A rifle is a rifle...

According to Merriam-Webster, a rifle, when used as a noun, is a shoulder weapon with a rifled bore. The term was first used in 1770. That sounds pretty simple and straight forward to this good ol' boy.  Unfortunately, politicians and gun-control advocates... in addition to the mostly ignorant news media... constantly confuse the issue with misleading and inaccurate information.

Ya'll know I'm a big Ruger fan, so let's take a look at one of my favorite rifles, one of those shoulder weapons with a rifled bore...

This is a Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle. It is semi-automatic and fires a .223 Remington or 5.56 NATO cartridge. Senator Diane Feinstein DOES NOT consider this an assault weapon under her newest version of a draconian infringement on our Second Amendment rights known as an assault weapons ban.

This is a Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle. It fires a .223 Remington or 5.56 NATO cartridge. Senator Diane Feinstein DOES consider this an assault weapon due to the 20-round magazine.

This is a Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle. It fires a .223 Remington or 5.56 NATO cartridge. Senator Diane Feinstein DOES consider this an assault weapon due to the 20-round magazine and flash suppressor on the muzzle.

So, first rifle pictured... OK, second and third rifle pictured... Not OK.  Did you get that? Let's look at some more...

This is a Ruger Mini-14 Target Rifle.  It is semi-automatic and fires a .223 Remington or 5.56 NATO cartridge. Senator Diane Feinstein DOES NOT consider this an assault weapon.

This is a Ruger Mini-14 Target Rifle. It is semi-automatic and fires a .223 Remington or 5.56 NATO cartridge. Senator Diane Feinstein DOES consider this an assault weapon due to the pistol-grip, thumb-hole stock.

This apparently makes sense to anti-gunners, does it make sense to you?

Now for the really scary, extra high-powered, super-duper, shoots jets out of the sky, can mow down a whole platoon in the blink of an eye, fires bullets at twice the speed of light, demon-possessed version of the Ruger Mini-14 rifle...

This is a Ruger Mini-14 Tactical Rifle. It is semi-automatic and fires a .223 Remington or 5.56 NATO cartridge. Senator Diane Feinstein DOES consider this an assault weapon due to the pistol-grip stock, the flash-suppressor on the muzzle, the adjustable butt-stock, the 20-round magazine... and most of all... it's black... very, scary black.

Now let's look at those terrible features that make this rifle an assault weapon... the pistol-grip which allows a person to better hold the rifle for safety, then there is the adjustable butt-stock that allows it to be properly adjusted for a five-foot tall gal or a six-foot-six high guy, how much more ADA and gender-equality compliant can you get? Of course there is the flash suppressor which reduces the muzzle flash, I've previously discussed, so maybe the person operating the firearm doesn't get blinded by the flash in low-light conditions so they can see what they are shooting at... know your target and what is beyond it... which is good, right?

Now over the years various rifles have been identified by their action types such as automatic (sometimes known as a machine gun), which means it fires continuously as long as the trigger is depressed and there is ammunition. There is semi-automatic which means the rifle fires one round or cartridge with each pull of the trigger and the trigger must be released and pulled again to fire another round or cartridge. There are also lever-action rifles, bolt-action rifles, revolving rifles, single-action rifles, break-action rifles, rolling block rifles, and probably several other types of rifles.

The German StG 44 or the Sturmgewehr 44 was the rifle that most folks consider the first to be named or referred to as an "assault" rifle, although "sturm" tranlates literally to "storm" and "gewehr" to "rifle". Many also think back to the origins of the Avtomat Kalashnikova, or AK47, as one of the original rifles referred to as an assault rifle.

The key factor to these firearms and their being referenced as assault rifles had to do with the fact the they were automatic rifles, or machine guns. They could fire 600, 700, 800 and more rounds per minute. The best trigger finger on a semi-automatic rifle can't even come close to that rate of fire and don't be fooled.... no American soldier I've ever asked would ever trade his or her automatic M4 for a semi-automatic AR15 on the battle field.

I'm also pretty sure that most soldiers or law enforcement officers wouldn't trade me their rifle for my New Jersey Assault Weapon pictured above that I received at the age of nine from my grandfather.  Yep, that fixed, tube magazine under the barrel holds 17-rounds... which is enough for New Jersey to charge you with a felony.

Modern Sporting Rifle is another term that I'm not too fond of in this whole semantics-word-jumble debate. I mean, how modern is a rifle with an action that was designed by Eugene Stoner over sixty years ago? The Ruger SR-556c is primarily our personal defense rifle, but also gets used for coyotes, three-gun matches and other things... but was mainly purchased to defend against two-legged varmints... which has nothing to do with "sporting".

The gals and I do keep some rifles handy for plinking and hunting four-legged varmints. The Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle is just about as light and handy as you can get out here in the country. All of ours have been reliable and up to the task.

Target and distance shooting is always fun and while we have several bolt-action rifles that do well in this area, I still enjoy the accuracy Ruger has managed to squeeze out of their Mini-14. Or course, even if someone wanted to hit the local "stop-n-rob" convenience store, I'm not sure how they'd get this thumb-hole stocked, twelve-pound behemoth under their coat to conceal it.

This rifle was recently involved in an active shooter incident out back on our shootin' range... almost seventy tin cans were mercilessly decimated in under thirty minutes. In an effort to reduce tin can destruction the 25-round magazine is also targeted to be banned.

While the wood stock makes this rifle look far less intimidating, the 10-round magazine classifies this as a New York assault weapon now. I wonder if we could trade our Ruger 10/22s even-up with the Marines for their M4s... what do you think?

Folks... let's call a rifle a rifle... a machine gun a machine gun... a criminal a criminal... and an idiot an idiot. The Second Amendment wasn't put in place by our forefathers for hunting or target shooting, or foolin' folks about our extensive experience with skeet shootin' at Camp David.

The Second Amendment is about protecting our freedoms that our Constitution was designed to keep the government from infringing upon.  Yes, it's hard for many to believe, but our forefathers meant for us to have shoulder fired weapons with rifled bores to protect us from harm, even if that harm comes from a tyrannical government... and that is why...

A rifle is a rifle...