Still seems rather cosmetic to me. With all of the above, it’s still just a semi-automatic rifle regardless of what the ATF or the AP chooses to call it. Actually, though, the AP isn’t using the ATF definition, they’re using the one dreamed up by politicians for the original 1994 Clinton ban on so called “assault weapons.”
My problem is that when a newspaper writer uses the term “assault rifle,” they do so not for any particular accuracy but rather for the emotional or “fear factor” response they hope to raise in their readers.
If a rifle wasn't capable of "assault" it would be broken. Describing it an "assault rifle" is done for the effect it has on the masses. Of course it is an "assault" weapon. All guns are "assault weapons." The selective categorization is pejorative, and purely Orwellian, and as Mr. Soyer accurately points out, cosmetic.
"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."- Rudyard Kipling
h/t Instapundit
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