What is an assault weapon?

An assault weapon is any weapon used to commit assault. If could be a car, a screwdriver, or a gun. In the US there is no legal definition of an "assault weapon." (Assault is a behavior.)

Here is a story about an assault hammer.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/alaska/hammerp...

I'm going to assume that some of your answerers like Mog are simply ignorant about firearms and deluded by some of the more extreme members of the anti-gun crowd.

An "assault RIFLE" is a select-fire (capable of either full auto or burst fire) rifle with a detachable magazine using an intermediate-strength cartridge. This marks a difference from a "battle rifle" which typically uses a more powerful cartridge. I've been looking around, and so far as I've been able to tell, there may have been one instance (Ohio, 1992) in which an assault rifle was used in crime in the US.

On the other hand, an "assault weapon" is a term that seems to have a Humptey-Dumptey definition of whatever its user wants it to mean. I've been shooting for over a half century, and I still don't know what people are talking about when they use the term. It seems popular for anti-gun people to use it in an obfuscatory manner to make the naive think they're functionally different from other firearms and scare the Bejeezus out of them. Others seem to consider it a term for weapons that somehow have cosmetic similarities to some military firearms, though which military firearms is of course open to question. I've often wondered if a reproduction of a Charleville or a Brown Bess musket qualifies. In personal conversations, I generally ask for specifics. When I see polls on topics like "Should assault weapons be restricted?" I just discount the numbers, since there's no way to know what each person polled had in mind.

If you look up the definition of an assault weapon, you will find all kinds of answers, depending on who is telling you.

In my view, an assault weapon is any weapon used in an assault, but who am I to say.

This whole kick they are on is just another typical liberal ploy to get what they always have wanted.

I personally have no dog in the hunt, but banning anything right now is just purely political.

It would have made very little or no difference since the perpetrator would have just used something else. The kid in California a week ago used a shot gun, Abby Gifford was shot with a pistol.

It is the crazy culture that is the problem. No one is doing anything about that, unless you consider Obama asking doctors to turn in patients. That will work well until people realize they cannot talk to their doctor about these issues.

Don't know the answer, but to me, taking guns away from Americans who want to defend themselves makes no sense.

If there were no guns, or few guns, maybe a ban would make sense, but since every criminal worth his salt has one, then odds need to be even.

The National Firearms Act of 1934 defined assault weapons as one that had either a lug where one could attach a bayonet or a flash suppressor.

Today people think that anything capable of firing as a semi-automatic method should be considered in the same manner. That would mean every weapon except a bolt action rifle or a single action revolver.

Any thing can be used to assault a person, you might do it with your bare hands, your car, a gun, knife or a bag of marshmallows. Of course since you mentioned it, you can also assault them verbally.

A term invented by Leftists to make some guns seem worse than others simply based on appearance, not functionality. For example, an AR-15 with a pistol grip is treated differently than the same rifle with a traditional stock.

An assault weapon is something that can be used to hurt people.

An assault rifle is a semi-auto rifle that is made to shoot large numbers of bullets with no recoil and very little heat build-up in the barrell, so it can be fired hundreds of times without jamming. They are made for the purpose of obliterating humans on a large scale in combat.

There is no reason for a civilian to own one, either for self-defense or for hunting

A standart military rifle (Usually they are (capable) full auto or selective fire).

But for example a M16 in (only) semi auto mode is allso considered an assault rifle because of the military calibre and the 30 round mag.

A Name.

Unless it is "written-down" somewhere that ANY "NOT Fully-Automatic," "Single-Shot" item that launches "projectiles," WITH a Magazine -- is an "Assault Weapon" (??)

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There are different definitions, but generally it's a weapon that can fire multiple rounds without reloading.