Re: Australian Gun Control ( Was Re: the virgininauniversity massacre)
On Apr 18, 2007, at 12:22 AM, Jordan Hayes wrote:
Do you mean the debate about what exactly is an ‘assault rifle’ …?
I know this is an obsession of yours, but I’m not sure why. I’m
guessing that most people use it to describe a weapon that’s more
military than something that would normally be used for hunting -
i.e., something designed to kill people in some quantity, though not
as many as a machine gun.
Wikipedia has no prob with what appears to be a rigorous definition -
could you tell us what’s wrong with this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
An assault rifle is a selective fire rifle or carbine firing
ammunition with muzzle energies intermediate between those typical of
pistol and battle rifle ammunition. Assault rifles are categorized
between light machine guns, intended more for sustained automatic
fire in a support role, and submachine guns, which fire a handgun
cartridge rather than a rifle cartridge. Assault rifles are the
standard small arms in most modern armies, having largely replaced or
supplemented larger, more powerful battle rifles, such as the World
War II-era M1 Garand and Tokarev SVT. Examples of assault rifles
include the M16 rifle and the AK-47. Semi-automatic rifles, including
commercial versions of the AR-15, and “automatic” rifles limited to
firing single shots are not assault rifles as they are not selective
fire. Belt-fed weapons or rifles with very limited capacity fixed
magazines are also generally not considered assault rifles.
The term assault rifle is a translation of the German word
Sturmgewehr (literally meaning “storm rifle”), “storm” used as a verb
being synonymous with assault, as in “to storm the compound”.
Sturmgewehr was coined by Adolf Hitler to describe the
Maschinenpistole 44, subsequently re-baptized Sturmgewehr 44, the
firearm generally considered the first widely-used assault rifle and
served to popularize the concept. The translation “assault rifle”
gradually became the common term for similar firearms sharing the
same technical definition as the name giver StG 44. In a strict
definition, a firearm must have all of the following five
characteristics to qualify as an assault rifle:[1][2][3]
Is a carbine sized individual weapon with provision to be fired from
a shouldered position.
Barrel length is usually 400 mm to 500 mm (16″ to 20″)
Is capable of selective fire.
Fires from a locked breech.
Utilizes an intermediate powered-cartridge.
Ammunition is supplied from a large capacity detachable box magazine.
Most common is a capacity of 30 rounds, sometimes 20 rounds.
The following features are commonly found on assault rifles, but
those are not exclusive to assault rifles, as those features are
shared with many submachine guns, battle rifles, automatic rifles and
machine guns:
Protruding pistol grip.
Folding, retractable or otherwise collapsible shoulder stock.
Bipod
Muzzle device like a muzzle brake or a flash suppressor.
There are commentators who use the expression “assault rifle” more
loosely to include other types of arms, particularly arms that fall
under a strict definition of the battle rifle, or civilian semi-
automatic off-shoots of military rifles for commercial or political
reasons. Some militaries of nations outside of the English-speaking
world also have a different definition of assault rifle. For
instance, the analogous term in the Swedish Armed Forces is
automatkarbin (literally “automatic carbine”) which includes both
assault rifles and battle rifles.