by Jennifer Freeman 

"The semi-automatic 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 that chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons." — Josh Sugarman, 1988, Violence Policy Center.

By 1988, gun banners had finally figured out that Americans were not going surrender their firearms willingly. The only way they were going to achieve their goal of total disarmament was through mass dissemination of misinformation and by infiltrating both the legislature and mainstream media.

By 1994, the disarmament crowd had succeeded in banning the sale and manufacture of many commonplace semi-automatic rifles. They called it the "Assault Weapons Act of 1994" and they achieved it by frightening the general public into submission.

The "Assault Weapons" ban was written to apply to a select group of semi-automatic rifles possessing certain features that made them look menacing. Features that would allow gun-ban organizations to confuse the public into the thinking that the rifles were fully automatic machine guns, despite the fact that the import and manufacture of machine guns for civilian use was banned under the National Firearms Act and Gun Owner Protection Act.

Prior to 1994, the term "assault weapon" was used to describe a military rifle that allowed the operator to choose semi-automatic or fully automatic firing of ammunition. The disarmament society erroneously labeled a select group of semi-automatic civilian rifles as "assault weapons" in a further attempt to confuse the public into thinking the ban applied to machine guns.The "Assault Weapons" ban, however, applied only to civilian semi-automatic rifles that possessed certain cosmetic features which had no effect on the performance of the firearm. Rather, the features were ergonomic or offered some other comfort to the operator.

Of the rifles that were banned in 1994, many others that perform in the same manner remain legal. It would be impossible, therefore, to claim any reduction in crime as a result of the ban. And yet, the disarmament society has done exactly that.

The gun-ban elitists want you to believe that America's streets will be flooded with killer machine guns if the "Assault Weapons" ban sunsets this September. They predict blood, mayhem, and societal chaos if law-abiding citizens are "allowed" to purchase these rifles, despite the fact that rifles of this sort have been commercially available since 1896.

In fact, gun-ban organizations need blood and mayhem in order to further their agenda and justify their existence.

The term "Assault Weapon" is just as important as the ban itself. One is required to continue to use the term "assault weapon" when discussing the banned semi-automatic rifles. This allows the lie to perpetuate itself making it easy to keep the public confused and fearful of what they perceive to be machine guns.

Once the public is frightened into submission, gun-ban organizations will work to ban all semi-automatic rifles and eventually all semi-automatic handguns. It is not uncommon, in fact, for a news anchor to refer to an ordinary semi-automatic handgun as an "automatic handgun." There is a huge performance difference between a semi-automatic firearm and a fully automatic machine gun. A fact that seems to make no difference to some in the news media, despite their occupation to keep the public informed of the facts.