Reply #79: So what was it then? [View All]

[ElboRuum]

A "hunting rifle with a 30 round clip?"

You are daft if you believe that the majority of the public gives one whit about the dictionary definition of an assault weapon vs. whatever the NRA wants us to believe is an assault weapon.

That distinction you care so much about COULD have very easily been made. What would it have proven? That a kid died because he was peppered with 30 rounds from a "sporting rifle" so that makes it somehow LESS tragic? Would unloading clips from a pistol somehow have changed the timbre of the conversation? That somehow the fact that it wasn't a dictionary assault weapon even though weapon and assault would be adequate descriptors in language describing the event would ameliorate your concerns?

So long as people do these things, whether they mean to or not, it WILL bring up legitimate questions as to the validity and utility of personal firearm ownership, regardless of the definitions we use. The attempt to obfuscate the true issue with quibbling over semantics and the erecting of strawmen is as obvious as it is tedious, which is to say, very.