It's not that hard, once you cleanse your brain of the lies and confusion that you have been fed by the mainstream media.
With regard to firearms…
- “Automatic” or “Fully-Automatic” means that as long as you hold the trigger, and as long as there is a supply of ammunition being fed into the gun, the gun will keep firing repeatedly. By definition, a machine gun is fully-automatic.
- “Semi-Automatic” — When you pull the trigger, the gun fires one shot, then uses some of the energy from that shot to eject the spent ground, chamber a new round, and set it up for the next shot. This is similar to how most fully-automatic guns work, with the difference being that it does not actually fire that next shot until you release the trigger, and pull it again. You get only one shot for each pull of the trigger.
Some handguns are described as
“Automatic”, but are, in fact, semi-automatic.
True assault rifles are capable of operating in at least two different modes—semi-automatic and either fully-automatic or burst-fire.
The term
“assault weapon” is a fraud, concocted to confuse the public into thinking that weapons so described are comparable to fully-automatic weapons. The fraudulent anti-Second-Amendment
Violence Policy Center even has
a page on its web site admitting to the deception.
Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.
In addition to the automatic modes described above, there are a few other categories.…
- Repeater — Like the automatic and semi-automatics, a repeater has a magazine that holds multiple rounds. But a separate action has to be carried out between shots, to eject the spent round and chamber another one, to set up for the next shot. Think of a pump-action shotgun, for example,or a lever-action rifle.
- Single-shot — There is no magazine. You can only load one round into the gun at a time. Once you fire that round, you need to manually remove the spent shell, and load a new round into it before you can fire again. The most recognizable, albeit imperfect, example that I can think of is a double-barrelled shotgun, which can be thought of as two single-shot shotguns in one unit. My wife has a single-shot shotgun, which would be a better example,if you can properly imagine it—try to visualize half of a double-barrel shotgun, and if you visualize that correctly, you'll know what I am talking about.
I think revolvers are considered to be outside of the above categories. A single-action revolver, you have to manually cock the hammer between shots, that action also turning the cylinder to put the next round into position. With a double-action revolver, pulling the trigger causes the hammer to be set back, and the cylinder to be turned, so that no other action is required on the part of the operator. Functionally, a double-action revolver is like a semi-automatic gun, though they are not considered to be semi-automatic. I'm not certain why they are not considered semi-automatic, but I suspect that understood definitions of automatic and semi-automatic assume that the energy to operate the action comes from the shot being fired, rather than from the operator's finger on the trigger.
I know less than a kindergartner, so please be gentle with this dummy!
