re: Journalists guide to the Firearms

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I've never really understood why gun fanboys get their panties in a wad whenever the press says assault rifle when explaining a store bought AR and/or AK... To the common man on the street said rifles are indeed assault rifles. Just seems like a really stupid thing to get hung up on.

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Because then, future "assault weapons ban" legislation will cover a lot more firearms than would be warranted under a stricter definition. That's why they blur the term. They want it to be as generalized and sweeping as possible.

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This seems to be splitting hairs to me.... I've never really understood why gun fanboys get their panties in a wad whenever the press says assault rifle when explaining a store bought AR and/or AK... To the common man on the street said rifles are indeed assault rifles. Just seems like a really stupid thing to get hung up on.

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Well, I am no gun fanboy, but can understand why. It is because the conversation about guns gets derailed by them. This is because of ignorance on the topic by the media, which the OP (or pic posted in OP) is trying to point out.

Every time there is a shooting incident, the talking heads always seem to bring up the point that "there is no reason for a person to own a fully automatic assualt rifle." Since these types of guns have a certain look, they are pretty much all labled as AR's, which people treat synonymously with "Assualt Rifle." So naturally, people shift the conversation to Fully Auto's and how they shouldn't be legal.

As pointed out on this board, (legal) fully auto's are in a finite supply, and are typically prohibitively expensive, especially considering the quality/age of the firearm.

So what I am trying to say, is that this conversation always seems to get shifted to fully auto guns, which are just not a huge threat in civilian crime in this country. The "AR's" that you see are not much different than most rifles, other than how they look, and of course magazine capacity, which is also regulated.There just isn't much that you could do with one of these weapons that you couldn't do with a weapon made for hunting or personal protection.

So the bottom line is that "fanboys" are likely the ones that see no real difference in these guns than any other guns, so there is no real reason to single them out.

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This seems to be splitting hairs to me.... I've never really understood why gun fanboys get their panties in a wad whenever the press says assault rifle when explaining a store bought AR and/or AK... To the common man on the street said rifles are indeed assault rifles. Just seems like a really stupid thing to get hung up on.

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It's stupid to get hung up on it until legislation starts being prepared using it as the basis of the guidelines. If Hilary is elected, you are going to see a major push from the white house to start new gun legislation. Now that there is a liberal majority on the SCotUS, you are going to see some seriously retarded anti-2nd amendment rulings on wording that people with a 3rd grade education can tell you the meaning of. The only thing giving even a glimmer of hope is that the right currently owns the legislative branch, but with a liberal ownership of the other 2 branches, its going to hard to hold it back, especially with this trend of executive orders consisting of more than just earthquake preparedness the past few presidencies. And if a executive order goes 30 days without being challenged by congress, it becomes law.

No, there is no splitting hairs and there is nothing stupid to get hung up on. It's a very serious distinction that as long as the media keeps blurring and muddying, will gain public traction and when it comes time to put into writing the guidelines on new legislation, it will make an ENORMOUS difference.