What is an Assault Rifle”?
Assault Rifle is a nebulous term that has various and complex definitions; I will try to clarify this term for the uninformed.
I observe three major sources for this term that differ greatly; I will address these in chronological order:
1. The English translation of the original German term: Sturm-Gevhar, which translates literally to “Storm Rifle”. The Nazis developed the Storm Rifle for close-quarters combat and developed a new ammunition with ballistic power* (see below) about half-way between a pistol and a rifle. This new weapon was semi-automatic (as were many rifles of the time, such as the M1-A1 Garand, America’s standard military rifle) and was short, being more maneuverable for close-quarters, and also lighter in weight. The small ammunition was also lighter and allowed soldiers to carry more of it. The Soviet Union recognized the value of such a weapon and developed the AK-47, in … 1947. The US built their own version of a Storm Rifle, the AR-15, with even smaller ammunition, 5.56mm or .223 (though there are slight differences between the official metrics of these two designations). The US started using the AR-15 (designated M-16) during the Vietnam war, with many soldiers complaining that American soldiers were dying because the gun was too weak.
2. As a propaganda term: activists and politicians often describe what they call Assault Rifles as “high-powered rifles” or “rapid fire” or rifles with high capacity magazines. None of these descriptors are correct. Assault Rifles typically have ballistic power* about half-way between a pistol and a rifle; they are by no means “high-powered rifles”. A very wide variety of guns are “rapid fire”, and not just modern weapons. A six-shot revolver can fire several rounds per second (all 6 in the hands of an expert). And whether a gun has high capacity magazines available has absolutely nothing to do with whether it’s an Assault Rifle or not. There are high capacity magazines available for pistols and for high-powered rifles (neither of which are Assault Rifles).
3. As just a term of laziness … people who know better just get tired of correcting others and the term creeps into the vocabulary of those who know that the term really has no precise meaning. One conservative pundit has defined this term as “any gun that looks scary” (which, of course, relates to the propaganda term).
*Ballistic power: this might seem like it should be an easy term to precisely define … it is not. I will try to be precise without getting into the math and physics. The problem is: “power” is a continuous quantity, and the impact of a bullet is a very short event, imparting an impulse of energy; energy being the product of power and time. So why not describe the ammunition’s “power” in units of energy? The problem is the kinetic energy of a bullet (the correct energy term for a known mass travelling at a certain velocity) is not a good predictor of the damage a bullet will impart on a target. Another useful physical quantity of a moving mass is called momentum. Doing the math and physics gives much larger values of kinetic energy to a mass moving at a higher velocity, whereas the calculation of momentum leans more toward mass, favoring the heavier bullet (this is a crude simplification, I’m avoiding the math). The greater effectiveness for defense, or military purposes, which might be called Stopping Power, is somewhere between kinetic energy and momentum, and there is no widely-accepted formula combining these quantities. There are many opinions, and there are some experts. One classic argument is between the 9mm (9×19) and the 45 ACP (both are pistol ammunition). The 9mm has higher kinetic energy, but the 45 has more momentum; many experts say the 45 has more stopping power. For this article, the point to be made is that an Assault Rifle has more stopping power than a pistol, but less than a high-powered rifle. The AR-15 (in 556) with its low-mass bullet has a high velocity, and therefore high energy, but many expert hunters would say that it’s too weak for deer hunting. It has less stopping power than a typical deer hunting rifle (such as a 308 or 30-06). This is quite contrary to the left-wing propaganda that people don’t need an AR-15 for deer hunting because “deer don’t wear Kevlar vests”.
Further, a “sporterized” or modified Assault Rifle sold to civilians in the US is nothing like the actual military version (except in appearance). Civilian versions are, of course, limited to semi-automatic fire, not full-auto (fully automatic rifles can only be owned in the US by federally licensed firearms dealers). Most short, light, close-quarters (military) combat rifles are “Select Fire” meaning they can be switched from semi-automatic to fully automatic. The fully automatic weapons you hear about on the news being used by “group” members in America’s inner cities, are typically a modified UZI, MAC-10, or something similar, which are actually just pistols (but are large and military-looking) usually 9mm. Hopefully this brief and simplistic description of Assault Rifles will be useful to those who wish to intelligently discuss gun issues. And, if a lot of this is new to you, I suggest doing a little more research: Go to your local gun shop; they should be happy to share knowledge with people who are truly interested in learning about guns. And, consider taking a training class suitable for carry permit qualification (many states require training to get a permit to carry). If more law-abiding Americans are trained to understand and respect guns, and, if more of them are armed, we will live in a safer country.