Found this in the St Louis Post Dispatch. In the SPORTS section. Sombody tell me how the truth can be printed in the sports section and lies printed in the news section?
In automatic rifles, "semi" can make all the difference
ByTim RenkenBY TIM RENKEN Post-Dispatch
updated: 04/09/2003 12:10 AM
Why does a hunter need an automatic rifle? That question is being asked a lot these days since the Washington area sniper attacks. Usually the question precedes a demand for more gun control laws.
The answer to the question is this: Hunters don't need automatic weapons. They are illegal for hunting almost everywhere. No automatic hunting rifle is on the market. Private ownership of automatic firearms, the kinds made for the military and law enforcement, is sharply restricted by federal law and is illegal in some states.
What, then, are those rifles such as the one used by the Washington snipers? They are semi-automatics, also known as self-loading. The difference is substantial. Automatic weapons fire repeatedly with a single pull of a trigger. Semi-automatics fire once with each pull of the trigger, automatically re-loading themselves after each shot. Millions of semi-automatic rifles and handguns are owned by hunters and target shooters and are used legally every day.
Here's some interesting information Gary Mehalik of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group, provided in response to an inquiry about the "assault" rifle used by the Washington snipers.
"The first semi-automatic rifle was patented (1878) by John Browning in the years following the Civil War, about the same time modern photography was being born, before radio and television were invented," he wrote. "Semi-autos were commercially available to the public, through the Sears catalog among other places, at the turn of the last century, and for many decades before the U.S. military ever adopted its first semi-auto rifle, the M-1 Garand, before WWII.
"Semi-automatics are simply modern design firearms, using the force of the expanding gas from a fired cartridge to load the next round to be fired. The federal Assault Weapons ban in 1994 limited certain features on semi-automatics that made them appear similar to fully automatic or machine guns, and semi-autos manufactured today comply with all these restrictions."
In response to a question about what some people perceived as the lethal accuracy of the rifle used in the attacks, Mehalik noted: "Firearms capable of firing a single shot accurately at distances up to 150 yards have been in civilian hands in America since before there was a United States. Some 80 million Americans are likely to have such a firearm safely stored in the home, and each year millions enjoy the recreational use of such products in a safe, legal, and responsible way."
Much also has been made of the supposed skill of the Washington snipers. At least one TV program even did a feature on "sniper schools," noting that anybody, even felons, could train at those schools.
Many hunters and target shooters scoffed at reports of the skill of the snipers.
"None of the shots I heard about required much skill," said Don Ball, a member and high-power rifle competitor at the St. Louis Benchrest Rifle Club.
In automatic rifles, "semi" can make all the difference
ByTim RenkenBY TIM RENKEN Post-Dispatch
updated: 04/09/2003 12:10 AM
Why does a hunter need an automatic rifle? That question is being asked a lot these days since the Washington area sniper attacks. Usually the question precedes a demand for more gun control laws.
The answer to the question is this: Hunters don't need automatic weapons. They are illegal for hunting almost everywhere. No automatic hunting rifle is on the market. Private ownership of automatic firearms, the kinds made for the military and law enforcement, is sharply restricted by federal law and is illegal in some states.
What, then, are those rifles such as the one used by the Washington snipers? They are semi-automatics, also known as self-loading. The difference is substantial. Automatic weapons fire repeatedly with a single pull of a trigger. Semi-automatics fire once with each pull of the trigger, automatically re-loading themselves after each shot. Millions of semi-automatic rifles and handguns are owned by hunters and target shooters and are used legally every day.
Here's some interesting information Gary Mehalik of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group, provided in response to an inquiry about the "assault" rifle used by the Washington snipers.
"The first semi-automatic rifle was patented (1878) by John Browning in the years following the Civil War, about the same time modern photography was being born, before radio and television were invented," he wrote. "Semi-autos were commercially available to the public, through the Sears catalog among other places, at the turn of the last century, and for many decades before the U.S. military ever adopted its first semi-auto rifle, the M-1 Garand, before WWII.
"Semi-automatics are simply modern design firearms, using the force of the expanding gas from a fired cartridge to load the next round to be fired. The federal Assault Weapons ban in 1994 limited certain features on semi-automatics that made them appear similar to fully automatic or machine guns, and semi-autos manufactured today comply with all these restrictions."
In response to a question about what some people perceived as the lethal accuracy of the rifle used in the attacks, Mehalik noted: "Firearms capable of firing a single shot accurately at distances up to 150 yards have been in civilian hands in America since before there was a United States. Some 80 million Americans are likely to have such a firearm safely stored in the home, and each year millions enjoy the recreational use of such products in a safe, legal, and responsible way."
Much also has been made of the supposed skill of the Washington snipers. At least one TV program even did a feature on "sniper schools," noting that anybody, even felons, could train at those schools.
Many hunters and target shooters scoffed at reports of the skill of the snipers.
"None of the shots I heard about required much skill," said Don Ball, a member and high-power rifle competitor at the St. Louis Benchrest Rifle Club.
