Originally Posted by
welsh
Hmmm, well....
Assault rifle: a centre-fire, select-fire or semi-automatic rifle firing an intermediate cartridge, fed by a detachable box magazine with a standard capacity typically of 30 rounds; may also refer to similar rifles firing full bore rifle cartridges and with correspondingly smaller magazines (FN FAL, M14), although some authorities insist on treating these as "battle rifles."
Now, someone will insist that assault rifles by definition are select-fire and not semi-auto. I used to believe that, but I've collected a pile of primary source examples, such as Guns & Ammo magazine, predating the US assault weapons ban (i.e., 1980s, early 1990s) that refer to semi-auto variants as "assault rifles." Indeed, "assault weapon" has the same origin: not from the mouths of politicians, but from the printing presses of gun magazines. Nobody in the gun world objected to this terminology until it became a political problem.
Note that this definition is also popular usage today.
So, based on that definition, we won't have to look too far to find a crime done with an "assault rifle."
Yup, based entirely on police discretion. But what they're looking for is violence.