You seem to be really hung up on this.
You noticed.
Yes, I am.
The gun community referred to such guns automatics for decades. That it is out of favor and that you don't like that the media now uses the terminology to our detriment does not change the correctness of the use. "Automatic" is a perfectly valid descriptor.
Valid, yes, concise, no. In the past, such careful selection of
precise descriptive vocabulary was not a concern. However, that was when journalism professors stressed the fact that the reporter's opinion should never be evident in the presentation of a subject, and journalists honored that procrustean rule.
Back then, there was no need for further differentiation between the two distinctly different firearms. With today's hostile environment toward the 2A, (especially SA weapons) and the fact that agenda based reporting is apparently acceptable, if not encouraged by many, if not most main stream media it behooves us all to encourage use of more precisely descriptive adjectives.
Double Naught Spy said:
Many AR15s can certainly be made to be fully automatic with just a simple change of parts. I know people with fully automatic AR15s. I have AR15s that could be converted.
You and I, as well as most here on THR fully understand the difference between full automatic and semi automatic,
but the non-shooting, general public does not. Therein lies the problem. MSM can and has used these incorrect adjectives to confuse the undecided general pulic and sway public opinion to support their agenda.
To the uninformed, automatic
means full automatic; we all realize that AR 15's
can be modified to
full automatic by changing a few parts,
but they don't.
We also understand that in 1986 a federal law was passed (albeit questionably...see very interesting article @:
https://www.nraila.org/articles/19990729/fully-automatic-firearms ) by which the number of fully automatic firearms in civilian hands was frozen at an estimated 150,000, making the manufacture or conversion of a self loading firearm to fire
full automatically illegal, but
they don't.
We are both on the same page; my preoccupation with carefully descriptive adjectives is probably overboard, but in this day and age, words matter. Wouldn't it be nice if the media used correctly descriptive adjectives?
Regards,
hps