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Comment by leesalminen | Hacker News Reader

The average American in 2008 wasn't setting fire to courthouses. Let's not pretend that far-left extremism is something other than what it actually is.

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Oh and also, nearly killing a US representative with a semiautomatic rifle.

Every rifle is semiautomatic

Not true, here is one of many counterexamples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Model_700

> Every rifle is semiautomatic

This is just incorrect. Bolt action and muzzleloaded rifles are both extremely common and not semiautomatic.

That being said, "semiautomatic" is usually a useless scare-word thrown in by people who have no clue what they're talking about.

My mother believed for the majority of her adult life that “semi-automatic” meant “fully automatic”, as in “squeeze once, all the bullets come out”. It’s incredible that people with little to no knowledge of the mechanics of guns want to regulate exactly that.

Indeed, and that's exactly why it is used that way. It's an intentional weasle-word used by gun control advocates to scare observers.

The current scare-term is "fully semi-automatic".

That is classic, soviet-style whataboutism. Yes, there are some left-wing extremists who have committed terrorist acts in recent years, but no, it is not the same as right-wing extremism. There are no left-wing militias running drills and planning to kidnap governors. Right-wing extremists exist in greater numbers, are more organized, and have been responsible for more violence in recent years than left-wing extremists.

How exactly are you quantifying the amount of violence for which each side is responsible?

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