VPC Claims Mini-14 Is "Poor Man's Assault Rifle"

In the wake of revelations that the deranged killer in Norway used a Ruger Mini-14, the Violence Policy Center has released a "report" calling the Mini-14 the "poor man's assault rifle." This term came from "Assault Pistols, Rifles and Submachine Guns" - an old, out-of-date book (published in 1986) - by Duncan Long

The MRSP for the base model of the Ruger Mini-14 is $881. The price for the model they feature in the "report" is $921. Street prices for these rifles are still in the upper $600 range. Those are U.S. prices. I imagine it is much higher priced in Europe.
The Violence Policy Center then goes into exhaustive detail from the deranged killer's 1500 page manifesto about why he went with the Ruger Mini-14. They, of course, call it a "militarized weapon" which can defeat body armor and are easily available in the United States. Mind you, the deranged killer was Norwegian and bought his rifle under the extremely strict Norwegian gun control laws.

Again, it is the implement that the gun prohibitionists blame and not the killer. Nowhere on their site do I see anything about the killer's access to fertilizer with which he constructed a car bomb that killed 7 people.

This "research" is typical of VPC. They use obscure books and articles to condemn the firearm, quote extensively from a deranged man's "manifesto", and, by doing so, give him the publicity he so desparately was seeking.