What is an "Assault Weapon"?

Both of you bring up good points, but I think the deeper issue is that the general public often learns about firearms almost entirely through media or headlines rather than hands-on knowledge. Because of that, visual appearance ends up shaping perception more than function.

When people hear “assault weapon,” they tend to picture a specific type of rifle because that’s the image that gets shown the most in news coverage or movies. The reality is that firearm mechanics are much more nuanced than that.

I think where the discussion should probably go from here is figuring out how to bridge that knowledge gap. If the public understood the differences between firearm types better, the policy debates might become more focused on specific mechanics and use cases instead of broad labels that mean different things to different people.