Marion P. Hammer: What exactly is an ‘assault weapon’?

“Assault weapon” is manufactured term designed to fool honest people. The term is a play on words.

In fact, according to a direct quote from Josh Sugarmann of the anti-gun organization called the Violence Policy Center:

"The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons-anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun-can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons."

Technically, an “assault weapon” is a tool, an implement, or anything that is used as a weapon to assault another person or object.

If you have ever read police reports, you have seen the term used to describe anything that has been used as a weapon.  For example: “the assault weapon was a baseball bat; the assault weapon was a kitchen knife; the assault weapon was fireplace poker; the assault weapon was table lamp.”

In the category or field of firearms and ammunition there is no such thing as an “assault weapon.”  It is a term for which there is no specific definition. That is intentional.  The term provides gun prohibitionists with a means to define it to mean whatever they want to ban at the time.

In a U.S. Supreme Court case, Justice Clarence Thomas explained the term by citing a previous case: 

“Prior to 1989, the term “assault weapon” did not exist in the lexicon of firearms. It is a political term, developed by anti-gun publicists to expand the category of “assault RIFLES” so as to allow an attack on as many additional firearms as possible on the basis of undefined ’evil’ appearance”. See Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914, 1001 n. 16 (2000).

All semiautomatic firearms are functionally identical. It is the same technology that has been used for well over 135 years.  It is reported that an Australian named Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher produced the first successful design for a semi-automatic rifle in 1885.

If you compare a rifle or shotgun to a person, a person is born naked, without clothes. That person must be dressed.  The clothes put on that person influences how it looks to the average person. It can be a tuxedo, a clown suit, a snow suit, a swimsuit or any manner of clothing. How the person is dressed most often determines what you think of the person, but the fact remains – it is the same identical person no matter how it is dressed.

A rifle or shotgun is like a person. You can take the gun – the mechanism (barrel, receiver, and trigger assembly) – out of a beautiful, traditional, magnificent grain, shiny wood stock and put it in an ugly black, plastic, adjustable stock, with a pistol grip, and a barrel shroud and it is still the exact same rifle or shotgun.  It fires the same.  The only difference is the way it looks.

This is no different from a lady in an elegant dress, nylon stockings, Christian Louboutin high heel shoes and some expensive jewelry who changes clothes into blue jeans, a sweatshirt, Nike athletic shoes and a Timex watch. It is the same person.  The only difference is the way she looks.

You might take an expensive rifle or shotgun in a traditional wood stock to a gun show to show it off, but you don’t want to take it to the woods hunting on a cold wet rainy day.

You have been willfully and intentionally deceived on the assault weapons issue.  You should be angry that gun ban organizers think you are stupid enough to fall for their trickery.

Marion P. Hammer is a former president of the National Rifle Association and is currently the executive director of Unified Sportsmen of Florida.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Marion P. Hammer: What exactly is an ‘assault weapon’?