The same can be said about assault weapon.
I don’t know the technical aspect but I have seen claims that an AR-15 rifle is not necessarily an assault weapon.
It takes certain specifications to make it an assault weapon.
I can see local law enforcement calling a weapon the wrong thing. Rifle for long gun.
Long gun for Rifle
Etc.
An AR-15 is basically a civilian version of an assault rifle, but it doesn’t meet the classic definition of assault rifle because of the modifications made to make it legal for civilian use. Assault weapon is a different term, invented by liberals to scare people, and it seems to mean whatever they want it to mean.
“I can see local law enforcement calling a weapon the wrong thing. Rifle for long gun.
Long gun for Rifle”
Law enforcement people don’t usually make mistakes like that, they know firearms and the terminology because it is an intimate part of their job, and they could ruin court cases by using the improper term in a piece of paperwork.
Now, here is how it works. “Long gun” is a general term that includes both rifles and shotguns, of any type. “Long rifle” is not a very often used term, but it means only rifles, and specifically full-size rifles, and not carbines. I suspect the only confusion going on here is on the part of the media, which is kind of betrayed by their using the phrase “long rifle”, when they could have just said “rifle”. The reporters don’t seem to know the difference between a “long gun” and a rifle, and get the terms confused, resulting in the question about the “long rifle”, which is just redundant in this case, since there are no carbines to distinguish from.
I imagine that someone told a reporter on day one that they found a “long gun” in the trunk, and other reports which specifically listed weapons found inside the school only mentioned one “long gun”, the AR-15. So, someone concluded wrongly that the “long gun” in the trunk must be the AR-15. If you watch the video, it clearly is not an AR-15, or any type of rifle, so there is no reason for this confusion or rumor to continue to spread.