Gun Rights - Second Amendment

Gun Rights - Second Amendment

Speaking of Guns – A Curmudgeonly Correction of the Media and Their Abuse of Gun Terms

One thing that I hate is when people, especially the gun hating media, talk about guns and royally screw up their terminology. With this in mind today we’ll begin our Guns 101 class with vocabulary.

Automatic-This term means that after each trigger pull the next bullet is brought into battery, or made ready to fire. This process is done automatically. This term is also used when the term Semi-Automatic is more appropriate in most cases. For specific examples look up 1911 pistols or the dreaded AK-47 rifles, these are both automatic.

Semi-Automatic-Remember back to our original vocabulary term where when one bullet is fired the next is automatically made ready to fire. The real difference is that by adding “semi” to the word you specify that only one bullet will be fired with each pull of the trigger. To fire subsequent bullets you need to pull the trigger again. Both examples listed above will fit into this category.

Fully-Automatic-Moving up the evolutionary ladder we reach the pinnacle of firearms technology the “Machine Gun.” In Fully Automatic mode a firearm is capable of expelling many bullets with only a single pull of the trigger. Many shooters refer to this a “Fun Mode” and if you ever get a chance to shoot full auto, do it! The first time I did it I smiled for a week, I still grin when I look back. As a note, nearly every gun available for civilian sale will not be capable of firing full auto. However it is important to note there are rules allowing citizens to own these types of weapons legally but you never hear of the legal ones being used in crimes!

Rounds Per Minute-In media reports usually dealing with “assault weapons” you’ll hear a pretty newscaster talk about how a gun is capable of firing several hundred rounds per minute. These specifications are hypothetical, set out by the manufacturers to prove the reliability of their firearms in military situations. Unless you have a gun that will take belts of ammunition that are 50 feet long you will never see a gun fire many hundred rounds in 60 seconds. Even if you had that 50 foot long belt and a full auto firearm after a minute of that type of firing the barrel would be glowing white hot and ruined.

Finally my least favorite Vocabulary term ever;

Assault Rifle-When you hear the term assault rifle you should laugh because it was created by media types to scare people who didn’t know about guns. This is not a term that is used in firearm manufacturing, it’s not used by the military and it’s not used by shooters. Only media and people with an anti gun agenda ever utter the words!

Now that you are little better versed in the terminology you will hopefully be better able to judge the validity of the news reports and of Rosie O’Donnell and her friends the Brady Bunch, a.k.a. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.



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