“I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt,” Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., declared in 2018. “I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks, we can do CDC research, we can make sure that we don’t reciprocal carry among states. And we can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are allowed to be carried.” In just a few sentences, Walz made false claims about assault weapons, background checks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) research, and reciprocal carry.
First, take his claims about “weapons of war.” Put aside that Walz never was in war, let alone carried a weapon in war. The term “assault weapon” is nonsensical. Even the Associated Press Stylebook, which carries water for Democrat narratives, recognizes that fact. As the AP acknowledges, the term conveys “little meaning” and is “highly politicized.”
Politicians will continue calling AR-15s “weapons of war” and “assault weapons,” as Walz does. Many seem to think “AR” means assault rifle when it stands for ArmaLite rifle, after the company that developed it in the 1950s. But at least some of the media is now recognizing that “AR- or AK-style rifles designed for the civilian market,” as the AP Stylebook says, are fundamentally different than military weapons.
“The preferred term for a rifle that fires one bullet each time the trigger is pulled, and automatically reloads for a subsequent shot, is a semi-automatic rifle,”
