Yeah, it's amazing how frequently people mix up their terminology - how little the differences seem to matter to them. You correct them, and they just toss it off - like "yeah, whatever".
One would think that if gun control advocates knew what they wanted, they wouldn't get things mixed up so consistently. If people are being murdered because of some specific category of weapons, and those weapons should be kept out of the hands of people who obey laws, It's important to know exactly which weapons those are. Is it the black weapons? Is it the "military style" weapons? It is machine guns? Rifles? Handguns?
Or is it that small ubiquitous, semi-automatic firing mechanism? It all sounds emotionally irrational to me.