Ramesh is wrong
but that doesn’t mean he should apologize. The AK-47 (an automatic rifle) is not and never has been illegal; but it is very severely regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934, which covers automatic firearms. The (now-expired) 1994 Clinton ban on so-called “assault weapons” had nothing to do with automatic weapons, including the AK-47. The ban applied to about 200 firearms with a military appearance, yet had nothing to do with real automatic military weapons. Kerry makes a big deal about being a hunter (he wants to “hunt and kill terrorists,” supposedly), but the “assault weapon” ban was about the cosmetics of ordinary guns, not about automatics, as I detailed
for NRO.