Last week, for instance, an article in the Times said AR-15-style rifles are particularly deadly because they are "fed with box magazines" that "can be swapped out quickly, allowing a gunman to fire more than a hundred rounds in minutes." But that is true of any gun that accepts detachable magazines, including many models that do not qualify as "assault weapons."
Yesterday the Times reported that "military-style rifles" fire "lightweight, high-speed bullets that can cause grievous bone and soft tissue wounds," injuries worse than those typically caused by handguns. As one trauma surgeon explains, "the energy imparted to a human body by a high-velocity weapon is exponentially greater" than the energy imparted by a handgun. But that observation is true of rifles in general; it is not unique to so-called assault weapons.
While the .223-caliber round typically fired by AR-15-style rifles does have a relatively high muzzle velocity, other cartridges, fired by guns that are not considered "assault weapons," equal or surpass it. Furthermore, muzzle velocity is not the only factor in a bullet's lethality; size also matters, and so-called assault weapons fire smaller rounds than many hunting rifles. Both velocity and mass figure into muzzle energy, a measure of a bullet's destructive power. As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh notes, "the .223 rifles that are often labeled 'assault weapons' have a much lower muzzle energy than familiar hunting rifles such as the .30-06."
http://reason.com/blog/2018/03/05/assault-weapon-banners-assert-false-distFacts like this are some of the reasons why when informed gun owners hear the gun-fearers talk about assault rifles, it's difficult not to think they are either uninformed or disingenuous. There is no way to define a so called assault rifle so as to distinguish it from any number of other firearms. The concept seems ridiculous.
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