So what if the media refers to “AR-15-style assault rifles?”

It’s all the same thing, right, maybe even redundant, if AR stands for Assault Rifle? Wrong. AR-15 is not the same thing as “assault rifle,” and by lumping the two together, the AR-15 suddenly sounds much more ominous than it really is. AR-15 stands for ArmaLite rifle, which is the name for the company that first developed it in the 1950s. AR-15s are little more than fancy looking rifles that citizens may own. “Assault rifle” refers to military weapons, generally fully automatic rifles available only to the military.  The Blaze has a full explanation here. Yet do a google search on “AR-15-style assault rifle” and you pull up thousands of results where the mainstream media combines the two, when it should only be referring to AR-15s.