It turns out we can make our own reality and bully certain media
figures (I can’t use the word journalist) to sanctify it, as did St.
Louis-based hate radio hack Jamie Allman to Fox News host Chris Wallace on
Thursday. Wallace was appearing on KFTK’s Allman in the Morning when
Allman protested that,
“[I]t agitates people … like me and my listeners, who are gun
owners” that the media uses the term “assault weapon.” He added that
“people who are gun owners never call — that’s not any official name of
any weapon out there — an ‘assault weapon.'”
According to wingnuts who approve of lots of innocent people
being gunned down on a regular basis by assault weapons, the term
“assault weapon” is misleading. Yet
according to Phillip Peterson
Gun Digest Buyer’s Guide to Assault Weapons (2008),
The popularly held idea that the term ‘assault weapon’
originated with anti-gun activists is wrong. The term was first adopted
by manufacturers, wholesalers, importers and dealers in the American
firearms industry to stimulate sales of certain firearms that did not
have an appearance that was familiar to many firearms owners. The
manufacturers and gun writers of the day needed a catchy name to
identify this new type of gun.
And Media Matters
pointed out that,
Wingnuts in media have adopted the false National
Rifle Association claim that the term “assault weapon” was invented by
proponents of assault weapons bans in order to arbitrarily single out
certain firearms for further regulation. However, before the gun
industry trade association attempted to rebrand assault weapons as
“modern sporting rifles” in 2009 — a change in terminology also adopted
by the NRA — the gun industry and firearm publications routinely used
the term assault weapon to describe the very military-style
semi-automatic rifles that would be covered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s
assault weapons ban.
[…]
The truth is that military-style semi-automatic rifles were called
assault weapons because that is what gun manufacturers and gun
enthusiasts called them. The term has played a key role in the ongoing
effort of the gun industry to rebrand and market military-style weaponry
to civilians. Now, as legislation supported by a majority of Americans
has been proposed to ban these weapons, the NRA and its gun industry and
media allies are using semantics and terminology arguments to downplay
the dangers of a class of weapons often associated with horrific mass
shootings and law enforcement killings.
But Chris Wallace replied like the docile little Fox News 'personality' that he is:
“[I]f that’s something that ticks people off because it’s so imprecise,
and such a kind of cover word that means nothing, I don’t want to do
that.” He then pledged, “You will not hear the word assault weapon out
of my mouth on Sunday. I may fall back into it later, but on Sunday I
will be more precise”
Take a listen courtesy of
Media Matters for America:
WALLACE: Thank you for the information, because if that’s
something that ticks people off because it’s so imprecise, and such a
kind of cover word that means nothing, I don’t want to do that.
ALLMAN: Yeah it’s almost like it’s an — and again, I’m not accusing
you of this. It’s almost like an editorial description of a gun. And
that’s all I’m saying is that it drives a lot of us crazy when we hear
assault weapon because —
WALLACE: I don’t want you to be driven crazy.
ALLMAN: No, I’m just saying if I can have an impact on a premier journalist like yourself, then I think I’ve made some headway.
WALLACE: Well, OK, no, listen.
ALLMAN: And we all fall into that.
WALLACE: You will not hear the word assault weapon out of my mouth on
Sunday. I may fall back into it later, but on Sunday I will be more
precise.
ALLMAN: That’s good, OK.
Maybe we can just call them “spoons” from now on. It’s much less
threatening. The problem is, these are a class of weapons. They are not
shotguns. They are not hunting rifles of the traditional variety. They
are semi-automatic, can take flash suppressors or muzzle breaks, they
use detachable, high capacity magazines, and have folding or collapsible
stocks.
We have to call them something, don’t we? It is not those who use the term “assault weapon” who are trying to be misleading.
And after all, as pointed out, we leftists didn’t invent the term;
the industry did. The military M-16 is an assault rifle. The AR-15 so
popular these days, and used in the San Bernadino shootings, was a
precursor to the M-16 and was itself
originally developed for the military. Why not call a spade a spade?
And if these things are favored by sportsmen and for home defense, they are also favored by home-grown domestic terrorists.
As CBS News
pointed out Friday,
An AR-15 was used to kill nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon in October.
It was also the weapon used in the murders of 12 people at a Colorado movie theater in 2012.
And an AR-15 was used in the 2012 murders of 20 first graders and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut.
Controversial the term may be, but many terms are controversial and
others that are not, ought to be (pro-life comes glaringly to mind as
part of this discussion), and we cannot make assault weapons go away by
calling them something else. All we can do is sanitize the term in order
to downplay the dangerous nature of these weapons.
Sure, any gun can kill somebody, but see how far you get taking an
old bolt-action rifle into a theater. Even terrifying as a sawed off
shotgun is, you won’t get many shots off before you’re overpowered. The
assault weapon does what the assault weapons is supposed to do. It’s
just that we should not be allowing it to do that against civilians in
our own schools, businesses, and theaters.
