[TC Rider]

The segment was a rerun from a month or so back. Larry Pratt missed a good opportunity to educate BO that the "assault weapons" in question are not assault weapons at all, but semi-automatic civilian knock-offs of military type weapons which were banned simply because of their looks.

The way I heard it, O'Reilly said he supported 'a' ban on assualt weapons, then went on to correctly identify assualt weapons as bazookas and machine guns. He did not address the current AWB.

[JediJones]

Yes, that's correct, Bill was addressing the general idea of a ban on assault weapons. He didn't address any specific legislation. O'Reilly covers IDEAS on his show more than details. It's the wrong format for details anyway. So to draw out his statements to supporting any specific legislation which may have unrelated riders tacked on would be a total strawman.

[Morgan's Raider]

The way I heard it, O'Reilly said he supported 'a' ban on assualt weapons, then went on to correctly identify assualt weapons as bazookas and machine guns. He did not address the current AWB

Bazookas have, to my knowledge, never been available to the civilian market. And private ownership of machine guns essentially been banned since 1934 (licensing and ATF registration have had the basic effect of creating a "ban").

No, the only questionaire the NRA would have sent out regarding "assault weapons" in the past ten or twelve years would have been addressing the so-called "assault weapons" ban of 1994. And, as already pointed out, these were not true assault weapons and were put on the list strictly for cosmetic reasons such as flash suppressors and bayonet lugs (they've had a helluva problem with drive-by bayonettings in NYC and LA, haven't they?).

Of course Lautenberg has introduced legislation to not only renew the AWB, but to add a whole string of new weapons to the list such as the Ruger Mini-14 and Mini-30.