gonna lose.

IXP
 
I would say a semiautomatic weapon with a high rate of fire, a burst &/or full auto setting, & high magazine capacity (20+).

A combat knife in this day & age is more a tool than a weapon.
 
Last edited:
"Assault weapon" is basically a political term, used to indicate "scary guns that we should ban", in order to make firearms-ignorant citizens feel like the government is doing something to make them safer.

I know that sounds like partisan BS, but it's not. It's seriously what the term means. The actual features of an "assault weapon" are arbitrarily selected by whatever politician or activist is proposing their ban. Commonly-cited features include pistol grips, removable magazines, bayonet lugs, and collapsible stocks. [ETA: And selective fire, of course.]

Contrast with "assault rifle", which is a military term of art, signifying a relatively compact, lightweight rifle, firing a medium-power cartridge, with semi-automatic, burst, and (sometimes) automatic fire modes. Modern assault rifles typically have pistol grips and detachable magazines, and may or may not have collapsible stocks or bayonet lugs.

Unfortunately, most of the things that make an assault rifle an effective weapon for armed assault, are also found in civilian firearms that are usually not included in "assault weapon" ban proposals.

The Ruger Mini-14, for example, is essentially an M-16 assault rifle, in many key respects: It's about the same size, it fires the same cartridge, it is semi-automatic, and it can take a detachable magazine. It lacks a pistol grip, but this is a relatively minor ergonomic difference. It lacks burst fire capability, but this is also relatively minor. In the hands of a competent shooter, a series of single shots in rapid succession are extremely effective in gunning down unarmed civilians. It lacks a bayonet lug, but bayonets are deprecated in most scenarios anyway.

But the Ruger Mini-14--along with pretty much every other medium-caliber, semiautomatic, non-pistol-grip rifle available to civilians--is not covered under most assault weapon ban proposals. Even though anybody capable of posing a threat with an assault rifle is capable of posing the same threat with the Ruger Mini-14.
 
Last edited:
Well you start with an ault and then find one with a really great ass.
 
On the left? Most people would probably see those as hunting/target rifles, much like the ones many of our grandfathers taught us how to shoot when we were young.


huntassault.jpg


And on the right? Many would say those are assault weapons. Isn't the difference obvious?
 
GeeMack said:
On the left? Most people would probably see those as hunting/target rifles, much like the ones many of our grandfathers taught us how to shoot when we were young.


[qimg]http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-pukQfKmp9S4/UUN0Z-m3HWI/AAAAAAAACYY/-OwLQgJL_gQ/s640/huntassault.jpg[/qimg]​


And on the right? Many would say those are assault weapons. Isn't the difference obvious?
Click to expand...

Too bad the law can't just be that picture, plus a caption that read "the guns on the left are allowed, the guns on the right are prohibited".

ETA: The joke is that they're all the same gun, right?
 
I remember some NRA guy talking about how stupid it was that a "pistol grip" was one characteristic of an assault weapon. I don't know much about guns, but it appear obvious to me that having a pistol grip, like the weapons on the right in the post #9 would certainly make it easier to quickly target a bunch of kids in a classroom, when compared to the hunting rifles on the left...

IXP
 
Redtail said:
I would say a semiautomatic weapon with a high rate of fire, a burst &/or full auto setting, & high magazine capacity (20+).

A combat knife in this day & age is more a tool than a weapon.
Click to expand...

Semi-automatics only have a rate of fire as fast as the trigger finger can pull the trigger. Yeah, there's bump-firing but that's about as effective a use of the firearm as "ghost-riding" is for driving a car.

Before the 1994 stupidity, there was a perfectly good technical definition of "assault rifle" (not "assault weapon", since if I snap off a car antenna and whip someone across the eyes with it, it's technically an assault weapon):

  • Fully automatic capability
  • Intermediate rifle cartridge
  • Small arm (as opposed to crew-served).

Any weapon with the first and third of those criteria but chambered in a pistol cartridge is a sub-machine gun (or machine pistol in Europe).

Fully-automatic shotguns are so rare that there is no specific definition for them other than "fully-automatic shotgun".

By definition, a semi-automatic weapon cannot be an assault rifle, sub-machine gun or fully-automatic shotgun.

Since the term "assault weapon" is an emotional politically-loaded term rather than technical jargon, and can be applied to whatever the hell the user wants to apply it to (see Dianne Feinstein deciding what constitutes "assault weapons" just by looking at pictures), the term is utterly meaningless.
 
Mudcat said:
Save your gun debates and rhetoric for the next "[insert name here] shoots and kills [insert name here] at [insert place here]" thread, because this isn't the thread for it.

I started this thread as gun illiterate person who's legitimately interested in what exactly qualifies an Assault Weapon, but it doesn't exactly get defined. How come combat knives aren't considered Assault Weapons, for example. They're clearly designed to kill, disarm, or severely injure others and their name makes it quite clear that they are designed to be a weapon used for combat.

Why must it be only guns? Is it only certain calibre of guns, using certain magazines and munitions? Is it only semi-automatic and/or fully automatic that get considered? Scoped? What, exactly, is an Assault Weapon?
Click to expand...

Intermediate power cartridge, selective fire capability.

And as hard as this may be to believe, utilizing the principal of battlefield calculus, the primary intention of the design is to wound an enemy, not kill them - in fighting a civilized enemy, a wounded combatant drains more resorces in the short (two or more combatants needed to remove the wounded troop from the fight) and long term (medical treatment, etc) than simply killing the enemy combatant - simply killing the enemy is a tactical, not strategic, goal.
 
IXP said:
I remember some NRA guy talking about how stupid it was that a "pistol grip" was one characteristic of an assault weapon. I don't know much about guns, but it appear obvious to me that having a pistol grip, like the weapons on the right in the post #9 would certainly make it easier to quickly target a bunch of kids in a classroom, when compared to the hunting rifles on the left...

IXP
Click to expand...
Not really. The pistol grip is useful in full auto fire as you can achieve a better shoulder weld, and some prefer it for long distance engagements for the same reason. A standard stock is more than sufficient for rapidly acquiring a sight picture.
I prefer a stock with a standard comb and no pistol grip for home defense. Shortening the weapon (one of the other uses for a pistol grip as a stand alone stock) can be accomplished by practicing the proper carry position for room clearing,and still have the standard stock's greater weapons retention capability (try wresting a cue stick out someone's hands, then try it again with it locked under their arm).
Plus, you cannot effectively deliver a vertical butt stroke with a pistol grip, and even if your weapon is equipped with both stock and pistol grip, you must change hand positions before beginning a butt stroke and smash.
Pistols grips found on semi-automatic copies of military weapons, or as aftermarket features, are mostly just cosmetic, with a few very narrowly defined exceptions. Namely, long range distance shooting and to compensate for the shorter reach of people who are very small statured (such as many women) or persons with certain disabilities who are unable to achieve a proper shoulder weld with a combed stock.
As the prestige commented, there is no standardized definition of "assault weapon" which was why it was invented by the anti 2nd Amendment left in the first place.
It can mean any firearm you want to ban.
Diane Feinstein, in an interview with Diane Sawyer, gave the definition as any firearm capable of killing multiple people at close quarters.
This definition, of course, would include my great-great-grandfathers .36 Cal Navy Colt percussion cap pistol.
But I expect they won't go after those until they've banned everything else.
ETA: BTW, exactly how many times have military style semi-auto rifles been used to target children in a classroom?
 
Last edited:
If you're hearing the phrase "assault weapon" in a gun debate, what they meant was "assault rifle" and they just got the phrase wrong, so that's why knives are out.

So it's a rifle meant for making assaults. The meaning of that last word is not the crime "assault" or "assault & battery", which isn't associated with any specific kind of weapon. It means an organized attack by an assault team on a building or compound for military or police purposes, as in news reports like "A Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team assaulted a cocaine money laundering operation today" or "United States Army Rangers assaulted Al-Jalaboujaddah Airport late last night".

The idea was to let civilians keep access to civilian weapons but not let us have the kinds of weapons that SWAT teams & Rangers & such would use in going up against drug thugs & terrorists in their own defended locations.

The problem was that a law requires specifics, and when they tried to describe exactly what makes the difference between a normal gun and a gun for an assault team, they couldn't find a simple, clear way to do it without leaving conspicuous exceptions on both sides of the line.
 
Delvo said:
If you're hearing the phrase "assault weapon" in a gun debate, what they meant was "assault rifle" and they just got the phrase wrong, so that's why knives are out.

So it's a rifle meant for making assaults. The meaning of that last word is not the crime "assault" or "assault & battery", which isn't associated with any specific kind of weapon. It means an organized attack by an assault team on a building or compound for military or police purposes, as in news reports like "A Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team assaulted a cocaine money laundering operation today" or "United States Army Rangers assaulted Al-Jalaboujaddah Airport late last night".

The idea was to let civilians keep access to civilian weapons but not let us have the kinds of weapons that SWAT teams & Rangers & such would use in going up against drug thugs & terrorists in their own defended locations.

The problem was that a law requires specifics, and when they tried to describe exactly what makes the difference between a normal gun and a gun for an assault team, they couldn't find a simple, clear way to do it without leaving conspicuous exceptions on both sides of the line.
Click to expand...

SWAT teams and US Army Rangers use fully-automatic weapons, which have been highly regulated for decades.

The tone I got from the anti-gunners in 1994 was because of some high-profile shootings at the time, and because of the resistance to banning handguns in the 1980s, they went after scary-looking weapons because they were an easy target and to set a precedent to ban even more (if not all) guns as time went on.
 
It seems to me that the basic idea behind all this is a reasonable one. Assault rifles were banned, but gun manufacturers figured out that there was a huge market for assault rifles that had been modified to remove the selective fire capability. The term "assault weapon" was even coined originally as a marketing term, making it clear to the buyer that this was not a simple hunting rifle, but instead a military combat weapon. That was the whole selling point.

Naturally some people don't like this arrangement. Removing the burst fire and full autofire capability of an assault rifle certainly reduces its destructive capabilities, but not a whole lot. It's still a weapon that is designed for killing a lot of people very quickly, and which is very good at doing what it was designed for.

Now as for me, I would say just outlaw large magazines and firearms that can be converted for full autofire.
 
IXP said:
I remember some NRA guy talking about how stupid it was that a "pistol grip" was one characteristic of an assault weapon. I don't know much about guns, but it appear obvious to me that having a pistol grip, like the weapons on the right in the post #9 would certainly make it easier to quickly target a bunch of kids in a classroom, when compared to the hunting rifles on the left...

IXP
Click to expand...
Pistol grips just make the rifle a bit lighter. A nice feature for a soldier humping for miles through the bush, doesn't make it any easier to "quickly target a bunch of kids in a classroom".
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom