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Indeed. Though I suppose any bolt-action rifle that had a pistol grip, telescoping stock or bayonet would also be covered under the ban.

 

I've heard the terms used interchangeably, but I've generally heard 'assault rifle' apply to civilian semi-automatic rifles and 'machine gun' apply to military fully automatic rifles. Same with pistols - a 'machine pistol' has fully automatic fire (and is not available to civilians who don't hold a class 5 license or whatever it is), and a semi-automatic pistol fires one round at a time and is the type of pistol (along with revolvers) that people are most familiar with from movies etc.

I'm certainly no expert, and the above terms and their uses may or may not be misnomers, but that's how I usually hear it.

I don't know that 'assault weapon' has much of a specific practical definition ... seems to mainly be used to promote general feelings of dread , being as 'weapon' is a fairly vague term to begin with, unlike rifle or pistol.

 

If we're still on about the guns, when it comes to weapons and their classifications, there has to be some common sense used and there has to be mass buy in on where we draw the lines. I think I've done this before in other threads, but screw it. Observe the following progression:

Rock* -- club -- spear -- knife -- crossbow -- pistol -- rifle -- submachine gun -- fully automatic machine gun -- shoulder fired bazooka -- howitzer -- Missile (conventional) -- nuclear missile

OK, where do we draw the line on what is classified as "arms" in the sense of "citizens have the right to bear arms"? There's a complicated issue here, and I don't pretend to have all the answers. But here are my thoughts:

1: The US seems to have people who want to carry a pistol with them 24/7 for protection. They want that pistol concealed (thus the term "concealed carry"). I'm concerned as to what kind of society that would engender.

2: In addition, even if it isn't concealed, I'm not thrilled about people walking around the city streets brandishing spears or crossbows, let alone deadlier weapons such as rifles or submachine guns. I'd be giving such folks a WIDE berth.

3: When it comes to rifles, the ones that look "military" in terms of the accessories attached seem to cause the most concern. I'm not sure that they are that much more dangerous than a hunting rifle - -I've read that the velocity and size of the projectiles are not significantly more dangerous. So trying to ban a weapon based on it's looks and the hated "assault" adjective is problematic for me in one sense. However, . . .

4: Those accessories may not be merely cosmetic, and they may be designed to increase human lethality rather than the ability to hunt. In which case the "I use it for hunting" concept is kind of out the window.

5: I would say that full society buy in as to weapons civilians should not be able to own and carry on a regular basis is around the submachine gun or fully automatic machine gun area. Full buy in is not present for rifles. It's difficult for me to see one law abiding group dominating another law abiding group in such matters. The line "I don't see the need for you to have (X)" is met, in my mind, with "I'll be the one to determine what I need, not you" and unless you have a HUGE majority of people siding with the first person, then I'm leery of infringing on the rights of the second.

6: Before the government goes after law abiding citizens, it needs to demonstrate that it is doing a good job of punishing repeat offenders and/or stopping them from their repetitions of depravity. Public perception of this matter is often that the government is NOT doing a good job in this area (statistics notwithstanding, I'm talking PERCEPTION here.) As a gun owner, I'd be saying to the government "look, keep John Smith over there locked up -- he shot 14 people. Yet I see you are releasing him on a technicality, despite the recording he made promising to kill the 12 people who served on his jury. Shouldn't you be focussing on him rather than on me, a citizen who has never committed so much as a traffic violation let alone a violent act with my trust .30 - .30? Taking my gun away seems to be less effective than re-working the laws to keep old John behind bars and gunless." The huge numbers of handguns in the hands of gangbangers and drug dealers leads me to agree with the notion that the focus needs to be elsewhere.

All of this stuff doesn't change this:

7: The USA has a serious PR problem worldwide. This is kind of deserved in that the violence that occurs in American urban centres is widely reported, as are the blow outs at schools and such. In terms of the original topic of this discussion, people seeing that sort of thing and hearing those news reports would be VERY unlikely to want to join in with that country, no matter how much jingoism the USA exports overseas.

 

The Supreme Court also addressed that in the elsewhere-referenced 2008 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA et al. v. HELLER decision, but I think any further gun rights discussion is just beating a dead horse at this point.

 

If any wants to read the summary of the D of C vs Heller brief here is a link.
http://www.lawnix.com/cases/dc-heller.html Draw your own conclusions.