It was a parody of the gunhuggers’ standard nitpicking response to anyone calling for gun control. “You used a wrong term so your opinion is worthless.”
Technically, it’s only a rifle if it has a rifled (internally grooved) barrel, which today describes most firearms apart from shotguns.
This is the gaping hole in all gun control opponents’ arguments. That’s why they studiously avoid talking about other countries or try to make claims about American exceptionalism. Making the problem seem unsolvable is their only real defence, and every other country in the world not having this problem is a pretty huge hole in said argument.
Remarkable that crimes like the 1929 St Valentines Day Massacre (where 7 Chicago gangsters were killed) led to a public outcry and the National Firearms Act (supported by the NRA!) that essentially banned Tommy Guns, but countless mass shootings that have killed many schoolchildren hasn’t turned the vast majority of the public against the sale of the assault rifles that so many of them are perpetrated with.
And nobody would call a 105mm cannon on a M60 tank a rifle, even though it is rifled.
…and everyone calls the shooty parts of pre-20th century tallships “cannons” even though technically they are “guns” in a ship and “cannons” when in a fort. Yet everyone knows what we all mean.
That’s the relevant bit.
Can’t refer to them foreign laws for 'murica unless you are reaching back centuries to deny women healthcare
Not true. The vast majority of the public supports gun control. It just hasn’t moved politicians to support gun control.
I’m specifically referring to the results of the survey in the linked article about assault rifles. Depending on how the question is asked somewhere between 47-61% of folks think that assault rifles should be banned from manufacture, sales and possession. 61% would be a majority but I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as “the vast majority.” Which is pretty sad.
Those are both examples of questions constructed to get negative or at least uncertain responses. When the question is simply worded, such as “do you support increased gun control laws” the results are more like 90%+ in favor.
But “increased gun control laws” means very different things to different people. For some folks that means closing minor loopholes here or there. I’m specifically interested in getting the damn things banned.
My point stands that both of these questions are designed to get negative responses, and still got 40-60%+ approval.
Arguing about whether someone is using technically-correct terminology to name a weapon that is designed specifically for the purpose of killing with ease and at scale is specifically an attempt to force the conversation into angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin pedantry and irrelevancy, while deflecting attention from the really important fact that there are thousands of these weapons in the possession of thousands of people, it’s trivially easy to obtain one, and that any of those owning one could at any time decide that turning their fellow citizens into red mist is how they’ll deal with their personal rage and frustration – and that there is right now exactly jack squat being done, or that can be done.
That is what is important. Not the fucking words.
There are much more specific things that have been asked that have 90% support though. Such as requiring background checks, which recently polled at 92% according to Colbert.
The point is even the most basic things that essentially all of America agrees on won’t be implemented because of corruption. It’s the same with abortion. The vast majority of Americans agree on many specifics, such as in the cases of rape and incest. Yet even those will not be acted upon because the government is corrupt and no longer representative. America is not, at present, a functioning democracy as far as one can tell from the outside.
We changed the definition.
So it’s a weapon and it can be semi-automatic, but you’re arguing it’s technically not a semi-automatic weapon because it can be more deadly. And this invalidates a poll where people don’t want them because…?
Well said.
A sentence worthy of Mr. Fish!
Guilty as charged (looks at model of HMS Victory)
The victims don’t tend to give as much of a fuck about that as the gun owners do.
