You’ve doubtless heard the phrases, “assault weapon”, “assault rifle”, and “high-powered rifle”. These are widely mis-used terms, and they are often used to characterize firearms in a negative light. I recently heard a guest on a popular radio show make the argument that, “they’re called assault rifles, doesn’t that tell you that no-one needs to own one of these?” Her point was premised on the notion that the label must accurately describe the rifle and that no civilian should need a rifle made for ‘assault’. In fact she was talking about an AR-15, which is not an assault rifle. Usually. By most definitions. In some states. Huh?
The chef reached into the freezer for a frozen turkey leg and bludgeoned the waiter to death. He was arrested and charged with ‘assault with a deadly weapon’. They call these things ‘deadly weapons’; why are civilians even allowed to own one? Do you know that anyone with a freezer can make a regular turkey leg into a frozen turkey leg? We need to regulate these things. But I digress.
In military terms, an assault weapon is a lightweight select-fire rifle chambered for a medium powered cartridge. These types of rifles began to appear around the time of World War II and the most common ones today date back to the 1940s and 50s. Most of the time, when you hear a commentator talking about “modern, high-powered assault rifles”, they’re actually talking about a low-powered sporting rifle based on antique military designs.
Select-fire refers to a rifle’s ability to switch between semi-automatic and fully automatic fire. Fully automatic fire means that the gun keeps shooting at a rapid rate as long as the trigger is depressed. Semi-automatic fire means that a distinct pull of the trigger is required for every shot. In both types of function, once the rifle is initially charged, the operator doesn’t need to do anything other than pull the trigger. This stands opposed to a design like a bolt-action rifle which requires the user to operate the bolt to chamber each successive round. These are a lot slower, but they may be more powerful and more accurate.
In the beginning of the 20th century, military use of semi-automatic firearms began to grow. The legendary M1 Garand rifle came into use in the 1930s. It was a clip-fed, high power, semi-automatic rifle. These accurate and powerful guns served well through World War II, but the nature of combat was starting to change. Trench warfare gave way to urban and jungle warfare as the nature of conflicts evolved. Maybe this had to do with the rise of air power, but that’s just a guess.
Designers of military rifles after WWII had to balance several factors. A rifle must be accurate and have adequate range, but powerful cartridges are heavy and a soldier needs to be able to carry enough ammunition while moving fast for extended periods of time. In close combat it was advantageous to be able to fire extremely rapidly, but the rifle itself needed to be light and small enough to maneuver. Automatic fire could abuse the mechanism of a light rifle and the gun would be hard to control. This compromise led to lower powered guns which could use lighter ammunition and function well under automatic fire while being shorter and lighter than their predecessors.
The designs from that era which most often show up in the news today are the Russian Kalashnikov and the American AR-15. The term AK-47 is usually a misnomer for Kalashnikov or AK type rifles. The AR-15 is closely related to the M-16 and M-4 military rifles. These terms are especially confusing. The original AR-15, sold by ArmaLite in the 1950s was a military rifle, but when Colt bought the design and turned it into the M-16, they started using the AR-15 name for a civilian version. Kalashnikovs include the famous Russian AK-47, AKM and AK-74, but there are many variants made for civilian and for military use in many countries around the world.
So these are lower powered rifles. They’re more powerful than most handguns and more powerful than .22 caliber rifles used for practice and varmint hunting, but they’re less powerful than most other rifles made in the past 100 years.
Are they ‘assault rifles’ or ‘assault weapons’? That depends on who you ask and where you ask it. And on a couple of other factors. In Massachusetts, for example, as in the expired federal assault weapons ban, the legal definition of an assault weapon is as follows:
A rifle that is semi-automatic and accepts a detachable magazine
AND has two of the following features:
- a folding or telescoping stock
- a pistol grip
- a bayonet mount
- a flash suppressor or threaded barrel meant to accommodate a flash suppressor
- a grenade launcher
Let’s dig into that a bit. I’m going to leave grenade launcher alone. I’m willing to concede that a grenade launcher might not be a suitable civilian weapon. We can debate that another day. First the rifle must be semi-automatic and have a detachable magazine. So we’re not talking at all about fully automatic weapons, which are legally regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA). We’ve just excluded all modern military assault rifles from the legal definition of an assault weapon. Then the detachable magazine- remember the M1 Garand, the high-powered military rifle that saved the world from the Third Reich? It’s clip-fed, into a non-removable magazine, so it’s not an assault rifle. The Ruger 10/22, on the other hand, that ubiquitous first rifle designed for youth, varmint hunting and target sports and chambered in the very lightweight .22lr caliber, with the right combination of cosmetic features, could be an assault weapon. A 10/22 is semi-automatic and has a removable magazine. So if it has, for example, a pistol grip and folding stock, it’s an assault weapon. An aftermarket folding stock with a pistol grip costs about $100. It attaches with a single screw. So if you have a 10/22 in Massachusetts and you take 30 seconds to attach such a stock, it is magically transformed into an assault weapon. Start traveling north, however, and like Cinderella at midnight it loses its magic at the New Hampshire line. As you leave the state, it’s no longer an assault weapon. Meanwhile the rifle that stormed the beaches at Normandy is not an assault weapon anywhere. Are you following this? How about a higher caliber example; a Kalashnikov rifle, based on the Russian AK platform and owned in the state of Vermont. It is semi-automatic, accepts a detachable magazine, has a pistol grip, a folding stock and a flash suppressor. It looks like an assault rifle. It’s an assault weapon, right? No, it’s in Vermont, silly. Take it into Massachusetts though, and the magic happens again. But wait… before your trip you’ve spot welded the flash suppressor to the barrel, now it’s part of the barrel and thus legally not a flash suppressor. You’ve also replaced the folding stock with a wooden stock. That took a minute or two with a screwdriver. Now the magic doesn’t happen when you drive across the border. It doesn’t have the right combination of features to be classified as an assault weapon. I’m not making this stuff up. And we’re not even talking about the “high-capacity” magazine yet. We’ll save that for another time. Massachusetts isn’t the only place with this special magic. California and a few other states have similar laws. Even if you agreed that something like a pistol grip and folding stock gave a tactical advantage to a criminal, which is a specious argument anyway, the replacement parts are totally unregulated, so we’re trusting said criminal to follow the laws and not to modify his non-assault weapon. Remember, the modification takes a minute or two with a screwdriver. Does this sound like common-sense gun control yet? It’s kind of like saying that cars with a sunroof, mag wheels and a fancy radio are more dangerous than the same car without the sunroof. Or if it’s painted black or if it has a dumb bumper sticker. Those are assault cars. We’re going to ban those. The dumb bumper sticker is ok if the car is green. It’s for public safety.
What is the point of these laws? There is a point, I think. Some folks would probably prefer that civilians be allowed to possess any weapon that a government may possess. But I think most people would allow that some things are just really scary in private hands. Let’s start with extremes- most of us would probably agree that civilians shouldn’t be allowed to own nuclear weapons. Let’s use that example to establish that, for most of those people who do believe in the right to bear arms, there is still a line beyond which that right should not extend. There have been many, many terrible crimes in this country. There have been many random mass killings which have wounded our civilization and torn at our hearts. There is a place for government in regulating the behavior of the population and the marketplace in the interest of public safety. If there were a law that was absolutely guaranteed to eliminate mass murders, I think most of us would support it. Do you remember what types of assault weapons were used in the two most lethal mass murders on American soil in the last hundred years? A rental truck and three commercial jets. The bombing in Oklahoma City took five times as many lives as the worst mass shooting – Virginia Tech – and the attacks on September 11, 2001 were worse by a factor of twenty.
The difference that a screw on flash suppressor or a folding stock might make in a mass killing, if any, is inconsequential. A pump-action 12ga shotgun, like what a turkey hunter might use, can fire more lethal ammunition into a crowd faster than an assault rifle. Guns are lethal. Excepting target guns, they’re all designed to kill things. A lot of animals are harder to kill than people, so hunting weapons are no less dangerous than military ones. In fact, AR type rifles are illegal for hunting in many places because the caliber is too small and the risk is too high that an animal will be injured and not killed. Sniper style mass killings are as horrific as close-range killings. My point is not that guns should be unregulated, it is that so many of the regulations that exist are completely absurd. Assault weapons, as they are defined in law and in common speech, are not really different than other rifles and should not be regulated differently.
They are useful for some types of hunting, they are used in some sports, but mostly they are excellent choices for home defense and for that well regulated militia that the second amendment talks about, should it ever be needed. The accuracy and limited power that these rifles offer is much more useful when the operator is not interested in random killing. That’s why police SWAT teams use them. With the right ammunition they can be effective without being too effective. In any morally justified use of lethal force, the shooter must be concerned about accuracy and not firing a bullet through and beyond the target. It can be difficult to be very accurate with handguns. Most hunting rifles are too powerful to use for self-defense in a populated area. There is a legitimate place for small, lightweight semi-automatic rifles and responsible gun buyers ought to be able to choose the best tool for the job without worrying about cosmetics.