A look at how the anti- gun fanatics have lied about rifles…
* In 1988, Josh Sugarmann, the founder of a prominent gun control organization, wrote the following about the “
new topic” of “assault weapons:”
[482] [483]
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.
[484]
* Prior to the publication of Sugermann’s 1988 booklet about “assault weapons,” Google Book’s library of books and other publications reveals no results that use this term to describe a semi-automatic gun.
[485]During the 10 years after Sugermann’s booklet was published:
- Google Book shows over 25 results that use the term “assault weapon” to describe a semi-automatic gun, including several state and local laws that ban them.[486] [487] [488] [489][490]
- U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D–OH) sponsored a bill named the “Assault Weapon Control Act of 1989” that sought to ban certain semi-automatic weapons but did not pass.[491] [492]
- U.S. Congressmen Jack Brooks (D–TX) sponsored a 1994 bill—which passed into law—banning the manufacture, transfer, or possession of a “semiautomatic assault weapon” for the next 10 years unless it was legally owned prior to the law’s enactment.[493] [494] [495]
* A 2013 New York Times article alleges “it was the gun industry” that first adopted the term “assault weapon” to increase civilian rifle sales.
[496] As evidence of this, the Times cites the cover of a 1981 edition of Guns & Ammo magazine with a headline that reads, “The New Breed of Assault Rifle.”
[497] With regard to that claim:
- the magazine repeatedly distinguishes these new weapons from actual assaultrifles by using phrases like “military look-alikes,” “semi-auto sporters,” and “military-type semi-automatic sporting rifles.”[498]
- the magazine never uses the term “assault weapon.”
- the New York Public Library Writer’s Guide to Style and Usage and various journalism guidebooks instruct reporters to “use jargon only when necessary and define it carefully” when writing for the general public.[499] [500] [501] [502]
- Guns & Ammo is a magazine for gun enthusiasts and professionals, not the general public.[503]
* To further support its contention that the gun industry first adopted the term “assault weapon” to describe semi-automatic weapons, the Times quotes:
- an unsupported claim from a gun dealer who wrote a book published in 2008 that he titled The Gun Digest Buyer’s Guide to Assault Weapons.[504] This was two decades after anti-gun activists began using the phrase “assault weapons.”[505]
- a snippet from a 1984 advertisement promoting a new magazine named GA Assault Firearms that would be “full of the hottest hardware available today.”[506] The portion of the ad not quoted by the Times states that the magazine will cover “battle rifles, shotguns and assault rifles from the armies of the world.” It adds: “And if you are interested in survival tactics and personal defense, we’ll give you a look at the newest civilianized versions of the semi-auto submachine gun.”[507]
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