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Comment by jff | Hacker News Reader

> (obscured by the upper receiver of the assault weapon)

You mean the stock of the semi-automatic rifle which happens to be scary and black?

Assault weapon is colloquially defined as a firearm with a detachable magazine and a pistol grip. I've seen this definition in common use going back 30 years, whether or not it helps anyone's political ideals.

A thorough discussion of the definition and it's history can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon

>Assault weapon is colloquially defined as a firearm with a detachable magazine and a pistol grip.

Rifle. Not firearm. Otherwise every pistol that isn't a muzzle/breech loader or revolver is an 'assault weapon', which is makes the distinction even more functionally useless.

A rifle is a firearm.

So is a Glock pistol, which obviously isn't supposed to fall into the 'assault weapons' category that has been constructed.

But since the construction is entirely political, they actually have fallen in the category, since the majority of them have a standard magazine capacity > 10 rounds, or simply detachable magazines.

Maybe not legally in any part of the US unless Glock sells models with threaded barrels (vs. their factory aftermarket ones), but I don't doubt rhetorically.

Isn't a handgun just a gun made to make assaulting another human easier?

Not at all. They're akin to a first aid kit, not what you'd choose to have if you know you're going into combat, but something you can much more often have with you because of their compactness and much lighter weight. More than 10 million Americans have concealed carry licenses, with their numbers growing by more than a million a year, and we demonstrably aren't carrying them "to make assaulting another human easier", unless you'd modify that as "counter-assaulting".

In the most dire situation they're a tool in a crisis to allow you to get to your long gun.

More generally, "assault weapon" a long time ago meant things like track mounted artillery designed for offensive roles, and as noted by others was more recently coined and defined by US gun grabbers as a purely political term.

I see you didn't like my zinger. I have a pistol permit, but I don't see any need to carry a gun. It's just not something I worry about.

Let's not forget these people had every intention to use those weapons against humans. This isn't some guns club hanging out.

Arguably, they intended to use them to defend themselves if they were attacked. (By humans, yes.) They were not hunting people down and assaulting them.

That being said, they were looking to defend themselves while illegally occupying a federal facility... but the particulars of that situation don't really reflect on the choice of weapon.

I prefer to call mine an anti-assault weapon. I don't have any need or plans to assault anyone, but I may have a need to defend against someone who'd like to assault me.

> They were not hunting people down and assaulting them.

Not with the guns, and not physically, much. But they most certainly were threatening people, according to the FBI complaint against them:

"The person with Ritzheimer told the woman he knows what kind of car she drives and he was going to follow her home and burn her house down, according to the complaint."

You don't have to assault someone for your weapon to become an "assault weapon". A semi-auto pistol grip rifle is an assault weapon. Especially when the clear purpose of them having these weapons are to be used in combat.

No it is not a defense to say that they are defending themselves. These people illegally encroached property that was not theirs.

Right.

Carrying a firearm = self defense. Fine. Someone might attack you, you can defend yourself.

Occupying land that is not yours = protest action. Fine. You'll probably get arrested or at least sent on your way, but fine.

Occupying the land AND carrying a weapon to defend yourself isn't just like "oh man, if someone tries to rob me during my protest operation, I'll be able to defend myself!" No, it's tacitly admitting that people are going to come and arrest you, and you expect to put up a violent fight.

Nobody's under any illusion that the police are going to march in there, put handcuffs on everyone, and walk out.

> Arguably, they intended to use them to defend themselves if they were attacked. (By humans, yes.) They were not hunting people down and assaulting them.

Then again they overtly sought to institute their own court system, and overtly sought to subject government officials to trial for various crimes by that court system, and issued threats for non-cooperation with that effort, so its not at all clear that the end game, were they not arrested before that escalated further, wasn't "hunting down people and assaulting them".

That's a lot of speculation. And also immaterial to the point.

> That's a lot of speculation.

The only speculation is that they would, if not constrained by intervening events, carry out their overt threats in support of their overt goals. That's not a lot of speculation at all.

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