Automatic firearm

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An M2 Browning machine gun, surrounded in ejected cartridge cases

An automatic firearm is a firearm that fires, automatically extracts the used cartridge case from the barrel and ejects it, then loads a new case into the barrel; generally by harnessing the recoil of the cartridge's explosion. The term can be used to refer to semi-automatic firearms, which fire one shot per pull of the trigger, or fully automatic firearms, which will continue to load and fire ammunition until the trigger (or other activating device) is released or until the ammunition is exhausted. An "automatic pistol" or an "automatic shotgun" generally refers to a semi-automatic design, though fully-automatic pistols and shotguns do exist (such as the Steyr TMP and Daewoo USAS-12, respectively). Conversely, an "automatic rifle" generally refers to a fully automatic or hybrid semi-auto/full-auto design.

Fully automatic weapons tend to be restricted to military and police organizations in most developed countries due to their potential for damage if used on human targets by civilians. In the United States, machine guns registered after 1986 have been off the public market since the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986.

Other similar designs not usually classified as automatic firearms are:

• Autocannon, which are 20 mm in bore diameter or larger and thus considered cannons, not small arms.
• Gatling guns, multi-barrelled bolt-action designs, often used with external power supplies to generate rates of fire higher than automatic firearms.

Similar in appearance but not able to fire in full-auto mode are some semi-automatic rifles. The visual similarity has led to the public usage of the term "assault weapon" to describe some semi-automatic weapons (as opposed to the military usage of the term).

Patents

• U.S. Patent 1,227,897 — Automatic gun

See also

Fully automatic firearms are covered in these articles:

• Machine gun
  • General purpose machine gun
  • Heavy machine gun
  • Light machine gun
  • Medium machine gun
  • Squad automatic weapon
• Submachine gun
• Assault rifle
• Automatic rifle
• Pancor Jackhammer (one of the only automatic shotgun to be designed, though there are many semi-automatic shotguns)
• Machine pistol
• Firearm action
• Bump fire - a technique to simulate fully-automatic firing with a semi-automatic rifle
• Federal Firearms License
• Gun Control Act of 1968
• Gun politics.

References