imported post
SGT Jensen wrote:
Sheriff wrote:
I have never understood the logic behind this. Back during the Assault Weapon Ban, a man couldn't buy an AR15. But he could pay the tax stamp and purchase a full auto M16.
:question::question: Now I am confused...
I bought a Bushmaster XM-15 ES2 in 1999, legally from a dealer, right in the middle of the assualt weapons ban. It came with a 10 round magazine, no bayonet lug, and the muzzle brake was not threaded on, but pinned on so it could not be removed.
I thought the ban only made these trivial items unlawful, not the whole rifle.
You're correct, but that's not what Sheriff was referring to.
The legal reality Sheriff was referring to still exists in California, where one of our odious gun laws is an AWB which virtually mirrors the defunct federal legislation.
In short, the proscription of certain features only applied to
semi-automatic weapons. Once a fully automatic receiver has been lawfully procured, it may possess features otherwise proscribed to semi-automatic "assault weapons" since the AWB doesn't apply. (This remains true in California, which doesn't have a prohibition of automatic weapons.)
Incidentally, while a common rhetorical recourse is the factually accurate assertion that "Assault Weapon" as used is a misnomer, many of the folks who most frequently rely on this resort are unable to properly articulate its reasoning. An "Assault Rifle", properly defined in the military sense, is a
select-fire, intermediate-caliber, medium-framed rifle. The legislative jargon "Assault Weapon", on the other hand, while clearly intending to invoke a fear-eliciting connection to ever-so-deadly military weapons, factually applies only to
semi-automatic weapons -- which are certainly "weapons" and "rifles", but definitionally not "assault"
anything -- thus rendering the term inherently self-contradictory and concomitantly invalid.
