18 March 2024

Fully Semi Automatic

Another "ackshually" firearms terminology moment spurred by Ian's recent video and Battleswarm's comments on it.

As Ian says; 'automatic' at one point meant self-loading.  The gun loaded the next round automatically.

Automatic becomes the term for when machine guns get developed because the gun does everything automatically and self-loaders become semi-automatic.

All is now well and good.  For all time.

But, wait, there's more!

Today we're calling automatic "fully automatic" but even that term isn't clear because there were a couple of machine guns with rate reducers and a selector that said "slow" and "full".  Full-auto on a BAR is the unreduced rate of fire.

And then there's burst modes.

Burst is it's own thing and isn't fully automatic in the same way that semi-automatic isn't.  It's just between full rate and self-loading.

LEGALLY burst modes are machine gun.

Just like "assault rifle" is a technical term for something, the legal terminology is creeping into the technical language. 

We should really fight that.

And we should learn to say "cyclic" correctly.  It's "sigh-click" not "sick-lick".

Posted by Angus McThag at 15:05
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous19 March, 2024 07:13

    Good points made. When I think 'automatic', I see multiple shots fired with one pull of trigger. Two or more shots with one pull to me is automatically fired. Autoloading is just that - automatically chambers the round but doesn't fire until trigger is pulled.

    I didn't know the pronunciation of CYCLIC but i do now. I was saying it wrong all this time - Thanks !

    jrg

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  2. Paul Chappell19 March, 2024 14:29

    I learned the US terms growing up with "Automatic" and "Fully Automatic", but I always liked Brit term of "Self Loading Rifle" as being more accurate and less "scary" to folks who do not actually understand firearms... But of course, living in the US nor many people understand "SLR"...

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