Cosmetics and Guns

One of the dumbest things that the anti-gunners do is try to define guns by cosmetic features. You can see this in California, where you can buy an AR-15 if it does not have features such as a collapsible stock, a pistol grip, a flash suppressor or a bayonet mount. Those things are largely cosmetics.

Let's look at some examples from an earlier age.

First up, the Mauser Karabiner-98. This was the standard rifle for the Wehrmacht Herre for two world wars. The Kar-98 is quite possibly the finest military bolt-action rifle made. The basic Mauser design has been copied and re-copied and "improved."
During the Second World War, Germany converted firearms plants all over occupied Europe to make Kar-98s. After the war ended, a lot of those plants continued to make the rifles to rebuild their armies and for foreign sales. Then many of those plants began making civilian versions of the Kar-98. After 110 years, Mausers and Mauser-inspired rifles are still in production.

During the 1970s and 1980s, a company named Interarms began importing civilian Mausers from Yugoslavia. The Mk-X Mauser was imported in a wide variety of chamberings. Compare this rifle to the one above.
The bluing is a lot prettier. The Mk-X cannot take a bayonet, nor does it have a full-length stock. Military rifles have full-length stocks with handguards over the top of the barrel. That is so that a soldier can grab the rifle and move fast (or use it for bayoneting the enemy) without burning his hands, as a rifle barrel with several rounds through it gets awfully hot. The action itself is no different.

Now put a telescopic sight on that Mk-X and you have this rifle.


Functionally, it is no different from this rifle, a Soviet Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle from World War Two.


Both rifles shoot similar cartridges, .30-06 versus 7.62x54R. Both rifles hold five rounds. Both rifles have telescopic sights. Both rifles even have magazine floorplates that open to dump out the unfired rounds. You can buy a replacement civilian stock for the Mosin for not much money. But it is still the same rifle.

The purpose of both rifles is to put a single aimed shot into a target at long distances. Military rifles such as these are frequently used for target shooting and for hunting. During virtually every war of the 20th Century, from the Western Front in World War I to the Bosnian Wars of the 1990s, civilian hunting rifles were pressed into service as sniper rifles.

The differences are a matter of cosmetics. Distinguishing between the two types of rifles, in that one is a military rifle and the other is a civilian rifle, is a matter of form over function. That is why the attempts to split hairs between what is a "military rifle" and what is a "civilian rifle" are basically stupid.