Call 'assault weapons' what you want, the result's the same

Many pundits and analysts have been recently pleading, predictably, that we don't understand what "assault weapons" really are. Here are just a couple of examples:

Is it fair to call them 'assault weapons'?

http://wapo.st/10gGTnk

Some myths about assault weapons

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/01/18/179907/commentary-some-myths-about-assault.html

It reminds me of the nutty '90s, before and after President Bill Clinton's assault-weapons ban, when gun nuts like G. Gordon Liddy used to maintain, pedantically, that what the Crime Bill really banned were "assault-type weapons." As if that made any difference.

Look, whatever you call them, these high-capacity, semi-automatic firearms are not used to bake souffle, hunt deer or protect a home. They are offensive weapons designed to kill a lot of human beings very quickly.

And that's just what Adam Lanza did at Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012. 

Afterward, investigators found "multiple 30-round magazines and hundreds of bullets" where he killed 26 people, most of them 6- and 7-year-olds, in a matter of seconds, with a semi-automatic .223 rifle. Some of the victims were shot as many as 11 times at close range. One of the semi-automatic pistols on Lanza was never even used. It wasn't needed. The other 10 mm pistol found on Lanza was used only once... when Lanza shot himself in the head.