It would be easy to laugh if the motivations of gun control groups were not so well advertised.

The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (LCPGV) is the newly self-anointed gun control propaganda group. I attended one of their meetings where they were collaborating with members of MADD and the anti-tobacco coalition, openly discussing reforming public opinion. Their desire to enact more gun control laws – regardless of efficacy – is something they promote with slightly snarky glee.

So when they get basic definitions wrong, I doubt it is amateurish idiocy.

One LCPGV web page I discovered this graphic. Ignore the irrational concepts it promotes, but pay close attention to the text block in the lower right where they claim an “assault rifle” is a “semi-automatic firearm”.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Small Arms Identification and Operations Guide, assault rifles are “short, compact, select-fire weapons that fires a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges.” In short, a firearm that can switch to machine-gun mode with the flip of a switch … not a semi-automatic as the LCPGV claims.

What makes this allegedly sinister is that the gun control movements assault-whatever campaign is purposely composed to confuse the public. The Violence Policy Center (VPC) is credited with inventing the term “assault weapon” with the mission of misleading the public about sporting rifles that are not assault rifles. In their own words:

“Assault weapons … are a new topic. The 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 the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”

Over time, even the media began to understand the difference between an AR-15, which is a semi-automatic sporting rifle that looks like (but does not fire) a military M-16, which is a switch-fire firearm. In other words, anything that looked like a machine gun was no longer assumed to be a machine gun.

So I suspect the LCPGV decided to deepen the canard by mislabeling sporting rifles (a.k.a. “assault weapons”) as assault rifles. It fits the gun control industry’s M.O. and might lead greener reporters astray.

I’m calling B.S. on the LCPGV … though that is a bit redundant.