Brain Fertilizer

Gunman kills 5, wounds 3.

Police said Vang opened fire with an assault rifle.

No. Not if Fox News is correct. It was an SKS communist bloc rifle. This is a Post-WWII-era semi-automatic rifle. It is no more an "assault" rifle than our Garand's from WWII, and a good sight less powerful. It is chambered for the 7.62x39 mm cartridge developed by the Russians in light of their recognition that conscript troops don't need rifles that can fire 6 times as far as their skills will be able to use effectively. Reduced recoil helps make training easier and cheaper, as well.

The round was developed to also be used in a true assault, the AK-47, because the reduced recoil helps with controllability somewhat.

But despite using the same cartridge, the rifles are not the same at all.

The scrollling news text bar on Fox News Channel said it was a "high-powered rifle".
No. The 7.62x39 is an deliberately underpowered round, for the reasons of recoil and range mentioned above. The same scrolling news text bar said that most of the victims were shot from between 50 and 100 yards away. That fits, because the 7.62x39 isn't very accurate, and the limit of its effective range is somewhere around 100 yards.

This will be used as an argument for gun control.

In other news, in the time since the shooting, approximately 125 people died in car accidents. Gun control activists won't even care.