Ah, but what is an Assault Weapon?

Here is where the line starts to blur.....

The term Assault Weapon seems to have caught on since its use in the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994, more commonly know as the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. As far as I have been able to research there is no set definition of an 'Assault Weapon' but rather various laws have tried to define them by certain weapon characteristics.

Such characteristics are, for semiautomatic rifles that can accept a detachable magazine and two or more of the following features:

• Folding or telescoping stock
• Pistol Grip
• Bayonet Mount or Lug
• Flash Suppressor or a barrel threaded at the muzzle to accommodate one
• Grenade launcher, or a gun designed to fire rifle grenades

Now it should be said that semiautomatic shotguns and pistols each have their own characteristics that define an assault weapon category. For all of these, I hate to cite Wikipedia but in this instance they are fairly informative. 

On top of that, the federal ban of 1994 included 19 guns by name. Some of which were the Colt AR-15, different versions of the AK-47 and even Uzis. These were banned based on their cosmetic similarities to their military counterparts. 

The '94 ban also banned the possession of detachable magazines capable of storing/feeding more than 10 rounds of ammunition into a firearm. 

Time for a quick detour through terminology

Clip on the left, magazines on the right

Magazine or clip? That is the $64,000 question. 

A magazine, with regards to a firearm, is a storage and feeding device that can be attached to a firearm. They can be internal (fixed) or external (detachable). Different firearms have different sized magazines and most can accept different sizes on their own (the common AR-15 platform can accept 10,20,30,100 and even 200 round magazines). 

A clip however is a device that is used to store ammunition together as a unit and is used to transfer that ammunition into the firearm's internal magazine. See the difference? Good, lets move on. 

What makes them more dangerous?

To fully examine each of these features I will discuss them in separate posts as shown below:

Folding stocks

Pistol Grips

Bayonet Lugs

Flash Suppressors

Grenade Launchers

Read these, as I come to writing them up, and come to your own conclusion, do these really make firearms more lethal?

Lets put another perspective on it. The pictures below show two rifles as configured by the factory they are made at. Which one meets the definition of an assault weapon?

AR-15

Mini-14

The AR-15 pictured above meets all of the definitions as defined in the assault weapon ban of '94. It has an adjustable stock, pistol grip, flash suppressor and a bayonet lug. The Mini-14 doesn't meet the definition as it only has a flash suppressor. However both weapons fire the same ammunition, are capable of accepting high capacity magazines and are arguably just as accurate. They are both fine choices for self defense, hunting (where legal to use a semiautomatic firearm) and recreational purposes.

What happened to the Ban of '94?

The federal ban had a sunset clause after 10 years. So on September 13th of 2004 the ban was automatically nullified. All of the weapons that were banned on the 12th were allowed to be bought, transferred and possessed on the 13th. There have been studies, which I will cover in the coming days, as to the effectiveness of the ban both while it was in place and since its sunset. Another thing to note is that some states still have an assault weapon ban in place, in some cases identical to the expired federal ban. Examples of these states are California, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.