[Peet]

FTA: “Assault weapons” is a made-up term, used to scare citizens into thinking that military weapons were commonly being sold and used on the streets of the United States.

  "The semi-automatic weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's
   confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic
   assault weapons anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to
   be a machine gun can only increase that chance of public support for
   restrictions on these weapons."
                       --  Josh Sugarman, 1988, Violence Policy Center.

All "liberals" lie some of the time; some "liberals" lie all of the time.

[MrB]

And some are ignorant, parroting stuff they heard so that they appear smart.

Case in point: A libinlaw was decrying people possessing “semi-automatic” guns. I asked him to describe a “semi-automatic” gun. He admitted he had no idea. I was actually impressed with his honesty.

I educated him on semi-auto vs select fire, and told him he was being intentionally deceived into convoluting the two concepts. Didn’t convince him to not be anti-gun, because it’s not the functionality of the gun that he opposed. But I did educate him a bit.