Correcting media myths on guns

Timothy Carney at the Washington Examiner clears up some of the media-spread confusion about “assault weapons,” “assault rifles,” and “semiautomatic weapons.” A sample:

Again, “semiautomatic” mostly means “not automatic.” You pull the trigger on a semiauto gun like an AR-15, and one bullet comes out. You pull it again, and another bullet comes out. Unlike a single-shot gun, you don’t need to cock it or load it after each shot.

And semiauto is the norm. As Al Tompkins at Poynter puts it:

The use of the phrase semi-automatic when talking about guns is like using the phrase “gasoline cars.”

Using this term is almost useless, unless you’re talking about to outlawing most handguns that are used today.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 19, 2012 11:03 AM | Send