I’m sorry, I just don’t see the ‘benefit’ to the gun grabbers of deliberately changing the meme for this story to ‘assualt weapons’ from handguns if that were the case. If you look at firearms murders, handguns are the weapon of choice. A liberal is generally clueless about self-defense arguments, deliberately so. And we know the gun grabbers, from past statements, yearn most for a handgun ban.
I see the confusion in the first couple days of reporting as typical for news agencies falling over themselves to get a scoop in the absence of hard information. As another poster noted, much of the initial reporting about Columbine was wrong. So were the accounts that the Aurora shooter had an armored vest. So confusion is a historically viable reason for the variances.
It is easier to peel off a smaller segment of the firearm population, those who own those 'eeeevil loooking' "assault weapons" which wet the panties of the average liberal, and will unfortunately still be thrown under the bus by the occasional Fudd out there who thinks his rifles will be safe if he sacrifices yours.
They can point back and say" see, if the AWB had still been in place...", ignoring the restrictions some jurisdictions have already placed on them, and even though the semiautomatic rifle is used in fewer crimes than virtually any other class of firearms (muzzleloaders, .50 BMG, and serious competitive target rifles may be the exceptions).
Facts don't matter, their goal is their god and in their minds even the truth must bend before that.
Remember your Alinsky, and even the rhetoric falls into place.