In May of 2018, Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) wrote an opinion column for USA Today in which he called for significant increases in gun control following the murder of Gary Jackson, a 28-year-old security guard from Oakland, California, whose killer was armed with an "AK-47-style semi-automatic assault rifle."

Swalwell was the prosecutor in the case, and his exposure to Jackson's autopsy reports emboldened him to seek significant gun control legislation at the federal level. Invoking the justification-induced power of the pronoun we, Swalwell wrote:

We should ban possession of military-style semi-automatic assault weapons, we should buy back such weapons from all who choose to abide by the law, and we should criminally prosecute any who choose to defy it by keeping their weapons.

Congressman Swalwell pointed to gun control measures in Australia as his inspiration for a buyback program to help get these firearms off the street, though there are many who disagree with such methods.

The Dubious Definition of "Assault Weapon"

There is predictably plenty of Second Amendment discussion to be had with this sort of statement by an elected official. The first debate is the gratuitous use by Swalwell and many other pro-gun control enthusiasts of the word assault, such as assault rifle or assault weapons.

This has been a contentious issue, to put it mildly, but according to Bruce H. Kobayashi and Joseph E. Olson, writing for the Stanford Law and Policy Review, the term "assault weapon" didn't even exist prior to 1989. They argue that "assault rifles" were firmly understood to refer to fully automatic weapons, meaning that multiple rounds would be fired with one pull of the trigger.