"The semi-automatic weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun can only increase that chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons." -- Josh Sugarman, 1988, Violence Policy Center.All "liberals" lie some of the time; some "liberals" lie all of the time.
And some are ignorant, parroting stuff they heard so that they appear smart.
Case in point: A libinlaw was decrying people possessing “semi-automatic” guns. I asked him to describe a “semi-automatic” gun. He admitted he had no idea. I was actually impressed with his honesty.
I educated him on semi-auto vs select fire, and told him he was being intentionally deceived into convoluting the two concepts. Didn’t convince him to not be anti-gun, because it’s not the functionality of the gun that he opposed. But I did educate him a bit.