A brief history of Assault Weapons

And now, a brief history of “Assault Weapons…” There. Did you enjoy it? That’s all the history required. There is no such thing and never was.  ATF Director Steve Dettelbach was recently asked by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) to define the term. Keep in mind Jackson Lee is very much an anti-liberty/gun cracktivist and was lobbing a softball to fellow traveler Dettelbach: 

Dettlebach was questioned by Democrat Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee who asked the ATF director whether he knew what an “assault weapon” was after acknowledging the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York.

Let me just hold up just to pay tribute and acknowledge that these are the deceased — their families are still mourning — of the incident in Buffalo at the grocery store. It was an assault weapon that killed them,” said Lee.

She continued, “My question to you is just simply a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ You know what an assault weapon is? You seen one?”

Dettlebach deflected the question, saying the term is not something he’s qualified to rule on.

No matter how she pressed him, Dettelbach, the head of the ATF, an organization all about firearm definitions and laws, refused to define the class of weapons he was testifying must be banned. That’s odd, but unsurprising. Even Dettelbach, who is also an anti-liberty/gun cracktivist, knows there is no such thing.

The term can be traced back to a 1988 book—Assault Weapons And Accessories In America—by Josh Sugarman, the founder that same year of the Violence Policy Center, dedicated to disarming non-criminal Americans. It was Sugarman who coined the term, and a primary gun grabber tactic:

“Assault weapons-just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms-are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons-anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun-can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”  

In those heady, pre-Heller (2008), McDonald (2010) and Bruen (2022) days, cracktivists like Sugarman believed it was possible to discredit the Second Amendment, disarm the public, and like all good Democrat/socialist/communist (D/s/c) cracktivists, any means to their ends were legitimate, particularly fear mongering and lying.

Their approach was incremental. If they could ban any class of firearm or accessory, that might open the door to banning everything. Thus were “assault weapons” born. Some even began calling common bolt-actioned, scoped, hunting rifles “sniper weapons,” but that never really caught on. 

Even so, some gun writers who should have known better bought into Sugarman’s lies. In 2007 Jim Zumbo defended traditional wood stocked and blued steel hunting rifles while agreeing that “black rifles” like the aluminum, steel and polymer AR-15 could, and probably should, be banned. He was followed in 2013 by Guns and Ammo’s Dick Metcalf who also fell for gun banner rhetoric. Despite both eventually issuing hasty apologies, it didn’t end well for them. Trying to infringe on fundamental, unalienable rights never should.

The guns people like Sugarman, Dettelbach and Joe Biden most want to ban are the AR-15, and similar firearms. That the AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America only increases their gun banning fervor. President Biden has argued rifles like the AR-15 would be useless to oppose him, because the government has F-16s and nuclear weapons. It’s sobering to realize our government would gleefully strafe and nuke Iowa, yet also wants to seize common rifles that would supposedly be useless to oppose it.

There is a class of firearms known as “assault rifles.” The first in that class was the German StG 44, first fielded in 1944.  Like all assault rifles that followed, it has three essential characteristics:

1) A shoulder-fired rifle of intermediate caliber

2) A detachable box magazine

3) Select fire capability

It is select fire capability that differentiates true military assault rifles like the contemporary M4 from the semiautomatic-only AR-15. Both look alike, but only the military version can fire either semiautomatically, in three-round bursts or fully automatically with a single pull of the trigger. The semiautomatic AR-15 fires one round only for each trigger pull. Three-round bursts were imposed by military brass to save ammunition and ease resupply concerns.

Graphic: author   L to R: .22LR, 9mm, .223, .308/7.62 NATO

Nor is the AR-15 a “high powered” rifle. The .223/5.56mm NATO cartridge, an intermediate round, has long been considered a mediocre man-stopper. Likewise, its 30-round magazine is not “high capacity,” but has been the standard since the Vietnam war era.

Thankfully, Sugarman has been unsuccessful, and it seems likely the Supreme Court will soon rule the AR-15 and similar rifles clearly constitutional. Perhaps Dettelbach might then be able to scrounge up a clear definition.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.