Courtesy of Geoff B.  PDF file here, link found here.  Some excerpts:

“Assault Rifles”.  The very term “semiautomatic assault rifle” is internally contradictory. In World War II, rifles of standard military power could not be made full automatic, because the recoil (“kick”) was too powerful. The “assault rifle” concept involved cutting the cartridge’s power, and thus its recoil, in half, so that it could be controlled in full automatic fire. An assault rifle redesigned to besemiautomatic is simply a semiautomatic firing cartridges with half the traditional military power.[…]

It is sometimes claimed that these are “weapons of war” that “belong on a battlefield.” With the exception of full automatic fire (fire like that of a machine gun, of which semi-automatics are by definition not capable), 1 there has historically been little distinction between military and civilian arms. In the 1920s,the Director of Civilian Marksmanship sold Krag military rifles to the public, andafter WWII it sold Springfield 1903s and M-1 rifles and carbines. Books were published (I have one in my library) showing how to convert these into deer rifles and target firearms. Manufacturers created civilian rifles based on military designs. At many points, civilian arms were more advanced than military ones. Americans for a century used rifles while their military stuck to smoothbores. Our civilians used repeating rifles for twenty years while the military stayed with single-shot ones. Civilians were hunting with semiautomatics (the Remington Model 8) a quarter century before the military went semiautomatic with the M-1. Other than full automatic fire, there simply is no line between military and civilian arms.

Well, that’s not exactly true:  there is the false and arbitrary line drawn between the two by those who wish to conflate full-automatic fire weapons with civilian semi-automatic weapons in order to pretend that civilian weapons have crossed the line into weapons of war.

On some level, these feel-good measures to ban scary looking rifles are often done by well-meaning petty despots who refuse to acknowledge their own ignorance when it comes to firearms.  But they are then quickly disabused of their ignorance by those who do know weapons — and yet they cling to their initial proposals anyway, out of some sense of misplaced pride or an ideological fidelity that refuses to let truth interfere with desired outcomes.

Worst of all are those who, like the police chiefs organizations or Generals like Stanley McChrystal who we know understand the differences between the categories of firearms under discussion, and yet are willing to lie outright to lend political cover to the elected buffoons whom they hope will advance their careers.

There’s a special place in Hell reserved for dishonest sellouts like these — preferably, one where they are daily beset by gangs of armed thugs and can only protect themselves with cell phones or whistles.  Or by claiming they’ve transgendered, then faking their periods.