disinformation and unfair stereotyping

Just as most people who know how to drive know the difference between an automatic and a stick shift, most gun owners know the difference between an automatic weapon and a semiautomatic weapon. A fully automatic weapon is commonly called a "machine gun," while a semiautomatic weapon requires one pull of the trigger for each shot fired.

It seems axiomatic that non-gun owners are more frightened by guns than are gun owners, and that they would be more afraid of machine guns than weapons that can only be fired one shot at a time. There is a clear desire on the part of gun control advocates to keep non-gun-owners as afraid of weapons as possible, and one of the ways this is done is by feeding them deliberate misinformation designed to make them think that there are a lot of dangerous people walking about with readily available machine guns. Blurring the distinction between machine guns and regular guns is accomplished by calling semiautomatic weapons by the names of their fully automatic counterparts.

Just as the fully automatic M-16 is not the semiautomatic AR-15, the AK-47 is not the same as the MAK-90, or the numerous semiautomatic cloned versions of the Kalashnikov design. Calling a gun an AK-47 when it is not an AK-47 is more than a mistake; it is like saying a non-machine gun is a machine gun.

AK-47 stands for "Avtomat Kalashnikova" developed in the year 1947. "Avtomat" means "automatic" and there are very few of them available for sale. Those that are for sale can only be sold to people who hold special licenses which are very hard to obtain. The last time I went to a gun show, one dealer had several actual AK-47s on display, and out of curiosity I asked how feasible it would be to buy the real thing. He said it would require a lengthy application, fingerprinting, an investigation, payment of a large fee, and a sign-off by the local chief of police (who will often refuse to sign the application). Fully automatic weapons are highly restricted, non-transferable and only those manufactured before 1986 can be sold even within the special restrictions. For those who are interested, the procedure is all explained here.

As to the price of a legal, fully automatic AK-47, they are ridiculous. The ones I saw started at $15,000.00.

It is therefore a very safe bet that the AK-47s complained of in this disinformation effort (discussed by John Tabin via Glenn Reynolds) are not real AK-47s. They are semi-automatic copies of the Kalashnikov design.

Wikipedia (hardly a bastion of gun nuts) is in accord:

Private ownership of fully-automatic AK-47 rifles is tightly regulated by the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934. The Gun Control Act of 1968 ceased importing of foreign-manufactured fully-automatic firearms for civilian sales and possession, effectively halting further importation of civilian accessible AK-47 rifles. In 1986, an amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act stopped all future domestic manufacture of fully-automatic weapons for civilian use.
So why are all these people accusing people who don't have real AK-47s of having AK-47s?

I don't take any of this personally, but I'm afraid Coco does. Here she is, gently holding a Yugoslavian M70AB2 -- one of the many semiautomatic Kalashnikov copies:


FMCDP.jpg


Coco wanted me to put the world on notice that the weapon above is definitely not an AK-47.

Sheesh.

(I wouldn't have felt the need to point this out except I don't want some ignorant crackpot complaining about "dangerous pit bulls armed with AK-47s.")

posted by Eric on 10.17.06 at 06:20 PM





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Comments

Even without auto, yours is definitely a house a bad guy should pass by.

Bird Dog   ·  October 17, 2006 10:06 PM

Good doggie! Strangely enough (or not) the Media in general and California more specifically fail to properly distinguish between the stick-shift AR and the automatic drive M-16 - both of which we are yet unable to purchase mainly because one is intentionally confused with the other. It does appear that a few illegals are smuggled in and sold to gangbangers in the Hunters Point area of San Francisco, in full cynicism quite possibly to reinforce that incorrect impression.

DirtCrashr   ·  October 18, 2006 03:39 PM

1. Is Coco considered a 'pet' in Philly? The Berkeley city council has banned that word. In Berkeley, Coco is an 'animal companion.'

2. Can you still 'own' a dog in Philly? Under Berkeley city law, you can't own Coco. You are now the dog's 'guardian.'

You can still call Coco a 'dog' in Berkeley if you wish, but some animal rights activists prefer 'canine-American.'

Chocolatier   ·  October 18, 2006 04:35 PM

A note for fairness' sake - many semi-auto AK-47s, while technically having other names (WASR, MAK, etc.) are marketed and sold as simply "AK-47"s.

As far as I know, this has never been the case with the AR-15 type rifle (which, of course, most "AR-15s" also technically aren't "AR-15"s, since that's technically an Armalite trademark, isn't it?).

I can't blame media people for calling a gun that looks just like an AK-47 and is typically marketed as an AK-47 an AK-47, even if it technically isn't one.

I can blame them for not making it clear that it doesn't fire more than one shot at a time, though, or calling a semi-automatic gun an "assault rifle", even if stupid federal law defined it as such. I expect them to note the redefiniton.

Sigivald   ·  October 18, 2006 05:01 PM
treetops   ·  October 18, 2006 05:34 PM

Stay out of this, Hugo!

Eric Scheie   ·  October 18, 2006 07:53 PM


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