USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- It’s time to stop using the other side’s hate speech.
I was on a good friend’s radio program recently when one of the other guests raised a tremendous point:
We need to take back our language from the anti-rights crowd and the legacy media.
Specifically, words like “assault weapon”, “mainstream media”, “gun violence”, and many more have been creeping into our vocabulary and – mea culpa – even some of my stories.
Folks, it’s time to stop playing by their rules. It’s time to stop using their labels, which are both inaccurate and designed to frighten the public into supporting their anti-civil rights agenda.
Besides, there are better words to use in place of theirs.
I’ve come up with a few examples of the fake-news misdirection-speech. Of course, there are many more. If I missed any, please let me know.
- Assault Weapon – True assault weapons use intermediate-length cartridges and are capable of select-fire. The term is a rough translation of the German Sturmgewehr. A modern AR does not meet this definition, even if it has a chainsaw bayonet attached.
- Assault Weapon Ban – A violation of the Second Amendment and the Fifth Amendment’s taking clause.
- Mainstream Media – We are the mainstream, not the gun prohibitionists. They are the fringe. There are more gun owners in this country than non-gun owners, so rather than referring to their lapdog media as mainstream, let’s call it the legacy media.
- Gun Buybacks – It doesn’t matter if it’s a buyback held at a local city hall or the mandatory buybacks President Biden has planned for our ARs – the government cannot buy back something it has never owned. And we should start referring to Biden’s plan as what it really is – mandatory confiscation.
- Gun Violence – Do we say knife violence? Do we say fist or feet violence? How about baseball bat violence or cast-iron-frying-pan violence? It’s time to call violence what it really is – violence – regardless of the mechanism used.
- Loopholes – There are no legitimate loopholes. The gun show loophole doesn’t exist. The online loophole is a joke. I’ve got a good friend who has a standing offer of $10,000, which he’ll pay to anyone who can show him a website that will sell him a firearm and ship it to his home without a background check. The Charleston loophole should be renamed the FBI-incompetence loophole. Loopholes are a fallacy. Unless we’re talking about the loopholes used by urban snipers, it’s time to stop using the term.
- Pro-Gun and Anti-Gun – Instead, we should say pro-rights and anti-rights.
- Gun Rights – This term is should be replaced by human rights or civil rights.
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- High-Capacity Magazine – Standard-capacity magazine is far more accurate, even though the folks who coined the term don’t know the difference between a clip and a magazine.
- Permitless Carry – Constitutional carry is the only term for this because you do not need a permit for a Constitutional right. It’s the true intent of the Second Amendment – what the Framers had in mind. Everything else is unconstitutional.
- Concealed Carry Permit – An unconstitutional act that occurs when the government strips you of your Second Amendment rights and then sells them back to you for a set fee, but only for a limited amount of time, and only if you behave.
- Gun Control – Let’s use crime control instead, rather than focusing on the weapon a criminal chooses to use. Do we say knife control? Knives and fists and feet are used far more frequently by criminals than firearms. Besides, for the gun grabbers it’s all about control anyway.
- Gun-Control Advocate – Anti-rights activist.
- Smart Guns – Smart guns are pure science fiction. The tech simply isn’t there. We should call them Sci-Fi guns. I will start carrying a smart gun when Mr. Spock beams one into the glovebox of my flying car.
- Ghost Gun – Americans were building firearms at home long before there was a United States of America. To be clear, it is perfectly legal to build a firearm in your home. I’ve been referring to them as home builds.
- Arsenal – How many times have you read a news story about an arrestee who had an “arsenal” of weapons in his or her home, even if it was just a handful of firearms and a couple boxes of ammunition? What the legacy media refers to as an arsenal, I refer to as a collection or a good start.
- Concealable Assault Weapon – This term is new, and the Dems already want to ban them. It was recently coined by the gun prohibitionists to describe an AR pistol with a brace. It is the dumbest term they have ever come up with since assault pistol, which they invented to describe the TEC-9. I burst out laughing every time I hear a cable TV news actor use it in a sentence. Let’s let them have this one. It’s hilarious.
- Commonsense – Commonsense sounds like a good term. We do need commonsense gun laws. However, the problem is who gets to decide what’s commonsensical. If it’s the folks inside the Beltway, we’ve got problems. Best not to use the term.
- Second Amendment Infringements – Civil rights violations.
- Strong Gun Laws – Show me a state with strong gun laws and I’ll show you a state with strong civil-rights violations.
- National Firearms Act of 1934 and Gun Control Act of 1968 – Draconian, unconstitutional gun laws written by grandstanding politicians in response to two specific criminal acts committed by a notorious gangster and a communist lunatic.
- Gun Owners – How about well-informed voters.
- Hollow Points – Standard defensive ammunition.
- Mass Shooting – How about just calling it a shooting
- Mass Shooter – Felon or murderer.
- Military Grade or Milspec – The media uses the terms interchangeably to imply that a military grade or milspec firearm is super lethal or extra-scary. It’s a derisive term. Most civilian ARs and AKs are not military grade or milspec. They’re lightyears beyond that. Today’s ARs are far superior to anything made for the DoD by the lowest bidder.
- Silencer or suppressor – Gun muffler.
- Need – The anti-civil rights crowd constantly brings up need – as in no one needs a AR. I can’t find the term in the Second Amendment. I’ve looked. Just like deer hunting – it’s not there.
- NRA, GOA, SAF, JPFO, FPC, CCRKBA and all others – Civil rights organizations.
- Giffords, Everytown, Demanding Moms, the Brady Bunch and the Biden administration – Anti-civil rights organizations.
and last but not least…
- Gun grabbers – Gun grabbers. Well, maybe not that one as it so well fits.
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About Lee Williams
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer”, has been writing about the Second Amendment, firearms, the firearms industry, and the gun culture for more than 10 years. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
The Marxist totalitarians call themselves liberals, there is nothing Libertarian about them.
They have been corrupting the language and history for quite some period of time, they use race when they are the originators of the KKK and racism.
“Assault Weapon – True assault weapons use intermediate-length cartridges and are capable of select-fire.”
This is false, or “fake language” in the author’s terms. There is no such thing as an assault weapon, except for that fake definition in the now-expired Clinton gun ban law. There is, however, such thing as an assault rifle, which follows the above definition.
While we still have a touch of common nonsense in our laws, I believe Texas has fairly strong gun control laws. (1) state preemption (2) starting in September – constitutional carry for pistols (3) already had lo CC for long arms (4) firearms businesses declared “essential” (5) restriction on individual officers ability to infringe – no stops purely for carrying and (5) 2A sanctuary. Would like to see us go further with (1) public school training and free online legal classes and (2) 2A sanctuary expanded to require TX LEO to stand aside if federal agents get in gun fight… Read more »
“There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the corruption of language.” George Orwell
NRA is NOT a “Civil Rights Organization”, as it supported the 1934 NFA, GCA 1968 and other second amendment restrictions!
In Wyatt Earp with Kurt Russell as Wyatt. Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday, tells Wyatt that “there’s no normal life, there’s just life.” There is NO such thing as “gun violence”, there’s just Violence. Much of it perpetrated by violent, vicious, media (movies, tv shows, video games, print, etc.). Until that changes, the psyche of the youth will never know consequences and we’ll never know peace.
Even more basic: HUMAN rights violations. “Civil” rights are rights “created” by governments to accompany the particular mechanisms of those governments (e.g., voting, treatment of released convicts). Human rights are basic, universal and independent of the form of government you live under.
Silencer or suppressor- Commonsense hearing protection
Old adage: “He who defines the words… wins the argument.”
Republicans are absolutely the worst at messaging on almost every issue. The Democrats always run circles around them, with their many lies. We must get in the trench with the Democrats and verbally duke it out to expose them. I have contacted Congressmen and requested that they please use better messaging, but they seem to be more interested in going to the golf course during the day and bars at night, and chasing women (and money). A big example is the Democrats constantly lying to the public that AR-15s are “weapons of war.” I simply asked these Congressmen to publicly… Read more »