Reading this I wondered ? I assumed it was only about really large weapons.
Routh has a criminal record dating back to at least 2002, when he was convicted in Guilford County, North Carolina, on one felony count of possession of a weapon of mass destruction, according to a review of state court records.
I just saw this post that clarified it was a fully automatic machine gun. Weapon of mass destruction sounds like a nuke, but from a legislative perspective, I can see how a fully automatic machine gun would qualify.
If you keep reading it is infact a modified firearm
The weapon of mass destruction charge was brought against Routh over a fully-automatic machine gun he had, according to the News & record.
“We know where the are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense while being publicly questioned on the validity of claims of WMDs in lead up to invasion of Iraq.
Rumsfeld of the “known knowns”.
Maybe he just owned land with oil reserves in the ground?
That was the traditional meaning of the word, yes. However it has been horribly misused to push headlines and in the legal arena it has been used to push for harder penalties on what would be considered traditional weapons.
It’s a pet peve of mine because it dilutes the word, but home made preasure cooker bombs have been called WMDs in the US and people seem OK with it.
The US government now uses it to charge people indiscriminately. I see the term in my local headlines once a month, at least, where someone gets tagged with this BS charge.
As one person said I used to think ‘dear God they must have a nuke in the basement’ but anymore you find out the person just had a sawed off shotgun or possibly the parts for a homemade silencer and a prosecutor got an instant hard on.
