Full Article | ArchiveSoon after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary changed its definition of “assault rifle.”
The entry for “assault rifle,” which was updated March 31, 2018, reads as follows:
After 17 people were shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February, activists have been using the tragic events to make the sale of so-called “assault weapons” illegal.
An Internet archive search shows the Merriam-Webster entry for “assault rifle” appears to be different now than it was before the shooting. A cached version of the same entry from June 13, 2016 has this definition:
“Assault weapon” and “assault rifles” are malleable terms often used in public discourse to scare people. After all, all guns are designed to “assault” something. The usual proper use of this term is to describe fully automatic machine-gun-style weapons, which in the United States have been banned from civilian use for years. Notice that the Merriam-Webster change stretches this definition to include anything that looks like such a gun regardless of whether it shoots like one.
Yet media and politicians often use this term inaccurately, as doing so furthers their desire of getting Americans to support gun-control policies. As Sean Davis pointed out on our pages last year, when the United States had a federal “assault weapons” ban, lawmakers defined the term cosmetically instead of by function and, contra Merriam-Webster, had nothing to do with a military-esque design (whatever that means):
To learn more about other firearm myths, you can listen to Sean discuss guns on an episode of The Federalist Radio Hour. There, among other things, he discusses “assault rifles” and “assault weapons” and language the media and other ignorant people use to inaccurately describe guns.
“’Military-style’ means it looks black and scary. Either something is an assault rifle — a military-issue rifle capable of select fire– or it’s not, and if it’s not, it’s not ‘military style,’” he points out in the podcast.
I have to give them credit, it is pretty damn funny that instead of admitting that "assault weapon" is a meaningless term or trying to route their way around the argument in a manner that made any actual sense, they just marched up to the dictionary and forcibly changed an already vague, meaningless term into something even more meaningless.
The first half of that definition is goofy because fully-automatic weapons have been banned for quite a damned while, and you can't get your hands on one without some pretty decent hoop-jumping for all of the permits, and it's going to cost you more than a couple thousand dollars before that rifle makes it into your hands. The second half, though, is hands-down one of the most-useless definitions I've ever seen, so what the Hell was the point?
By their own logic here, can't we just cover an AR-15 in clown socks so it doesn't "resemble a military rifle?" What about assault shovels? Are those going to be classified as unlawful instruments of war, now?
Last edited:
