Journalist’s Firearms Identification Guide
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Friday, April 16, 2010
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Funny because it’s true:
In fairness, these are sometimes referred to as “assault rifles” or “semi-automatic weapons.”
James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. Follow James on Twitter.
Pretty funny. My eyes were first drawn to the Barret, and I’m like “that’s not an ak47.” Then I look around and get it.
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Just like every dog that bites a person is a pit bull.
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Nice play on theme since if it is an assault rifle it by definition is a select fire weapon and therefore not semi-automatic.
Let’s not forget context either. In the hands of a law abiding citizen it is a machine gun, in the hands of a criminal it is an assault rifle and in the hand of the police it is a patrol rife. When in reality it is a semi-automatic rifle with cosmetic features resembling those seen in movies.
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Same here. The potato gun and the Opel sealed the deal for me though :)
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Hell I’ve seen a semi-auto gun referred to as being an “automatic weapon”…
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Greetings:
For me, “assault rifles” means an automatic firing capability. What soldier these days would want to assault something with anything less.
I’m not holding my breath waiting for the next appearance of “semi-automatic weapons” in the media. There’s neither romance nor propaganda value to that moniker.
I live in the San Francisco Bay area. Several years ago, I took a local reporterette to e-mail task for calling an SKS rifle an assault weapon. She laid off the misinformation to what a police officer told her.
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An “assault rifle” has a distinct definition which Journalists (and politicians) never use, it means you can change the firing mode on it…Hell, even Clinton’s ban on “assault rifles” included non-assault rifles.
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It needs to be a t-shirt. Just like the Celebrate Diversity shirt that shows all the pistols. mpw
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This is to replace the 1970′s and early 1980′s where every pistol was the evil “Saturday Night Special”. Reporters used SNS to describe any and all pistols used in any function. mpw
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Very clever. But…shouldn’t that be an SUV? Preferably a Ford Explorer? (It’s probably a bit too much to ask that the MSM go *that* hard on the Prius.)
Love the t-shirt idea, mpw.
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I readily admit I couldn’t name a weapon beyond rifle, pistol, shotgun, but I did recognize that all those weapons weren’t AK-47.
Very clever and sadly too close to the truth. My favorite was the water gun.
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That’s actually a potato gun.
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Yep, you forgot to post a pic of a black-powder muzzle loader rifle. In a local paper, that was ID as “an assault rifle” too.
Re-enactors, watch-out! (Maryland has several organized groups of re-enactment militias, Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and the Civil War; most participants have at least one weapon, some actual pieces, others are modern replicas.)
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Greetings:
I heard that Toyota, as part of their corporate greening and rebuilding campaign, is coming out with a “hybrid assault weapon”.
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Clinton’s “assault weapon” really didn’t ban a single assault weapon but it saved us from the evils of bayonet lugs though..
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During the assault weapon ban I could of bought a high quality AK47 clone for less then half the price they sell for now..
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Susan Boyle may not be a very good looking woman but she has an angelic voice. *
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Susan Boyle may not be a very good looking woman but she has an angelic voice. “
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