...since the media seem to keep confusing terms and their history, although I think it's mostly from ignorance and indolence than for any conspiratorial reason:
"To avoid the confusion that media intentionally creates by mislabeling modern sporting rifles, it’s vital to remember that the firearms sought by [Department of Homeland Security] are banned from civilian commerce by the 1934 National Firearms Act and the Hughes Amendment to the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act. Government agencies can buy fully automatic military rifles and call them “suitable for personal defense.” But when a civilian buys the less-functional semi-automatic variant, it becomes an “assault weapon.'"
And this: "Following December’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, we have witnessed the spectacle of politicians at every level of government tripping over each other to race before the cameras and proclaim their outrage, not at the perpetrator of the atrocity, but rather at the many law-abiding Americans who are employed in the making of firearms and the many, many more who use them recreationally. Something must be done, they tell us, “for the children.” That the “something” might be wholly ineffectual or even counterproductive in the fight against crime is of little significance when the real goal is to see one’s name in the headlines and one’s face on television."
The use of children as props for political press conferences is reprehensible; even more so when politicians exploit the grief of the victims' parents for their own dark purposes. In every mass shooting in the last fifteen years, psychotropic medication has been used, sometimes long-term, by the shooter. Why aren't we talking about that, too? It's enough to make me think that, on the national stage, this is just an attempt to distract the press and public from the economy and, at state level, because Pfizer is a major employer in our area [and contributor to the current governor's campaign treasure chest].
You can always count on a bureaucracy to think clearly and offer good, sound advice.
NY Post: Is your workplace getting shot up by a crazed gunman? No problem — just grab a pair of scissors and fight back! That’s some of the helpful advice in a new instructional video from the Department of Homeland Security that was posted on the agency’s Web site just a month after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut