Yep. Same here. The only things I called weapons were my issued M-4 battle rifle and my issued 9mm. Then I called the M-4 the primary and the 9mm the secondary. Machine guns such as the M-2, the M-240, the MK-19 and the MK-44 were all crew served weapons since it took more than one person to keep them shooting.

However, as others have already noted, it doesn't matter what you call them because some brain dead dolt will want to outlaw them.

Good Lord you Navy guys make things complicated.

When I was in the Army, we called M-16s weapons (I think weapon may have become the preferred term in the wake of Full Metal Jacket: "This is my weapon, this is my gun . . ."); gun referred to machine guns (or a mortar crew, i.e., 2 Gun); and I don't remember what we called pistols.

More seriously, I think perception counts a little. Not for the antis, but for the people in the middle who haven't made up their minds, or those who are not anti gun or hunting per se but might support some restrictive laws they believe are reasonable.

Anti's will use what ever they want. If they wanted bats banned, they will call a bat an assault club. If they wanted pointed sticks banned, they will call them assault sticks.

I believe the training in boot camp went something like this: This one's my rifle, this one's my gun......

If someone stabs a person to death with a screwdriver I guess it's now an "assault tool".

Or to take it to an even more absurd level...... a rapist murders his female victim by strangling her with her own lace stockings. Now we have.... Heaven help us..... assault lingerie.

Yes, Heaven help us. LMAO.

In the military, I was compelled to call an M16 a 'weapon', whether I like it or not, but calling an M60 a "gun" was acceptable. Being a civilian now, I no longer have any use for playing that jazz. I was never fond of the military and I try to forget it as much as possible. I am a total civilian now and my semantics bare witness to that as well.

Once the listener or reader understands what kind of gun I am talking about in a conversation be it a rifle, revolver, self-loading handgun, machine gun, paint gun, air gun, BB gun, staple gun, shotgun or muzzleloader, the term GUN is used by me from then on.

It is a very simple word to say and type and I like the sound of this three-letter word like Johnny Carson was fond of the word HAT.

There might be a caveat to that one. Because liberals say a women only needs to urinate herself or vomit to stop a rape. So in their eyes, she deserved the death if she did not do the above, therefore exonerating the lingerie.

ha ha i like it