You can’t read a newspaper, watch a television news program or even listen to President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris give a speech without hearing at least a mention of “assault weapons.” To listen to all the talk from the anti-gun side of the Second Amendment debate, you’d think nearly every American owns an evil “military-grade” rifle and uses it for some nefarious means, like the wholesale slaughter of children or other innocents just for the fun of it.

And you’d be wrong.

All About the AR-15: America’s Rifle

Let’s clear the air a bit and take a look at the “assault weapon” issue. If you’re wondering why we are using quotation marks around “assault weapon,” it’s because what the anti-gun, anti-freedom crowd calls “assault weapons” simply are not real assault weapons. As NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action points out in a fact sheet on the topic, the origin of “assault weapon” stems from the term “assault rifle,” which the U.S. Army defines explicitly as a selective-fire rifle chambered for a cartridge of intermediate power.

Thus, the term “assault rifle” only applies to automatic firearms, not the semi-automatic firearms that gun control advocates are focused on banning today. In fact, the term “assault weapon” as used by the anti-gun crowd is a made-up term in order to push forward their goal of banning millions of rifles. They use “assault weapon” and “assault rifle” interchangeably, and foist those monikers on common semi-automatic rifles owned by millions of Americans for a variety of lawful purposes including sport shooting, hunting, competition and self-defense. In fact, even Wikipedia admits that “assault weapon” is a political term. 

The Brady Bunch

Handgun Control, Inc., now the Brady Campaign, first used the term “assault weapon” for AR-15-style rifles way back in 1984 in reference to a rifle in a newspaper advertisement. Four years later, the term became a household word after Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center spelled out to gun-ban advocates a way to turn the public tide in their favor.

“The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons,” Sugarmann wrote.

Since it’s hard for anti-gun advocates to even define an “assault weapon,” most such bans, including the federal ban that ran from 1994 to 2004, outlawed guns based on a number of cosmetic features. Most bans and proposed bans include language like: Any semi-automatic rifle that can use a detachable magazine and has any one (or two) of the following features. They then list things like pistol grips, a flash suppressor, a barrel shroud, an extendable stock and other features that don’t make a rifle any more, or less, “deadly.” 

Those “Weapons of War”

Thus, when we hear the oft-repeated “weapons of war” description of AR-15s and similar rifles, we’re simply hearing more psychobabble. No countries send their troops to battle with semi-automatic firearms. They’d be under gunned no matter what kind of war they were fighting.

Most gun-ban advocates today likely don’t remember Sugarmann’s suggestion that common semi-autos could be banned because of their “menacing looks,” or even remember Sugarmann, for that matter. What they are basing their belief on is the constant drumbeat by the so-called “mainstream” media to ban these rifles.

Despite all the constant hype for the past couple of decades, however, a Monmouth poll from last year still found that nearly half of Americans—49%—opposed a federal ban on so-called “assault weapons. If the other 51% knew the truth about these rifles instead of believing the media, they might actually change their minds on the matter. Here are a few real facts about these guns.

Semi-Automatics, Actually

What most refer to as “assault weapons” are nothing more than common semi-automatic rifles that fire one round with each pull of the trigger, just like semi-auto rifles that don’t look so evil. The most common type is the AR-15, which ban proponents claim stands for “Assault Rifle 15,” but really is just the name designated by the initial maker, Armalite (thus Armalite Rifle).

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry trade association, calls these rifles “modern sporting rifles (MSRs),” a far more accurate name than “assault weapons.” And according to the NSSF, some 24.4 million MSRs—AR-15-style rifles and AK-style rifles—have been produced in the United States since 1990 for the civilian market. 

That makes MSRs the most popular selling firearm in the country. In fact, to put it into perspective, there are more MSRs in circulation today than there are Ford F-150 trucks on the road!

Millions of Americans Can’t Be Wrong

The millions of lawful Americans that own such firearms use them for a multitude of purposes, ranging from plinking and hunting to competition and self-defense. What most people likely wouldn’t expect, based on the constant media blather, is these “evil” guns are seldom used in criminal activities. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), very, very few murders—typically less than 5% annually—are committed with rifles of any kind. And modern semi-auto rifles are just a small subset of all rifles. In fact, more people are killed by fists and knives than rifles every year. 

In the end, the whole “assault weapon” issue is a made-up controversy based on the desires of some Americans to infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of others. And the millions of Americans who own AR-15-style and other modern semi-autos are set to continue the fight to protect their right of gun ownership.