What makes the AR-15 an assault weapon ☀

After another mass shooting in which an AR-15 most certainly posed a problem to many people trapped inside a nightclub, such a blasé approach to powerful civilian weapons may be harder to maintain. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a great 20th-century philosopher and a veteran of the first world war, wrote in his “Philosophical Investigations” that when “we employ the word ‘meaning’,’’ we are most often referring to the everyday purpose of some phrase. “The meaning of a word”, he wrote, “is its use in the language”. By that sensible if trivial standard: if an AR-15 can be used to assault large crowds of people, killing and maiming scores of them, on multiple occasions, it qualifies as an assault weapon.