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Comment by nathanm412 | Hacker News Reader

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

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>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.

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