Hacker News Reader

Every rifle is semiautomatic

> Every rifle is semiautomatic

This is just incorrect. Bolt action and muzzleloaded rifles are both extremely common and not semiautomatic.

That being said, "semiautomatic" is usually a useless scare-word thrown in by people who have no clue what they're talking about.

My mother believed for the majority of her adult life that “semi-automatic” meant “fully automatic”, as in “squeeze once, all the bullets come out”. It’s incredible that people with little to no knowledge of the mechanics of guns want to regulate exactly that.

Indeed, and that's exactly why it is used that way. It's an intentional weasle-word used by gun control advocates to scare observers.

The current scare-term is "fully semi-automatic".

Not true, here is one of many counterexamples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Model_700

Reply on news.ycombinator.com