“noun: any of various intermediate-range, magazine-fed military rifles (such as the AK-47) that can be set for automatic or semiautomatic fire; also : a rifle that resembles a military assault rifle but is designed to allow only semiautomatic fire.”
Ok, so we own assult rifles now. Legally, but they are still not machineguns… nor doesn the second amendment say the government can ban certain arms. It says the government cannot encroach on the peoples right to bear arms.
Encroach:advance gradually beyond usual or acceptable limits.
Also based in this, we should be fighting the other way:
Edit, actually according to that definition, a semi-auto air rifle that resembles a real assault rifle is an assault rifle, since their definition of “rifle” is a weapon, not a firearm.
M-W philosophy of language is descriptive not prescriptive like the American Heritage. This goes back to the 1960s. They have a view that if a word is used a certain way, that way is correct. No different than gender fluidity and anything in postmodern sociology.
But MW is not authoritative. They just want you to think that.
Right, this isn’t aimed at us (pun intended) this is propaganda for the uniformed, already in their minds all evil black rifles are the same and need to be banned and now M-W says so. This is straight out of Orwell’s 1984.
"Although Orwell felt that these ideas were too technical to completely integrate into the novel, they support the novel’s stance on language and thought in relation to the public’s acceptance of governmental control.
Newspeak is the official language of Oceania, scheduled for official adoption around 2050, and designed to make the ideological premises of Ingsoc (Newspeak for English Socialism, the Party’s official political alignment) the only expressible doctrine. Newspeak is engineered to remove even the possibility of rebellious thoughts—the words by which such thoughts might be articulated have been eliminated from the language."
Common usage, that is the key. If enough people (who knows how many it takes?) misuse a word it still gets in due to common usage. It is the same reason you will see clips right alongside magazines in the dictionary.
Technically correct may be the best kind of correct, but how many informal debates do you win on technicalities? How many Congressional debates do you win on technicalities?
Maybe this means we’ll stop whining about how, “it’s not an assault rifle,” and, “it’s not a weapon of war,” when those are exactly the weapons the Constitution was intended to protect.