Newspeak

In George Orwell’s classic work Nineteen Eighty-Four the totalitarian government is developing a language called “Newspeak” rather than a language that makes communication easier, it makes it more difficult by REMOVING words from the lexicon. The idea being that if you control the language you can control the thoughts of the people using the language.

Now what’s really interesting is when “Progressives” speak words mean what they say they mean, and any reference to an actual lexicon is irrelevant. Take this article about the Occupy DC lunatic who fired shots at the White House.

Hernandez used a cheap but powerful Chinese- made assault rifle when he fired shots at the White House. His SKS rifle carried rounds high-powered enough to crack a bullet resistant window, even after traveling one-third of a mile from Constitution Avenue.

Ahh the SKS Rifle I have one, its hardly the best rifle on the planet, but they’re functional, and fun to shoot.

But calling an SKS an “Assault Rifle”? Well let’s look at the term.

An assault rifle is a selective fire (selectable between semi-auto and fully automatic) rifle (capable of being fired from the shoulder) that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine.

Ok first up, let’s further clarify that the SKS, unlike the various guns popular in civilian gun safes is not a variant of a military rifle…these are honest-to-goodness military rifles, and the condition my SKS is in is identical to how any soldier who was issued one was in.

An SKS is indeed in an intermediate cartridge the 7.62x39mm cartridge was actually designed for the SKS rifle, and was considerably less powerful than the 7.62x54R cartridge used in the Mosin Nagant rifles that the SKS, and later the AK-47 replaced. So intermediate cartridge, but the SKS is semi-auto only, and it runs off of a fixed 10-round box magazine. Nope not an “Assault Rifle”. Well we all know the term “Assault Weapon” was deliberately coined to confuse people with the term “Assault Rifle”.

“Assault 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.”

–Josh Sugarmann executive director and founder of the Violence Policy Center

The term was designed to be so confusing that most anti-rights activists interchange the terms freely. Let’s see what those things are:

Very generally speaking, a semi-automatic firearm is defined by these laws as an assault weapon if it has both a detachable magazine and a pistol grip, sometimes in conjunction with other features such as a folding stock or a muzzle break. Assault weapons are often similar in appearance to military firearms, but are capable of firing only once each time the trigger is pulled.

The SKS in its stock military configuration does have a bayonet lug (and integral bayonet), but no extended pistol grip, muzzle device, or folding stock. Still, the gun does not accept a detachable magazine, so again, not even an “Assault Weapon”. The term for the SKS is “A Rifle”. And not a terribly powerful one at that.

Furthermore news reports are now saying he fired NINE shots at the White House.

NINE! As in One-less-than-Ten! Note that 10 is the magical count the anti-rights people are claiming no gun should hold more of. Careful guys we might notice that a 30 round magazine shot down range is no big deal, but a single shot fired at the White House is quite relevant. Almost like its the people USING the guns that’s important not the guns used! (novel Concept)

So again, more of the anti-rights forces attempting to demonize firearms rather than look at the real issue (note they also don’t seem to discuss much about the various Occupy groups rioting, raping, murdering, and the overall tone of Antisemitism held by the group that this gentleman belonged to) which is violent people.

Oh BTW, if you’re at all interested in SKS rifles, the prices on them spiked when President Obama was elected, but they’ve appeared to have plateaued at a VERY reasonable point, you can buy the Yugo variant here, they’re neat rifles as they have a grenade adapter on the muzzle, and night sights. They aren’t making any more of them so these prices will only go up!

Pick one up and have some fun at the range! It’ll really piss the bad people of the world off!