Assault weapons by federal definition are semi-auto.
There is no Federal definition. There WAS a Federal definition, under which the following 7.62x39mm AK was NOT an "assault weapon":
...but a Ruger mini-14 with a screw-on flash suppressor arguably was:
...but that definition expired in September, 2004, and no longer exists in Federal law.
(I say "arguably" because under the 1994 law, a mini-14
sans folding stock that violated the 2-features rule was simultaneously classified as an "assault weapon" and "particularly suitable for sporting purposes", but the features count was assumed to take precedence over the red-herring "sporting guns" list, hence mini-14's were not sold in that configuration during the quasi-ban.)
Also, any semiautomatic rifle with a detachable magazine (regardless of features) would be an "assault weapon" if it was marketed by the manufacturer under any of 19 banned names, many of which were red herrings. Changing the name to a non-banned name removed the "assault weapon" status as long as the gun passed the features test.
The former Federal definition no longer exists at the Federal level. A few states copied it, but state definitions of "assault weapon" are widely divergent. There is a California definition, a Massachusetts/New York definition, a Maryland definition, a New Jersey definition, an Ohio definition, and a Virginia definition, under which a particular rifle may be an "assault weapon" or specifically NOT an "assault weapon" depending on which borders it crosses.
Assault rifles by military definition are full auto.
Select-fire, specifically.
Also the term "assault weapon" was used in gun magazines for years before the federal government codified the term.
But not before the
gun control lobby popularized the term in the mass media.
The Violence Policy Center has certainly claimed that the civilian gun industry and gun media popularized the term "assault weapon" prior to 1988, but I don't think so, and it *certainly* was not in widespread use. The only cite I can find for it is a rather lame pro-gun whitepaper (Tartaro,
"The Great Assault Weapon Hoax", 1995), written years
after Sugarmann's 1988 screed
"Assault Weapons and Accessories in America" that started the whole "assault weapon" fraud. I debated this issue at length on Democratic Underground a while back, when a gun control advocated cited Tartaro to try to make the same point you are, and I believe that claim to be highly suspect.
Not only does Tartaro fail to cite even
one instance of a pre-Sugarmann use of the term "assault weapon" in gun marketing, but he doesn't come across as particularly well informed on modern guns overall, IMO.
Here's Tartaro's claim:
The idea of calling semi-automatic versions of military small arms "'assault weapons" did not originate with either anti-gun activists, media or politicians. The term "assault weapon" was first corrupted by importers, manufacturers, wholesalers and dealers in the American firearms industry to stimulate sales of selected "exotica"--firearms which did not have a traditional appearance.(10)
And here is Tartaro's
sole citation for that claim:
(10) See SHOTGUN NEWS and other firearms publications beginning in the early 1980s.
Shotgun News, at that time, was a tabloid-format weekly of mostly classified ads posted by individual gunsmiths/collectors or mom-and-pop businesses---and he can't even seem to cite an instance ("see half a decade's worth of WEEKLY classified ads, or maybe some other magazine, but trust me on this"). Maybe he recollected accurately, and maybe he didn't, but it looks like he pulled the citation out of his head, and if he's a lawyer you'd think he'd own a copy of the MLA Style Guide.
Tartaro wrote that article in 1995; Josh Sugarmann had been popularizing the term in the pro-bans literature for years by that point. Color me skeptical. If you have pre-1988 citations of widespread use of "assault weapon" in the gun media, I'd love to see it.
Another passage from Tartaro flatly contradicts much of what he implied in the first cite:
First, the term "assault weapon" is erroneously applied. Assault weapons are by military procurement definition "selective, fire (full auto continuous or burst fire plus autoloading) arms of sub caliber." Since fully automatic and selective firearms have been severely restricted, taxed and licensed---and owners screened by local and federal law enforcement---since 1934, real assault weapons have been strictly regulated by federal as well as state laws for sixty years. The firearms which are targeted by recent laws and current legislative proposals are mostly semi-automatic (requiring a single trigger pull for each shot) or, in the case of the Street-Sweeper type shotgun, functional revolvers. They are indistinguishable in operation from other semi-automatic firearms used for self-defense, pest and vermin control, sport hunting and recreational shooting since the turn of the century.
He here applies the term "assault weapon" to NFA Title 2 restricted full autos (contradicting the other cite); the National Firearms Act restricts assault rifles, not "assault weapons." He also conflates the term "assault weapon" with "assault rifle" (Sturmgehwer); the definition he cites is the DOD definition of assault rifle, not "assault weapon."
I also see this passage that suggests Tartaro was way out of his depth when he wrote that:
The ballistic data for the .30-06 and M1 carbine cartridges, the .45 ACP used in World War II and Korea, and the .308 (7.62 X 39) M-14 individual infantry arm used by some units in Vietnam are substantially more powerful than the 5.56mm (.223) U.S. small arms cartridge of the M16 or 5.45 X 39mm Soviet Russian cartridge fired in current AK47 military small arms and their semi-automatic civilian derivatives.
Based on that paragraph, I think it's pretty obvious that the author was unfamiliar at that time with the guns and calibers under discussion.
Finally, it was
indisputably Sugarmann's 1988 pamphlet and subsequent rehashing by the gun control lobby that popularized the term "assault weapon" in the popular media, gun media, and the general vernacular in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is *possible* that Sugarmann lifted it from an obscure antecedent, but I have never seen any such antecedents cited. I had personally never heard it until it was used by the proponents of a ban circa 1989. It's also indisputable that today, "assault weapon" is a term used to demonize popular civilian rifles with handgrips that stick out, or firearms that exceed 10 (or sometimes 5) rounds capacity, without any fixed definition whatsoever.
Once the term entered the media, you can find occasional gun writers, gun owners, and gun sellers using the term "assault weapon", but I have never seen any that predate Sugarmann 1988, and if there were then they were never widespread. "Assault rifle" (in the DoD sense) yes; "assault weapon", no.
Is it really just esthetics?
Yes. Here's a 188-series Ruger mini-14 Ranch Rifle, circa 1989 (my first rifle, actually):
With the top stock, it was protected as "particularly suitable for sporting purposes" under the 1994 Federal AWB and is legal in California.
With the middle stock, it was protected as "particularly suitable for sporting purposes" under the 1994 Federal AWB but is banned as an "assault weapon" in California.
With the bottom stock, it was classified as an "assault weapon" under the 1994 Federal AWB, so new-production rifles could not be equipped with those stocks between 9/1994 and 9/2004. The stocks were legal to purchase, though, and I don't think anyone was ever prosecuted for "constructive possession" or for installing ban-era folders on ban-era guns. Still, I bought the middle stock in 1994 and waited till 2004 to buy the bottom one.
