There are, it seems, at least two different reactions to news that police officers arrested two people — one a convicted felon — hanging out in the Bayshore Mall parking lot with a loaded assault rifle hidden in the hood of their pickup, along with spare high-capacity magazines, also loaded, and fake police badges.

One reaction is: Whew! Good catch, Eureka Police Department!

A far more common reaction is: NOT AN ASSAULT RIFLE! NOT AN ASSAULT RIFLE! Dumb idiot mainstream libtard journalists when will you learn and also Hillary and Benghazi AAAAA-AAAAAA-AAUUUUGHHHHHH *head explodes*

Well. We have noticed in the past that the latter response is not at all unusual whenever the phrase “assault rifle” or “assault weapon” appears in these pages, generally when people are arrested on the specific charge of possessing an assault weapon. That “assault weapon,” folks say, is not an assault weapon. 

It may have come to us late, but finally it came to us: We are talking past one another. What we are dealing with here is a semantic problem: What is an assault weapon?

It is for exactly this class of problem that God invented The Big, Dumb Thread. Let’s do it!

To explain our current position on the matter, at least before you all talk us out of it: Generally speaking — and exclusively, to the best of our recollection — the Outpost calls something an “assault weapon” when local law enforcement agencies call it an “assault weapon.” And local law enforcement agencies, unless they err, call something an “assault weapon” when it meets the definition of an “assault weapon” cleanly laid out in the California Penal Code, under the section that makes such weapons illegal in the state of California.

Which weapons are those, specifically? The California Office of the Attorney General’s website has a really good plain-language FAQ posted up on this, and Wikipedia has an even better one. Basically, the state considers something an “assault weapon” when either: 

  • It is on the list of specific makes and models of rifle, pistol and shotgun enumerated by the law, or
  • It meets certain “generic characteristics.” As they pertain to semiautomatic rifles, those characteristics include either:
    • A capacity of more than 10 rounds of ammunition, or…
    • A weapon with a detachable, non-“bullet button“-protected magazine and one of the following features: a pistol grip, a forward pistol grip, a folding or collapsing stock, a flash suppressor, or a grenade launcher.

That’s the state’s definition of an assault weapon and the one we are inclined to follow. We reached out to Brittany Powell of the Eureka Police Department this morning; she told us that according to the officer’s report, the loaded semiautomatic rifle retrieved from the hood space of those Sacramento dudes’ pickup meets at least three of the latter criteria, above. It has a folding stock. It has a flash suppressor. It has a pistol grip. Powell said it wasn’t immediately clear from the officer’s report whether the weapon violated the over-10-round rule or the no-bullet-button rule, but was confident that the officer knows a legal weapon from an illegal one.

So we’re calling this an assault weapon. But, hey: In France and The Netherlands they call potatoes “ground apples,” which to us just seems crazy. A potato is not any kind of apple. Try telling that to them, though! It’s frustrating.

Much the same must be true when the state of California keeps telling you that something is an assault weapon when you know in your heart it is not what you would call an assault weapon. It’s not surprising, then, that you get bitter, you cling to your definition of which category of gun is which.

But the LoCO loves all its flock, and we want to hear it. Why is what California calls an assault weapon totally not an assault weapon? Is it because it could conceivably used for purposes other than assault, or the threat of assault? Is it because there are other weapons that are even more assaultier? Should the Outpost ignore the legal definition of assault weaponry — as a form of moral protest, maybe, or simply to avoid looking like pussies? 

Let us know. Make your best case below — in the Big, Dumb Thread!

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CORRECTION!: Sometimes The Big, Dumb Thread isn’t so dumb! An earlier version of this post said that an assault rifle could be considered such if it had any of the following attributes: Grenade launcher, pistol grip, flash supressor, etc. But commenter Hugh Manatee teaches us that an “assault weapon” must also lack a “bullet button” that prevents the tool-free replacement of magazine and possess one or more of these features. See here. Thank you, Hugh. The post has been updated.