Talk:Automatic firearm

Activation

It seems like "shooter is killed in action" is already covered by "the trigger is released" Barndoorsentry (talk) 18:30, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Patent link

The patent linked on the bottom of the page is, although having the title "Automatic gun", in fact a patent of a cooling system for automatic guns. Igram oxyd (talk) 21:15, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

From the article "Automatic weapons tend to be restricted (...), due to their mistakenly supposed potential to kill many people quickly" - this seems an odd use of words - the article is about guns not people's suppositions. Changing article to remove the words after the comma (great article though!).

Change of content

Since "automatic firearm" can mean many things depending on context (of "automatic pistol", "automatic shotgun" and "automatic rifle", only one implies full auto), and since the content here is almost entirely redundant with other articles, I'm going to change it to a discussion of meaning and a set of links, so people can chose the appropriate meaning and find the right article. scot 18:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Automatic firearms and elephant poaching

So how exactly will the slaughter of elephants effect the nature of automatic firearms, to the extent that the article on automatic firearms will change? Just because an assault rifle or machinegun was used to kill elephants (and this isn't a new thing, it's been going on for decades) doesn't mean that it was intended for such use, or even that it's particularly well suited to the task, and I don't forsee anyone starting to market, say, an automatic rifle in .600 Nitro for specifically for elephant hunting. Elephant ivory is used for piano keys, do you think it's justified to tag the piano article as being subject to short-term change because someone is poaching elephants in Africa? I think the burden is on you to propose a causatave link from elephant poaching to changes in the automatic firearm article before you are justified in tagging it. scot 20:34, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

this is fairly simple:

• the number of pianos manufactured will not depend on elephant poaching as the material used can be varied to a synthetic, whereas:
• obviously the poachers chose to use automatic firearms, because they thought them to be efficient weapons for killing elephants in the wild (just as militia in the same region consider it an efficient weapon (assisted with burning of villages and airstrikes) for the approximate 100,000 civilians slaughtered by Janjaweed).

I fail to see your concern of letting wikipedia readers interpret for themselves viable linkages of information. i dont think your censorship of reasonable linkages honours the intelligence of our readers. if you care to respond to this posting, please do it here, as i am watching this page Anlace 20:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

The poachers chose the weapons they did because the Soviets shipped millions upon millions of them to Africa to support the Marxists there, and various Western powers shipped millions of them to support the counterrevolutionaries. Any 7.62mm rifle is very, very poorly suited to killing large game; the 7.63x39mm used by the AK-47 is considered useable only for game up to deer size, while the 7.62x51mm NATO and 7.62x54R Russian are only considered adequate up to elk sized game. Elephant cartridges are things like the .416 Rigby, the Nitro Express cartridges, and the like, which provide a much, much heavier bullet to get the penetration needed to take big game.

As for slaughtering thousands of civilians, again, it's not a matter of suitability, it's a matter of availability. Chemical weapons agents are far, far more efficient (just ask Saddam or Hitler) for wholesale slaughter, while bombs and artillery produce most of the casualties in warfare. Military full metal jacket ammunition, which is what they'd be using, is quite restricted on the damage it can produce, and the modern small caliber rounds such as the 5.56x45mm and 5.45x39mm assault rifle rounds produce wounds not much more significant than a .22 Long Rifle catridge--just at much greater ranges and with more penetrating ability. If you wanted to kill people, a hollow point bullet design is far more effective, which is why hunters use them. I think it's been well proven that the best way to kill millions in Africa is to control the water supplies--hence the term hydraulic empire.

As for censoring, I just see no possible way that the elephant poaching is going to have any significant impact on the article; I think you're just trolling for hits on your article--after all, to figure out what sort of current event might change the fundemental nature of automatic firearms, people have to click through and look. scot 21:03, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

People and animals are killed every day by automatic weapons in Iraq, Africa, South America, and all over the world. It would be ridiculous to link to every current event involving them. --Askaggs 12:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Bullshit claim in the article

> on April 21, 2008, Governor Kathleen Sebelius signed a bill allowing the sale and possession of NFA weapons in Kansas. The law took effect on July 1, 2008. <

Because of the US federal government's supreme powers manifest in the 1934 and 1986 laws, any state regulation to lax full-auto rifle ownership is just empty boast. The BATF agents will go and forcibly collect any autofire weapon, regardless of what Ms. Kathleen declares. The WACO incident has conclusively shown that Washington has power to act against non-govt full-auto weapon posession, using military force of battle tanks if necessary. 91.83.3.66 (talk) 19:55, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Wrong, it just means that people can go through all the legal rigamarole to own their own through legal means in that state, while before it was completely illegal in that state. Do a little bit of research, NFA firearms are not actually illegal, they are just heavily regulated, although it is illegal to own any produced after 1986, or to import any into the US for civilian use.--LWF (talk) 22:52, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the bit about Kansas entirely. It was an irrelevant non sequitur in the context in which it was used, and was irrelevant to this article anyway. Indeed, leaving it in invites confusion. Lumbergh (talk) 18:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Merge

This article clearly duplicates information from the Firearm and Firearm action articles without adding any unique information. I recommend merging the content changing this article to a redirect. --Scalhotrod - Just your average banjo playing, drag racing, cowboy... (talk) 16:06, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

The seperate firearm action articles need to stay seperate PerkinsC (talk) 18:04, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Semi-automatic Pistols

The classification of pistols in this article seems confusing, especially considering we also have an article Semi-automatic pistol.

CBHA (talk) 22:21, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

This page should be merged with Machine Gun

The use of the singular term "automatic" is misleading and incomplete with regard to firearms. The correct term is Fully Automatic Action.Digitallymade (talk) 11:25, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

on second thought, this page is the SAME content as the page titled Machine Gun. The two pages should be merged. Digitallymade (talk) 16:42, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

• Strong oppose, while all automatic firearms are legally machineguns in the US, an automatic rifle is not always a machine gun in military parlance around the world.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 17:16, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I oppose the move as well. Wikipedia uses common names for articles. See WP:COMMONNAME. Also, the issue that Mike mentions. Felsic2 (talk) 18:15, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Edits to the intro

A couple of points. First, this article is about the type of weapon, not the term. Second, bold text is normally used only for the article title when it first appears in the text, along with alternate titles which redirect to this article. Third, this isn't the US Wikipedia, so discussions of US-centric issues should be kept to a minimum in the intro. Lastly, the intro should reflect and summarize the article. It shouldn't discuss issues that are never mentioned in the article body. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section. Felsic2 (talk) 18:27, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@Digitallymade: has an issue with the intro.[1] Something about the disconnecter on the trigger. I'm not sure I understand it completely so I'll let him explain it here. Felsic2 (talk) 01:17, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Confusion in the Introduction "Automatic" vs "Fully automatic" vs "Semi-automatic"

In the introduction, automatic weapon is defined as: "An automatic firearm is a firearm that continuously chambers and fires rounds when the trigger mechanism is actuated. The action of an automatic firearm is capable of harvesting the excess energy released from a previous discharge to feed a new ammunition round into the chamber, and then ignite the propellant and discharge the projectile (either bullet, shots or slug) by delivering a hammer/striker impact on the primer." This is actually the definition of a "Fully Automatic" weapon. Later in the introduction, however, it is stated that "...all semi-automatic, burst-fire and fully automatic firearms are "automatic" in the technical sense...". However, semi-automatic falls outside the definition given in the first sentence since it does not continuously chamber and fire rounds, nor does it use energy released from the previous discharge to "ignite the propellant and discharge the projectile". I would suggest the first two sentences of the intro be replaced with:

An automatic firearm is a firearm that is capable of harvesting the excess energy released from a previous discharge to feed a new ammunition round into the chamber and reset the hammer/striker. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Southwestern Giant (talk • contribs) 17:40, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Automatic or Full Automatic will fire and reload for as long as the trigger is depressed and there is ammunition . Burst Automatic will execute a predetermined number of fire and reload cycles after the trigger is feathered or depressed as long as there is sufficient ammunition . Semi-automatic is self loading and will only fire once and reload per trigger action as long as there is ammunition when the trigger is pulled . Does any one have a difference between Semi-automatic and Semiautomatic? PerkinsC (talk) 18:02, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

As it is written, the lede can be understood that semiautomatics are a type of automatic firearms. I think that the article could be clearer, while still explaining the difference between fully automatic and semiautomatic. Sjö (talk) 20:50, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

In modern usage, "full/fully automatic" is a synonym of "automatic". "Full" is just an emphasis. It seems clear as written. VQuakr (talk) 21:04, 1 August 2022 (UTC)