A new study led by epidemiologists at Brown University found that among firearm owners, less safe storage was associated with higher blood lead levels in children.
My argument is that quibbling about definitions only works when we’re talking about strict legal definitions, and the thing with the law is that the definitions are whatever the lawmakers want them to be. As a result, the legal definitions depend on context and place (such that an American legal definition would not apply in Canada or France or India), so any global discussion of guns should stay away from legal definitions.
There’s a whole world of firearms that are legally classified by the ATF as pistols, but that are visually, ergonomically, and tactically indistinguishable from submachineguns that happen to fire semiautomatic, complete with a brace and where adding a foregrip might change the legal status. That’s all I was referring to with my pistol comment: the legal definitions have diverged from common understanding of what types of firearms fall into which types of categories.
You can go out and complain that the word assault rifle should only apply to automatic/burst/select fire rifles, but that’s not what anyone else means when they describe assault rifles in a colloquial sense. If you’re talking the strict legal definition, well, the 1994 law had a strict legal definition of assault weapons covering semiautos, too.
So my original point is simple: interjecting into a conversation about guns in a colloquial and cultural discussion, and insisting on the WWII military definition of assault rifle is out of place, especially when plenty of automatic weapons would not qualify under that definition. This discussion wasn’t the place for you to make that argument about definitions.
My argument is that quibbling about definitions only works when we’re talking about strict legal definitions, and the thing with the law is that the definitions are whatever the lawmakers want them to be. As a result, the legal definitions depend on context and place (such that an American legal definition would not apply in Canada or France or India), so any global discussion of guns should stay away from legal definitions.
There’s a whole world of firearms that are legally classified by the ATF as pistols, but that are visually, ergonomically, and tactically indistinguishable from submachineguns that happen to fire semiautomatic, complete with a brace and where adding a foregrip might change the legal status. That’s all I was referring to with my pistol comment: the legal definitions have diverged from common understanding of what types of firearms fall into which types of categories.
You can go out and complain that the word assault rifle should only apply to automatic/burst/select fire rifles, but that’s not what anyone else means when they describe assault rifles in a colloquial sense. If you’re talking the strict legal definition, well, the 1994 law had a strict legal definition of assault weapons covering semiautos, too.
So my original point is simple: interjecting into a conversation about guns in a colloquial and cultural discussion, and insisting on the WWII military definition of assault rifle is out of place, especially when plenty of automatic weapons would not qualify under that definition. This discussion wasn’t the place for you to make that argument about definitions.