Writer Max Baird of the Northwestern Chronicle has penned a new post in which he refutes much of what you’ve heard about assault weapons.

The Case for “Assault Weapons”

Let’s face it. If you’ve been paying any attention to the news in the last year, you’ve probably heard the term “assault weapon.” But what is an assault weapon anyway? Why are they so easy to get? Those can’t be used for sporting purposes, they belong on the battlefield!

Allow me to preface this by saying that everything you’ve heard about assault weapons is a lie. An assault rifle is a weapon that fires an intermediate cartridge (like the 5.56 NATO or 7.62×39 mm) and has a select fire capability, meaning it can fire on full automatic. These weapons have been extremely regulated by the federal government since the passage of the National Firearms Act in 1934, and it is illegal for private citizens to own an automatic weapon that was manufactured after 1986. The AR-15, which is often described as an assault rifle, is limited to semiautomatic fire only, firing the .223 Remington cartridge, a similar one to the 5.56 round that the military’s M16 and M4 rifles fire.

So if the AR isn’t an assault rifle, why do they keep calling it one? Simply put, “assault weapon” is a media buzzword. Anti-gun activist Josh Sugarmann put it best: “anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun… [increasing] the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.” The mainstream media and the anti-gun crowd have been purposely trying to mislead the public through fear.

The culmination of these arbitrary titles is in Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) Assault Weapons Ban. After naming over a hundred weapons to be banned by name alone, Sen. Feinstein goes on to list a number of “military features” that supposedly does not serve any legitimate sporting purpose. I don’t seem to remember the term “sporting purpose” showing up anywhere in the Second Amendment, but there are whole books written on that.