That doesn’t matter to far too many people, in this day and age. They love throwing that term out there regardless.

There’s a reason for that.

Supporters of gun control, as well as many liberal politicians, have called for a ban of so-called “assault weapons,” which in turn convinced Americans of the need to limit access to these firearms. The very name of the guns certainly sounds ominous enough, and may convince many to ask the question “why does anyone need a weapon of war?”

That is how these groups plan to win over the public. Consider it a marketing campaign like no other. In this case, it is directed by various groups that have continued to spread misleading “facts” about these firearms.

The Center for American Progress stated on its website, “They are weapons of war that have no place in civilian society.” It added, “Assault weapons are semi-automatic firearms—meaning that they fire a round every time the trigger is pulled—that are capable of accepting a detachable magazine and have another military-style feature such as a pistol grip, a folding stock, or a threaded barrel. Firearm manufacturers, in response to declining sales of handguns, began selling assault rifles in the civilian market in the 1980s as part of a broader effort to create a new market for military-style guns among civilian gun owners.”

The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has an entire page devoted to assault weapons, and offered this chilling tidbit, “Assault weapons are designed for the battlefield and pose a serious public safety risk, making it easier for shooters to kill more people more quickly.” It added, “Assault weapons are a class of semi-automatic firearm specifically designed to kill humans quickly and efficiently.”

To the uninformed those facts could be overwhelming, and they certainly seem to make their case.

Except all of it is misleading to say the least. The hyperbole overstates the danger from this class of firearms by holding back some details.

Of course. Among those details, as noted in the above-linked article, is that the rate of fire from these “weapons of war” is no different than any other semi-automatic firearm. Additionally, it should be noted that while much of the paranoia about these weapons revolves around mass shootings, most mass shootings are carried out with handguns.

Yet I believe that’s a matter of design.

Anti-gunners aren’t going to admit any of this because it doesn’t fit their narrative. They don’t like the idea of AR-15s in the hands of armed citizens because they know that those weapons can be used to keep prevent any other aspect of their agenda from taking hold. They figure they need those gone first before they can start working on anything else.

And they’ll play the same game.

Instead of weapons of war, though, they’ll use other scary terms. Your bolt-action rifle will be a sniper rifle. Your shotgun will be a street sweeper or something else. Your handgun will get some kind of rebranding as well.

That’s because they market in fear. They need people afraid because people will only give up their civil liberties out of fear. They know that calm, rational people will see through the BS and refuse to budge, so they pretend that a weapon that’s never been issued to any military fighting force on the planet is a weapon of war, so it’ll scare people.

Eventually, they’ll do the same thing to everything else. They’ll use a scary name to justify taking it away until we’re left with nothing.

It’s why we’re not moving anymore. It’s why we’re unwilling to compromise anymore. We did and we watched our rights be taken away and given nothing in return. That’s not compromise, that’s just death by a thousand cuts. We’re not playing that game anymore, but there are a lot of people who don’t see that. They weren’t paying attention to the past. They’re ignorant of the history of gun control. They think this is new.

It not. What is newer, though, is how we’re not playing their game anymore.

They’re not weapons of war…and we’d prefer they stay that way.