I noticed in “Navistar gunman got past cracks in gun law” (Page 1, Feb. 7), the SKS rifle is called an “assault rifle.”
The SKS is a semiautomatic rifle. It is not an assault rifle.
Real assault rifles have a selector switch that controls how many bullets will be fired with one pull of the trigger. The usual pattern is up to four selections: safe or no bullets, one bullet at a time, a burst of three bullets or fully automatic fire like a machine gun. That selector switch is what makes a real assault rifle different from a semiautomatic rifle.
The SKS has never had this selector switch. It has always been a semiautomatic rifle–one bullet for each pull of the trigger. That’s the way the Russians designed it and the way it has been built all over the world. It is a simple, easy-to-operate, semiautomatic rifle. It’s popular in the U.S. because it is simple to operate, inexpensive, easy to maintain and can be used for both target shooting and hunting some game.
The phrase “assault rifle” is much more terrifying to the average person than the phrase “semiautomatic rifle.” Saying something is an assault rifle when it’s not is a way of inducing fear. For government to be successful in banning weapons of any kind, fear is an important tool. Federal and state governments have been very successful lately in banning weapons by falsely labeling them “assault weapons.” The media have been very helpful, even excited sometimes, when it comes to spreading these fear-inducing labels. The media should be questioning government.
