So what, exactly is the difference between an assault style rifle, like the Remington R-25
http://www.remington.com/rifles/modern-sporting/model-r-25-gii/model-r-25-gii
and the Remington Model 750?
http://www.realguns.com/images/aftrshtimgpc.jpg
http://www.realguns.com/Commentary/comar197.htm
Or the Browning BAR?
http://www.browning.com/products/firearms/rifles/bar/current-production/bar-mark-3.html
They're all semi-automatic. They all take replaceable box magazines. They are all available chambered for similar cartridges. They are all marketed as hunting weapons. The differences are entirely cosmetic. One of them is a scary, high tech, military looking rifle, and each of the others is a conventional looking “sporting” rifle that bears a resemblance to the autoloading shotguns from the same manufacturer.
The differences are entirely cosmetic, yet one is a "sporting rifle", and the other, in the minds of many, is "a weapon of war". (Even though it isn't, but that's another argument.)*Updated, as Remington no longer produces the 750.- Alan Petrillo Robert, the flaw in that is the fleetingly small portion of violent crime committed with assault style rifles. Depending on whose figures you believe, 93%-97% of all violent crimes committed with guns are committed with handguns. So one of the questions the gun control lobby need to ask themselves is how much effort and political capital are they willing to spend on a law that will at best affect only about 4% of violent crime committed with guns, and about 2% of violent crime overall?
- Alan Petrillo And I'll stand by my statement here: The only differences between the R-25 and the 750 are entirely cosmetic.
- Robert Luis Rabello I agree with you on the cosmetic issue. However, I've ALSO learned that the actual numbers on gun-related crime have been stifled by legislation intended to obscure the issue for political purposes. It's hard to make intelligent decisions about what works based on flawed data.
- Robert Luis Rabello The UNDC, for example, tracks homicide statistics. (You can download an Excel spreadsheet, here: http://www.unodc.org/.../en/data-and-analysis/homicide.html ) Germany has a much lower percentage of homocides by firearm, and a fraction of ours as a percentage of population. Australia's percentage of homocides by firearm has been dropping since they enacted stricter rules on gun access. Canada's homocide rate per 100 000 population stands at .5, while our was 3.3 in 2009. People still have guns up here. I've gone shooting with my friend, Maurice, who has an enviable arsenal of personal weapons. So why is the homocide rate so much lower here? Could it be that laws restricting access to weapons and requiring registration actually work?
But in the United States, the paranoia of government confiscating weapons is so intense, no rational discussion of gun restrictions is possible. 
- Alan Petrillo Well, Robert, whatever we've been doing for the past 2 decades we must be doing something right, because the homicide rate in the United States has fallen by half in the past 20 years and continues to decline.
- Robert Luis Rabello Yes, it's true. But the same is true in Canada, too. Perhaps the article you posted earlier about lead is the underlying cause. It still begs the question, "Why is a country that is so similar to ours in terms of culture, language and history, so different in terms of its firearms-related homicide rate?"
- Alan Petrillo That is indeed a very good question.
- Robert Luis Rabello And once we cut through the hype and rhetoric, we might be able to find the answer. However, howling for gun bans and screaming insurrection out of fear of said gun bans are not helping with a rational discussion of the issue.
- Alan Petrillo Definitely!
- Alan Petrillo See, here's part of my problem with the idea of reinstating the Clinton era assault weapon ban. The definition of what constituted an "assault weapon" was three or more "evil features". Two of those evil features were semi-automatic action and a replaceable magazine. The 750 already has 2 of those features simply as a sporting gun. The other features were almost entirely cosmetic. One of the evil features was a pistol grip stock. If I were to take a perfectly legal pistol grip stock, which would be perfectly legal on an 870 or 1100 shotgun, and put that perfectly legal part onto the 750 then that would constitute "conversion into a banned weapon", which was a felony.
But it was worse than that.
Mere possession of the parts for the conversion constituted "functional conversion", which was, and is, also a felony.
During the Clinton era ban, the way manufacturers got around the pistol grip rule was to put a brace between the base of the pistol grip and the toe of the stock, at which point it became a "thumb hole stock". The proposal for the reinstated ban would also list the thumb hole stock as an "evil feature". Seriously, we're talking about something here which is 99% cosmetic in function. - Robert Luis Rabello I agree. The definition of what constitutes an "assault rifle" is a slippery thing, at best. I've fired an beautiful .30 caliber SKS rifle that my friend, Maurice, owns. It's a bolt-action rifle, but in the hands a trained or determined shooter, it could certainly empty its magazine in a hurry. That weapon was designed for the military, which, in reality, makes it an "assault rifle," even though it's not semi automatic.
President Clinton's "assault weapons ban" was lousy legislation from the outset. It was full of holes and exemptions, and the gun industry lobbied hard to ensure it wouldn't be enforced. After a ban like that was passed in California, gun makers simply modified their weapons for sale in California. That's why I think a ban is unlikely to be effective, unless we can get industry on board.
But the demographics of gun ownership nearly guarantee that sales will decline in the future. So I think the arms industry has a vested economic interest in heating up the hype and hysteria. It's good for sales . . . - Alan Petrillo Uh... Actually, an SKS is semi-automatic. Unless his was modified, which is a possibility. Some of them were modified to make them "bolt action" in that instead of a gas system to cycle the action the shooter had to do it by hand, kind of making it a straight-pull bolt action. This was actually one of the work-arounds for the Clinton era ban. A couple of AK variants came out in which manufacturers took off the gas system, put on a movable forearm, and made it a slide action gun.
- Alan Petrillo The majority of the problem with the Clinton era assault weapons ban was not so much that it was lousy legislation, it was, but it was simply the wrong legislation trying to solve a problem that didn't really exist.
- Robert Luis Rabello Ah, maybe it had been modified for Canadian rules . . ?
- Alan Petrillo There is that.
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