America’s ‘gun culture’: Does anyone actually know what an ‘assault weapon’ is?

Before British coverage of the American debate on gun control goes any further, I have to hope the BBC and a lot of other Anglo-Saxons who really ought to be better informed try to find out what they are talking about. The chatter started up again last week after President Obama’s State of the Union address.

I don’t mean the ignorance here of the origin of the right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, thought there is that, too. The amendment was not an invention of James Madison, the principle author of first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights. In the Second Amendment, Madison was simply affirming the right to bear arms which the people of the 13 States had inherited from English law. Any educated American shooter will point to English documents from the 1328 Statute of Northampton to Coke’s Institutes of the Laws of England to prove it.

In fact, in protecting the right to keep and bear arms – something the British abandoned only in the 20th century – the Americans are now more English than the English.

But what really makes me cringe when I listen to anyone here talking about ‘America’s gun culture’ is their shocked talk about ‘assault weapons.’