You make a good point about the danger of falling into the propaganda traps laid by our enemies. Which is why I try to be careful when referring to this issue as [the ban on so-called "assault-weapons"].

I see too many people tying themselves into knots when trying to explain to the public what the real issue is. A simple lie has to be fought with a complicated truth. That is the real genius of the anti-gun conspiracy when it comes to this issue.

How can one boil down something so complicated that it can fit into a simple ‘sound-bite’? Something like…

“The ban on so-called “assault-weapons” is a bait and switch con-job. The anti-gunners con the public they are going after machine guns when they are really going after everybody’s target rifles.”

… This is obviously an oversimplification of the issue, but we have got to get better shooting down the propaganda of our enemies.

As for what to call semi-auto firearms, I prefer to stay away from the word ‘auto’ in any variation. i think we should adapt the Winchester model 1907 self-loading rifle as our symbol and term of art. What the anti-gunners are really after is everyone’s self-loading rifle, and not the “assault-weapon” bogeyman.

But we’d make more headway if we’d quit refering to semiauto firearms as “assault weapons.”

What is the sense in that?

You can call a turd a bon bon, but it’s still a turd and you’d still be incorrect.

Clayton, i have a sneaking suspicion that you are going to be heavily involved in many pro-gun efforts in the next 4-8 years… please make sure that if you need help, you ask for it.

The only help that I need at the moment is people interested in funding a film that will lure in a lot of people that don’t necessarily agree with us–and when they leave, many of them will have an entirely new view of the importance of an armed population, and resistance to arbitrary ggovernment. It involves a poorly known incident in which hundreds of professors and college students armed with rifles and handguns surrounded a hotel, and demanded that federal marshals release a runaway slave.

Today … those that wish to infringe our right to arms (like Chicago mayor Daley) have no such honor.

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/DaleyGuns

Daley With New Gun Proposal
Outraged by last week’s murders of three teens on the Southeast side, Mayor Daley today will unveil new gun measures aimed at curbing the flow of automatic weapons into the hands of children.

We are led to believe that there exists a flow of automatic rifles into the hands of children, and no measures to curb such a flow? With all these auto guns flowing around … why do those Title III dealers want to charge over $15,000 for a lousy $500 AK?

I believe the California legislature tried to pass a ban on so-called “assault-weapons” in 1988, but it went nowhere. I remember reading a cutesy newspaper story that described it as ‘Now that California has banned toys that look like guns, it will try to ban guns that look like toys’.

The same legislation was re-introduced in 1989 and probably would have suffered the same fate as the earlier effort. But then Purdy committed his mad act of mass murder and suicide at a California school. The press poured gasoline on the political fire and powered the vote to a very slim margin of victory in the California Assembly where opposition was strongest (1 or 2 vote margin, I think). Newspaper editorials ran 90% in favor of the ban and letters to the editor ran 90% against.

Right you are. The bill was aimed at disarming gang members in Oakland and Los Angeles, and included at least one gun that did not exist. They passed it through the Assembly (California’s lower house) by one vote–and the price of getting that one Republican to vote for it was to remove the Ruger Mini-14 from the list. (The legislator they were trying to turn owned one of those.)

I can still vividly recall that Newsweek “Machine Gun USA” cover story back in 1985. It featured rifles such as the Ruger Mini-14 and the Colt AR15 from what I can recall, and right away I knew this reporting was factually-challenged when it made the claims of the “relative ease” that it would be to convert the Ruger Mini-14 and Colt AR15 rifles to select fire.

I was in the military back when I first saw this Newsweek cover story, and even then I could tell that my service-issue M16A1 rifle had some different internal parts from those of the Colt AR15 sporter model, and that no amount of “filing” would easily change an AR15 into the M16. As for the Ruger Mini-14, the reality is that converting it into a select-fire AC556 is even a bigger chore, even for an experienced gunsmith, let alone some street corner crack dealer from that era.

What I don’t recall from back in 1985 is the NRA doing much of anything to counter the disinformation campaign that Newsweek had foisted upon the American public about these semi-automatic rifles on the market for civilians, except maybe reporting on it in the pages of its own “American Rifleman” magazine. I also don’t recall from back in 1985 any these gun grabber types using the pejorative term “assault weapon” yet.