Kostas Moros
Associate Attorney at Michel & Associates Los Angeles
Represents California Rifle & Pistol Association

Yes, “assault rifle” has an actual meaning while “assault weapon” was more of a political invention (though there is some history of the gun community using the term before that).

But getting hung up on terminology is an unconvincing exercise. It’s also why I stopped caring

about correcting “clip” when someone means “magazine” (except when that person earnestly wants to learn) because it is beside the point.

Instead, our position should be that all semiautomatic* small arms should be legal to own, regardless of what grips or attachments or  magazines come with them and regardless of what term, political or otherwise, is used to describe them. I don’t care if you call them a “weapon of war”. Good. The Second Amendment was indisputably meant to protect such small arms most of all, as the historical record proves.

I have to admit I roll my eyes when I hear “modern sporting rifle”.

Just say semiautomatic rifle. It’s useful for sport yes, but also personal defense, hunting, and of course, the core purpose of 2A – opposing tyranny. Own it. They are going to hate us either way. 

19th century texts show us that access to “weapons of war” was seen as the core purpose of the 2A, even towards the end of the century when revolvers and lever-action rifles proliferated, which were orders of magnitude more capable than their predecessors.

Even those of the era that thought small weapons could be restricted nevertheless saw the 2A as protecting access to the arms of modern warfare.

This is a great intellectually honest video about the AR15.

And for what I mean by the use of the term “assault weapon” among the gun community, there are a few examples. This is from 1986.