At Real Clear Politics: AP Stylebook Finally Recognizes AR-15s Aren’t Weapons of War
Dr. John Lott has a new piece at Real Clear Politics.
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The term “assault weapon” is nonsensical. Finally, the Associated Press’s highly influential Stylebook followed by the news media is recognizing that fact. As the AP now acknowledges, the term conveys “little meaning” and is “highly politicized.”
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Politicians will obviously continue calling AR-15s “assault weapons” and “weapons of war,” as President Biden did a few days ago. And many seem to think that “AR” means assault rifle when it stands for ArmaLite rifle, after the company that developed it in the 1950s. But at least some of the media is now recognizing that “AR- or AK-style rifles designed for the civilian market” are fundamentally different than military weapons.
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“The preferred term for a rifle that fires one bullet each time the trigger is pulled, and automatically reloads for a subsequent shot, is a semi-automatic rifle,” according to the AP Stylebook. “An automatic rifle continuously fires rounds if the trigger is depressed and until its ammunition is exhausted. Avoid assault rifle and assault weapon, which are highly politicized terms that generally refer to AR- or AK-style rifles designed for the civilian market, but convey little meaning about the actual functions of the weapon.”
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All this comes as first lady Jill Biden called AR-15s “machine guns” at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Massachusetts on Thursday. House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York announced that next Wednesday the Judiciary Committee will mark up a bill to ban the sale of most rifles.
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he AR-15 and AK-47 are frequently called “military-style weapons.” But the key word is “style” – they are similar to military guns in their cosmetics, not in the way they operate. The guns are almost never the fully automatic machine guns used by the military, but rather semi-automatic versions of those guns.
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The civilian AR-15 uses essentially the same sorts of bullets as small game-hunting rifles. It also fires at the same rapidity (one bullet per pull of the trigger), and does the same damage. Military weapons have machine gun modes whereby the gun will continue firing bullets as long as the trigger is pressed. The civilian version of the AK-47 is similar, though it fires a much larger bullet – .30 inches in diameter, as opposed to the .223 inch rounds used by the Bushmaster. Still, no self-respecting military in the world would use the civilian versions of either of these guns.
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The uninformed may still ask, “Why do people need an AR-15 to kill deer?” “What do you think – deer are wearing Kevlar vests?” Biden joked a few months ago. The answer is simple: It is a hunting rifle. It has just been made to look like a military weapon.
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The .223-inch rounds used by the AR-15 are actually small compared with what is usually used to hunt deer. Many states prohibit using .223-inch bullets out of concern that the animal will suffer from its wounds rather than experiencing a quick death.
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But hunting isn’t the important issue here. Semi-automatic weapons are needed to protect people and save lives. Single-shot rifles that require manual reloading after every round may not do people a lot of good. The first shot may miss, or there may be multiple attackers. As Biden has frequently talked about banning all semi-automatic guns, the one concern about the AP Stylebook update is that it is being changed as part of the push for such a ban.
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Most mass public shootings aren’t carried out with semi-automatic rifles. Fifty-five percent involve only handguns, and only 11% solely involve rifles of any variety.
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It should be little wonder that banning “assault” rifles did very little. Under the 1994-2004 ban, there was no drop in the number of attacks with “assault weapons,” and virtually no change in total mass shootings.
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But President Biden would have people believe otherwise. “When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled,” he claimed. In fact, even studies paid for by the Clinton administration couldn’t find statistically significant changes in the number of attacks.
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Biden’s claim that mass shootings tripled relies on one researcher’s unique definition – a definition that includes fights between drug gangs over turf. But even with that definition, there is no statistically significant change in the number of attacks with assault weapons. Instead, it’s the increase in non-assault weapon shootings that drives the growth in attacks. The percentage of attacks with assault weapons fell once the ban became obsolete – just the opposite of what proponents of the ban would expect.
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It’s good that the Associated Press has taken this step, choosing to be more precise and less alarmist in its language. Let’s hope the news media and gun control advocates take note, but the timing of this change as the Congress considers language to ban most semi-automatic rifles raises questions. We shouldn’t hold our breath that there is going to be a meaningful change in the debate.
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