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In reply to the discussion: 'No More Weapons!' billboard placed on US border [View all]boppers
(16,588 posts)So, is a burst fire weapon automatic? Your definition says no.
Is a rechambering weapon... automatic in some way?
"In legal and colloquial terms" in your head, and in my head, are different places. They are also different places in the law.
"can only be intended to get someone detained by the government"
Well, that's a mighty limited view of the world. Perhaps thinking about one's use of words, and the history of weapon design, and ways of evading laws about weapon design, are possibilities you had not considered.
Do you know what a "Hellfire" is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_trigger
I get it, really, I do.
Smug gun owners complain about "ignorance", and claim that a source is bad if it does not use the boutique phrasing found in gun culture. So, since I'm spanning both cultures, let me explain it to you, as the non-gun folks, that I know, see it:
Non-automatic weapon: Each round is loaded separately, manually. Rate of fire is maybe 2-3 per second at maximum, as slow as 3 per minute with revolutionary war weapons, as fast as five in three seconds with a bolt action weapon, and single-action revolvers (in the hand of speed shooters) push the limits.
Automatic weapon: Rounds are automatically loaded. Rate of fire is easily 10 per second up to 300/500 per second with gunpowder, and a metalstorm can send 1800 rounds downrange in a single second.
This is not just a terminology debate, it's an awareness debate. It's not just "Ha ha, people who don't know guns used a word differently", it's also "Dayum, I am superior to these people, because of the way I use a word" issue.
A semi-automatic is, in part, automatic. It's in the word pairing.