'Weapons of War' and Other Leftist Fairy Tales

In the wake of the mass murder at a homosexual nightclub in Orlando this past weekend, the anti-gun Left quite predictably renewed the clamor for more gun control laws generally, and specifically an outright ban on “military-style assault weapons.” They of course have largely worn out this grossly inaccurate term, so they’re beginning to move on in their demagoguery to “weapons of war.” (Conservatives who concede these terms do the cause a disservice.) This is all part of the agenda to scare the public into ceding rights and submitting to centralized control.

Speaking of inaccurate terms, The Washington Post wrote a lengthy article about the evil AR-15 used in Orlando, before having to admit it did not identify the gun in question correctly. Of course, the WaPo is hardly the only media outlet to get it wrong. The jihadi used a Sig Sauer MCX carbine, which is an entirely different gun.

There is a profound amount of ignorance and demagoguery surrounding these weapons, so let’s start by establishing what an “assault weapon” is and is not. According to the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Intelligence Agency book “Small Arms Identification and Operation Guide,” “assault rifles” are “short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges.” Selective fire means you can choose between semi- (one round fired per trigger pull), and full-auto (continuous fire as long as the trigger is depressed).

(The Truth About Assault Weapons is an outstanding resource for further information.)

Contrary to the hysterical claims of the anti-gun crowd, full-auto weapons have been highly regulated since 1934, and effectively prohibited since 1986. To obtain a full-auto-capable weapon, one must pay a heavy federal tax and go through an FBI background check, including fingerprinting each finger on both hands. In fact, even for standard, non-“assault” weapons purchases, one must go through background checks and fill out a stack of paperwork in order to comply with the roughly 20,000 federal, state and municipal gun laws currently on the books in the U.S. Anyone who claims you can walk into a pawn shop or a gun store, throw down some cash, and walk out with a new gun 10 minutes later is either misinformed or deceitful.

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