[Pox]

There's no confusion about it, other than their determination to obfuscate the meanings in their attempt to influence ignorant Americans who they hope will start howling for the banning/confiscation of automatic and semi-automatic weapons.

Obama made the same plea recently, for us to follow Australia's example to ban automatic and semi-automatic weapons.

They're not stupid. They're doing this on purpose, and they know exactly what they're doing and who they're dealing with.

They have their goals and they know who they need to pander to in order to achieve those goals.

[DesertRhino]

Tell the average low information type that at Sandy Hook, or in the Aurora Theater, that they are being lied to, that it wasn’t an automatic AR15 being used, that it was actually a semi-auto.

They’ll shrug and think you have a screw loose. It’s not like if they realize that no actual select fire rifles were used, that they’ll suddenly see things our way. They know EXACTLY what they are trying to ban. We need to fight the actual fight, not a hobbyists wonk fight.
That tactic might make more sense for us if they were saying everyone had a right to a semi auto rifle, and were pretending that the mass murders were all select fire. But that’s simply not the case.