Lever Action Rifles, The Really Poor Man's Assault Rifle
Hot on the heels of complaining about the popularity of Glock pistols, the Violence Promotion Policy Center (VPC) has released another report titled "The Ruger Mini-14, The Poor Man's Assault Rifle. Obviously I'm not linking directly to VPC material (they get no link love from me) but No Lawyers - Only Guns and Money has a nice writeup and a link to the paper:
In the wake of revelations that the deranged killer in Norway used a Ruger Mini-14, the Violence Policy Center [Direct VPC Link Removed] has released a "report" calling the Mini-14 the "poor man's assault rifle." This term came from "Assault Pistols, Rifles and Submachine Guns" - an old, out-of-date book (published in 1986) - by Duncan Long
The MRSP for the base model of the Ruger Mini-14 is $881. The price for the model they feature in the "report" is $921. Street prices for these rifles are still in the upper $600 range. Those are U.S. prices. I imagine it is much higher priced in Europe. The Violence Policy Center then goes into exhaustive detail from the deranged killer's 1500 page manifesto about why he went with the Ruger Mini-14. They, of course, call it a "militarized weapon" which can defeat body armor and are easily available in the United States. Mind you, the deranged killer was Norwegian and bought his rifle under the extremely strict Norwegian gun control laws.
You know what else can defeat body armor and is easily available in the United States? Lever action rifles, which must make them the really poor man's assault rifle. Likewise I can get a pretty nice entry level AR-15 for the price of a Mini-14 so if I'm going to go for the poor man's assault rifle I might as well go all out and buy something that's scarier looking (according to anti-gunners).
I also find it interesting that the Norwegian psychopath was able to get a select fire rifle when I can't even get those here with our "loose" gun laws. Well he either obtained a select fire weapon or VPC is lying by saying the Mini-14 is an assault rifle because assault rifles by definition have the ability to go full auto. I'm just saying an organization willing to lie about what kind of weapon a specific rifle is likely lying about other things as well.