Talk:Assault weapon

The page is linked to from pages about Canada

So clearly just describing how ONE political party in ONE country used the word is inadequate. 2604:3D09:D78:1000:377E:61DF:3EAC:2898 (talk) 15:08, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Good point. But as a starting point, this is an article about a fluid American political term, not a type of firearm. North8000 (talk) 15:12, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Is there any reason the scope of the article can't include analogous legislation in other countries? VQuakr (talk) 16:12, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Keeping in mind that "this is an article about a fluid American political term, not a type of firearm." The issue is "analogous in what way?" North8000 (talk) 18:32, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

In the way that the term and concept is also used in Canadian firearms legislation/politics. [1]. VQuakr (talk) 18:51, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

@VQuakr: Sorry, I missed your post at the time. Not sure what to say; they threw around all kinds of terms in what was covered in that article including 2 different ones with "assault" in them (including conflating with the "assault rifle", the full auto firearms which only the military gets to have) but didn't use the term "assault weapon" and this article is really about a term. But it might be good to include what you linked beacuse it shows use os similar sounding terms in political context. North8000 (talk) 17:05, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the ping. I do not really agree this article is about a term. It is about the vaguely defined grouping of firearms that the various definitions of the term classify. It is therefore about a political concept. But the specific phrase "assault weapon" was indeed used in connection with the Canadian program, [2]. VQuakr (talk) 17:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Note on Hawaii ban on assault pistols

I think that the recently added note is out of place and that it is WP:SYNTH placing a text about the difficulty of defining the term just after the text "Hawaii defines and bans assault pistols." This gives me the impression that it is intended to tell the reader that the Hawaii ban is poorly defined.

Also, I am not at all sure that the text in the book refers to the Hawaii ban. I found the snippet of text on page 192 (which is not part of the Google Books preview), not page 351 as the citation says. Drmies, did you read the page in question to verify that the text is about Hawaii?

The note could fit somewhere, just not there, as another supporting ref for the fact that definitions of these weapons are often unclear and disputed, but maybe not where it is now. Sjö (talk) 16:14, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

• Sjö, I corrected the page numbers--thank you. I was able to read all those pages. The text does not refer to Hawaii, at least not on those pages, but the fact that "pistol" is already italicized in our text makes it clear that there is something about the word, something that is clarified in the note. I placed the note behind the first occurrence of the term "assault pistol". If you wish to see it elsewhere, I don't disagree necessarily, but the best thing to do is to add it as text, and that could go maybe in the first section of "Definitions and usage"--sure. Let me just state also that this brief note came from an article Assault pistol, which was blanked and redirected without much fanfare in 2020. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 16:33, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
• Sjö, if you feel like writing, I'm seeing a lot of news hits because whatever an assault pistol really is, it was used in the 2023 Monterey Park shooting, where eleven people were killed. Some of that coverage specifically addresses the term ([3], [4]), and it may be illegal in California, which I suppose should also be itemized in that list with state law definitions. There's more to say on the topic and all its vagueries; the Trace article can do that, and there's this as well. I'm not sure this should be cited. This might be helpful though. Drmies (talk) 16:42, 18 July 2024 (UTC)