Straight from the horse's mouth:
Assault weapons--just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms--are a new topic. The 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 the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.
(Emphases in bold mine.)
From the Conclusion of
Assault Weapons and Accessories in America (
http://www.vpc.org/studies/awaconc.htm), published by the Violence Policy Center in 1988. This is the paper in which Josh Sugarmann essentially coined the term "assault weapon" to indicate semi-auto-only variants of military selective-fire weapons, and as we can see, he practically urges the gun control lobby to capitalize on the public's ignorance, a logical consequence of which must be that the gun control lobby must in no circumstances enlighten the public as to the difference.
He helps it along in the Introduction (
http://www.vpc.org/studies/awaintro.htm) by defining "assault firearms" as including both semi-auto-only weapons and weapons capable of automatic fire, and using highly ambiguous language to boot:
Assault firearms are semi-automatic (firing one bullet per trigger pull) and fully automatic (the weapon will keep on firing as long as the trigger is depressed) anti-personnel rifles, shotguns, and handguns that are designed primarily for military and law enforcement use.
Is he describing two classes of weapon, each with distinct modes of fire, or is he describing one class of weapons that can operate in both modes (i.e. is selective-fire)? It hardly matters, because throughout the rest of the paper, the term "assault weapon" is used to indicate semi-auto-only weapon, rendering the mention of automatic fire irrelevant and, above all, misleading.
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