the term “automatic weapon” typically refers to a weapon (other than a shotgun) that fires more than one round with a single trigger pull. As far as I know, the shooter’s weapons were semiautomatic.
Not quite.
“Automatic” guns are guns that, when the trigger is pulled, both expel and rechamber a round and the hammer is pulled back ‘automatically’. The trigger may only causeone bullet to fire at a time. A magazine loading 7 round handgun is an automatic. (Most) Shotguns and revolvers are not automatics.
The term semi-automatic is a euphemism used to refer to guns that fire one bullet, but still reload the chamber and pull the hammer. Think of a slide. When the trigger is pulled the slide ejects the chamber, reloads the chamber, and hairpins the trigger; all of the internal process of a fully automatic, but with only one round per engagement with the trigger.
That wiki doesnt have very good references. Furthermore, it never uses the term “automatic weapon” which is what I was responding to, in addition the term “automatic gun” is rarely heard and something of a misnomer.
if you go into a gun store and ask to see the automatic weapons, they might show you semiautos, because they assume that you dont know what youre talking about, but they are just as likely (if not more) to show you their class III merchandise or explain the gun control act of 1964 to you. If you refer to a semiauto pistol as an “automatic” around people who use firearms, they will probably tell you that “no, your kel-tec is not a machine pistol.”
“semiautomatic” is not a euphemism (is “automatic” considered profane?), it is a descriptive term for a weapon that cycles automatically but does not permit automatic fire.
Note your quoted “sometimes” vs my statement “typically.” just because people use a misnomer like “automatic pistol” to refer to an autoloader, does not make it accepted semantics among people who use firearms. People call revolvers “pistols” as well, that does not make them so.
Well that’s not good.
I thought you said you made it up? Oh well. I guess that answers that question. Now on to the others. I assume you have answers for those too? Or will you at least make up stuff to entertain us?
P.S.
It’s nice to see the IBTimes call out the media for their bullshit: “The media, once it found out about the NIH fellowship, immediately branded this guy as some kind of delicate genius. Now that narrative has been discredited. This guy was no genius. Now we are left to wonder how he managed to secure a prestigious and lucrative NIH grant with only a mediocre academic record.”
You’re welcome, random deckhand.
I mean to “imply” that when the idiot with the badge looks into the camera and says “All the evidence we have — every single indicator is that this is all Mr. Holmes’ activity, and he wasn’t particularly aided by anyone else,” he’s full of shit.
blah blah blah
Most people know nothing about guns and use ignorant phrases to describe them. An “automatic” refers to the chambering system not the firing pin. (All it takes is a rubber band and a slight bend in the firing pin to make a “semi-auto” a “full-auto.”) The same cannot be said for a gun with a manual hammer. That was all my point was.
haha, yeah. Semi-autos are automatic…SEMI refers to the TRIGGER and FIRING MECHANISM. AUTOMATIC refers to the chambering system. They used to call them autoloaders.
@JJ.
Christ man, you are a dickhead.
Not even a post made in jest can slide without you demeaning the poster.
What Malachi said, plus this.
Your link contains an incorrect definition. Malachi and I have both stressed that, semantically, people are very ignorant of classification of guns. Just look at the term “assault weapon.” It is a political term that people latch onto and connect incorrect images to. Much like “automatic.”
http://www.gunsamerica.com/Search/Category/199/Guns/Pistols/Colt-Automatic-Pistols.htm - notice how they are classed as ‘automatic’ even though they are all also “semi automatic”
It is because ‘automatic’ is a general term for the chambering system. “Semi-” and “Full-” refer to the trigger/firing mechanism.
So now the dictionary offers “incorrect definitions.” Tell me, what source do you reference to discredit the definitions provided by dictionary?
I’m not picking on you, this is just a rare opportunity to talk about things I know about (small arms) instead of what you guys know about (things Austrians said a hundred years ago).
semiautos actually have a slightly different task than fullautos, and in a fullauto mechanism there are some things that sometimes happen that you dont see in the semis. For starters, the hammer or striker actually has to be retained by a different mechanism than the sear (which is connected to the trigger) because thats what makes it fire one round only.
secondly, the process a self-loading firearm goes through is actually des ribed in textbook fashion as an 8 step process: firing the round, unlocking the breech, extracting the now-empty shell from the chamber, ejecting the shell, cocking the firing mechanism, feeding a round from the magazine, chambering the round, and locking the chamber. See, the chamber has to stay locked because if it wasnt locked up, the hot gas from the deflagrating propellant would come out of the open breech which would be unpleasant and likely hazardous to the user. A big part of the design in self-loading firearms is figuring out how to lock and unlock the breech, and make sure the timing is correct. There are three major ways to do this, although each has its own minor variations. Recoil operated firearms (thats the nomenclature, another action type is recoil operated but called something else) use a mechanical delay of some sort, frequently a rotating link that mechanically ensures that enough time has elapsed for the pressure to drop to a safe level before allowing the weapon to unlock. Recoil operated firearms cycle because the hot gas from the propellant pushes back on the bolt (or slide) face. Gas operated firearms actually bleed some of the hot gas from the fired round and use this energy to cycle the action. The delay to allow pressure levels to drop is designed into the gas travel system, somehow. Blowback firearms are the simplest, like a recoil-operated weapon, they cycle because of the equal opposing force from the deflagrated propellant. The only things keeping the chamber locked up are inertia (of the bolt or slide) and the compression resistance force of the recoil spring. So thats how all that works, in simple terms.
Another thing that is different about some automatic weapons is that they fire from an open bolt. When I told you about the cycle of operations, I related it as it pertains to closed-bolt firearms. There is a lot of waste heat involved in the process from all the propellant, and naturally this is even more of a factor with automatic weapons, so they discovered that if you heat the chamber up and then leave a round sitting in there, it will cook off and this is dangerous and unpredictable. So weapons were designed to be carried around with the bolt locked to the rear, and when you pull the trigger it does this; feeds a round, chambers the round, fires the round, extracts the shell, ejects the shell, cocks the firing mechanism; and if the trigger is still depressed it will immediately begin to feed a round. So that leads me to my third point,
this cycle of operations needs to be timed as well. Of course, this is part of the design of firearms but my point is that when the repeated firing action is always and necessarily interrupted by the need for the trigger to reset and be pulled again, and an automatic weapon does not have this opportunity. This means that automatic weapons need to have the cycle of operations timed or the weapon will fire too fast and beat itself apart. In ww2 the armorers used to sometimes modify machine guns for the guys by drilling holes in the bolt to make it lighter, and therefore cycle faster.
[/thread hijack]
I think our Aristophanes has yet again found himself out of his league, and with a foot in his mouth.
womp womp womp.
the implication being, “so should we also”?
no, as in “automatic fire.” an automatic rifle is a light machine gun. It is not your dad’s mini-14. Dont take my word for it, do some reading.
if you can do this to any of my guns*, you are the king of all hAAxxx0000Rz and I will call anything you want an automatic, even a double action revolver. But I think you heard this from someone you trust who is totally full of shit. I would like to see some evidence please.
*we are going to use a new firing pin and immediately destroy both firing pin and rubber band after the experiment. I dont need automatic weapons, else I would get a class III license.
well I must admit I am still confused as to your point. Double-action revolvers are self-loading, and capable of repeating fire, yet most of them have manual hammers. But you cannot make an ar-15 into an automatic weapon by bending the firing pin, or with a rubber band, nor both, I’m sorry, you have to show me this trick because I dont buy it for a picosecond. The same for the semiauto glocks that he used as secondary weapons, there is no full-auto hack, short of a g18. Obviously this is a semantic debate, but there are propagandic implications here as well. I refuse to give up the terms “automatic weapon”, “automatic rifle”, and “automatic pistol” so that hoplophobes, ignoramuses, and would-be tyrants can shout at each other and remain ignorant of both reality and the conventional vocabulary of the industry they wish to destroy. This is one semantic hill I am digging in on, and I have the military crest, all the avenues of approach are wired and mined, supporting arms are sighted in, and the automatic weapons are in condition one. Thats all metaphorical, I’m not shooting anyone over semantics/diction. But I will not be silent.
they are not automatic, they are autoloading. They are semiautomatic, hence the term semiautomatic pistol. Automatic weapons are also autoloaders, although infrequently referred to as such. The term “autoloader” is not archaic, as you seem to imply. I really hate to say this because the quality is so bad, but read a gun magazine someday. But take everything you read with a grain of salt.
You said
Using the word “typically” (I assume for the average TV watcher). You are right “typically” people refer to automatics as machine guns or fully automatics. All I said was that “automatic” refers to the rechambering not the bullets fired.
If you want to split hairs what prevents shotguns from being made this way? You disqualify them from this…
@JJ
Yes, or “overgeneralized definitions” or “incolmplete definitions.”
(just like “inflation” is misdefined in the average university textbook)
Tell me, why would they categorize them as “automatics” if they aren’t “automatics”? Hm? Because the dictionary (that you referenced) is using the “typical” defintion instead of the definition an actual gun owner and user would use.
Says Canada.
Dude, read my last post. I’m not challenging the accuracy of your statement, just the breadth of it.
I watched a friend’s dad do it to a G-3 he brought home. And yea, I doubt a rubber band was the case. He had the firing mechanism taken apart and showed us that the sear block prevents a full auto in the trigger through the firing pin locks. Bend and file the firing pin (or hammer…I cannot remember) and modify the sear block in order to accept full auto (although I am not sure how he notched it).
Right, cause they tie the function of the hammer to the cylinder. This is not controversial. They are called “double action” to specify their fuction from a standard revolver.
You think I want to destroy it?
This was all my point was. I thought that automatic simply overtook autoloader because automatic is referred to, colloquially, as a machine gun. A 1911 is still an “automatic,” but it is semi automatic.
because when you fire shot out of a shot gun, it releases n (where n>1) projectiles. This is what it was designed to do, which is what makes it a shotgun. 12 gauge 00 buck in 2.5 inch has like 9 pellets that are .3 inch in diameter, or something like that. It releases all those Projectiles when you fire one single round.
my use of the word “typically” was intended to refer to a typical user of firearms, who wouldnt often make a novice mistake like referring to a semiauto as though it were a machine pistol. You are incorrect, as “automatic weapon” refers to a weapon capable of producing automatic fire. So lets quit enabling those who would like to bombard television viewers with agitprop referring to the “automatic weapons” that holmes used to murder over a dozen people. Because he didnt have automatic weapons. He was firing semiauto weapons.
Yes it certainly can, but that hardly makes it correct nomenclature. Semantics is inter-subjective. We are talking about weapons, lets use established terminology.
thats backwards. The typical definition is the definition that the actual gun owner would use, because gun owners have need to talk about guns, therefore they need a common language. This necessitates the need for a degree of semantic agreement. Whereas non-gun-owners dont typically have a need to discriminate between a semiauto and an automatic weapon, they are less likely to conform to semantic adherance. They can remain ignorant of semantic distinctions, but this is a problem when you live in a place where they might vote for someone who would like to prohibit ownership of autoloading weapons, simply because he convinces them that you can buy a machine gun at the flea market.
So, I am not wrong.
You are scared that the people who call the guns the batman nut used “automatic” that you are unwilling to accept the categorization of 'automatic" as “autoloader” in the semantic field. Sure, you’ll admit, as evidenced above, that operationally I am correct, but you don’t want to admit that semantically the people who call for gun control are technically correct as well. Even if they use the term ignorantly.
It is not backwards. It looks that way to you because (paragraph above).
You wish to use the terms as the gun control lobby does…
If they say “ban automatics” but they mean fully automatic guns and I point out that semi-automatic guns have the same automatic function (chambering) then you are worried that semis will get culled as well.
no, whats going on here is that you insist that the definition of term be broadened in order to accommodate the most ignorant element of the general public, completely disregarding previously established nomenclature and the broader consequences of this semantic shift.
yah, you can convert guns if you know what youre doing. There are maybe half a percent of gun owners that have the skills to reasonably attempt this task. Most of them are professionals. also, the majority of legally prohibited home gunsmith projects end up badly for those involved, one way or another. I hope your friend’s dad was successful.
no, I am telling you that your insistence on this definition for this word is enabling the hoplophobia-mongers by equivocating between automatic weapons, which are machine guns; and semi-automatic weapons, which discharge exactly one round per trigger pull.
youre missing an important distinction, the inclusive term is “autoloader.” the exclusive terms are “automatic {weapon type}” and “semiautomatic {weapon type}”. A select-fire weapon, like a glock 18, is capable of both, and there do exist burst settings on some weapons, that permit the firing of exactly two rounds, exactly three rounds, whatever. These are all autoloaders, but not usually called such, and while some automatic weapons are capable of semiautomatic fire (even switching from open-bolt to closed-bolt operation), they are still automatic weapons because they are capable of automatic fire. Semiautomatic weapons are not capable of automayic fire, hence the necessity of the term “autoloader.”
look man, semantics is relative. You can call it whatever you want, but thats going to be out of ignorance, and its going to reveal your ignorance until you change and decide to inform yourself. You seem like youre pretty pro-freedom, you didnt like the unintended implication that you wanted to destroy the gun industry, why not support it by getting yourself something fun and cool like a walther p22 and partaking in the joy of punching holes in paper multiple feet away from you? Its awesome
Right. I see it optimistically. If we tell them that semi- and full are distictions between the ‘autoloader’ then we might enlighten them to think that they must say “machine guns” or else people will roll their eyes and check their holsters.
Seriously? My grandpa has a Chinese SKS that he said he modified before steel bullets were illegal (he also has a bucket of steel rounds!!) and it still fires full auto. I shot it when I was probably 12 years old and still have both my eyes and all my fingers. He was an engineer on a submarine in the 60’s…my friends dad is a rich dude with a lot of time and three very large gun safes.
Your inclusive/exclusive did it. I get what you are saying. And, I was not under the impression that I was the one enabling the ignorant to make their claims as I thought that by telling them that they are “not specific enough” we could divide ‘semi’ and ‘full auto’ along lines that don’t use the word “auto.”
Also, I have a ruger super blackhawk .44 that was gift from my grandpa (he has all barrell lengths). It is a western grip. I haven’t shot it in years. I have tried to get my mom to give me her Ruger SP101 (she has a lady D.E. and both are .357; she doesn’t need them both) And if I had 1,200 bucks to blow on a gun that I’ll never shoot I’d get an FN 5-7. Counter-Strike that shit!
