One of the telltale signs you’re living in a progressive nightmare is when leftists have infiltrated every single facet of society and begin implementing fundamental changes to the language to reflect their own personally held values.
A good case in point is how Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary has now joined the front lines of the left-wing attack on the Second Amendment by changing up the definition of “assault rifle” in the wake of the Parkland shooting.
The Federalist is reporting:
Soon after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary changed its definition of “assault rifle.”
The entry for “assault rifle,” which was updated March 31, 2018, reads as follows:
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.
After 17 people were shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February, activists have been using the tragic events to make the sale of so-called “assault weapons” illegal.
An Internet archive search shows the Merriam-Webster entry for “assault rifle” appears to be different now than it was before the shooting. A cached version of the same entry from June 13, 2016 has this definition:
noun: any of various automatic or semiautomatic rifles with large capacity magazines designed for military use.
The actual, proper use of the term “assault weapon” has always been in reference to fully automatic machine gun style weapons, which have been banned in the United States for civilian purchase for quite some time.
This new definition concocted by Merriam-Webster essentially makes any gun that has a similar appearance to such a weapon, an assault rifle, despite the fact they do not at all operate like one.
Co-opting the language like this is a ploy by the left to get weapons Americans actually have the right to own banned from public sale and is a stepping stone to a complete repeal or ban on the sale of all firearms.
If a case can be made that AR-15s, which are semi-automatic — meaning you have to pull the trigger for each round to fire — should be banned, then what is to stop gun grabbers from eventually making the same call for 9mm handguns? They both require individual trigger pulls for each round.
Words have meaning, and the meaning matters.
