Tag Archives: what is an assault weapon

A Gunspeak Primer

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If you read enough gun articles, hang out at shooting ranges, and peruse the gun shows enough,
you find out that firearms owners and users have their own language. For the benefit of those not
fully fluent, we here at Firearms Talk decided to put together this handy reference.

Word Number One: Clips

magazine-clip-LABELED-800

Get away from this word as much as possible! Of the 25,000+ firearms in existence, 24,995ish
are either single shot, belt-fed, or use a magazine. Magazines, which may be tubular, rotary, drum,
or box, is correct word for the reservoir that holds cartridges/shells. The only guns that use a ‘clip’ are the M1 Garand, the M95 Steyr-Mannlicher, and a few rare oddballs.

These enbloc clips are inserted completely into the firearm and hold the rounds, but are not magazines. In old war movies when the GI yells, “throw me a clip” he often is talking about these
8-round clips for the Garand and is correct. There are also stripper clips, used to feed in rounds
through the top of a magazine such as used with the Mosin-Nagant rifle. With these few
exceptions, leave the word clip at home closing potato chip bags.

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk

What IS an Assault Weapon?

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With all this talk about assault weapons, let’s look at what they are talking about. Just what makes something an ‘assault weapon’ and how does this term compare to the concept of what lawmakers are looking to regulate.

The first true assault rifle was born in 1943 Germany. Invented by firearms engineer Hugo Schmeisser, it was a select-fire (either full auto or semi-auto at the flick of a switch) rifle that fired an intermediate caliber round (larger than a pistol but shorter than a rifle round), and had a large detachable magazine that could be changed quickly. This gun was dubbed the StG44 or ‘storm rifle model 44’ and was a crucial addition to the German arsenal in the end of World War Two.

This rifle was very popular and the Soviets soon had a modified version they adopted a few years later as the AK-47. The current assault rifle of the US military is the M4A1 carbine, which has a select-fire trigger, 14.5-inch barrel, and can fire at 750-rounds per minute until its ammunition is exhausted. For a private citizen to own one of these types of weapons, it has to be made before 1986 as the Hughes Amendment banned production of select-fire weapons for private sales that year. Even if a ‘pre-86’ gun is available, they run upwards of $10K and take 3-6 months to transfer from a Class III dealer after an extensive ATF approval process that includes a $200 tax stamp.

ak74u
AKS-74U ‘Krinkov’ of the Russian Army. It is 19-inches long with a 8.3-inch barrel and fires 30 rounds of 5.45x39mm at about 700 rounds per minute. Its a true assault rifle…..now lets talk about the mythical creature that is an ‘assault weapon’…..

Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com