In all the ruckus surrounding the shooter at the FedEx facility in Kennesaw, Georgia yesterday, one detail may have gone unnoticed by most.  The witness, FedEx clerk Liza Aiken, told the local news affiliate what the shooter looked like.  Pay attention:

“He had bullets strapped across his chest like Rambo, a huge assault rifle and he had a knife,” Aiken said.

A “huge assault rifle?”  Dear God, what kind of artillery was this monster packing?

Authorities confirmed the gunman, who was found dead in the facility from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was armed with a shotgun.

A shotgun.  Since when is a shotgun an assault rifle?  I’m pretty sure he didn’t have one of these.  They’re not really used in the US except by cartels and whatnot; the chances of some angry 19-year-old having a Class III destructive device are very low.  So low, in fact, that I’m pretty confident going on the record and saying he didn’t have one.  If I’m proven wrong later, I’ll eat my words; I guarantee you, however, that if he did actually have one, you’d have already heard all about it in detail.

The point is this: Witnesses are unreliable, and their memories often leave something to be desired during recall, especially when the memory was formed during a traumatic or highly stressful event.  This particular woman claimed that she saw a “huge assault rifle,” and even though the media found out that he was actually carrying a shotgun, they not only allowed her comment to stand, but purposely used the word “confirmed” in relation to it, thus linking the word “shotgun” with the phrase “assault rifle,” even though in 99.9% of cases in the United States, the word shotgun means anything but an assault rifle.

Naturally, this latest shooting is just more fuel for the anti-gun fire, and another blight on law-abiding gun owners.  Even if that shooter was found to have purchased the gun with cash on the same street corner where he buys his meth, even if the serials were filed off and he was found to be running a gun/drug operation on the side, you’ll hear all about how we should take guns away from everyone.  If he bought his (regular, boring) shotgun legally, then you’ll hear all about how we need to take guns away from everyone because obviously the current laws “don’t help” and “don’t keep people safe.”  Either way, ready yourself for round 786 of “guns are bad, mmmkay?”