Tipsheet

CNN And The Curious Case Of The 'Full Semi-Automatic' Rifle

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  February 27, 2018 1:15 PM

UPDATE: Now, we have “machine gun magazines.” Yeah, folks—it gets uglier by the day.  

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You know there were some who thought the media was actually making steps towards improving their pervasive and appalling ignorance on basic gun facts. Like knowing the difference between automatic and semi-automatic firearms, while also knowing that the latter constitutes the vast majority of guns in America. Semiautomatic is a self-reloading firearm. It fires one round per trigger pull. Once a round is fired, the energy pushes the slide back, ejecting the casing, while the next round in the magazine is pushed up and chambered as the slide comes back. The video below of a Beretta 92 9mm (the gun Bruce Willis uses in Die Hard) captures the function perfectly. 


Automatic firearms fire multiple rounds per trigger pull. You can own some automatic firearms as a civilian. You need to undergo a background check, which could take up to a year or more, pay the NFA (National Firearms Act) tax stamp, and have your name and weapon serial number placed in a database. This is all run by the ATF. Legal transfers of such firearms are only for those made pre-1986. New sales of automatic firearms are banned.

I bring this up because CNN had a rather interesting segment in which a former member of the military and the network’s military analyst, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, wanted to show what “full semi-automatic” fire looks like from an AR-15. It wasn’t that more rounds were fired per trigger pull; he just pulled the trigger faster. That’s not the same as an automatic weapon. The Washington Free Beacon’s Stephen Gutowski noted the odd phrasing, adding that it’s sort of hard to show examples of semiautomatic and automatic firing systems when only an AR-15 is used. A M-4 Carbine, which can fire multiple rounds per trigger pull, was seen but never fired. 

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There is no such thing as “full semi-automatic fire.” I admit that I get things wrong on firearm terminology at times, but I work quickly to correct the record. You don’t see that with the mainstream media. They have a narrative to sell to liberal voters; facts will get in the way of that. Articles from Lois Beckett of the liberal Guardian publication is definitely worth your time. Her beat is firearms. She notes the glaring biases in the media, the sloppy reporting, and understands why so many gun owners and Seconds Amendment supporters distrust the media on this subject. They never learn from their mistakes, nor do they apologize for them. This nonsense, along with MSNBC interviewing a would-be school shooter to push gun control and trashing Florida Gov. Rick Scott for not meeting with student protestors, only to find out he was unavailable because he was at the funeral for one of the school shooting victims, places the media back at square one. Well, maybe a few notches back from that since we have news outlets confusing shotguns with AR-15s.

It’s maddening. It’s atrocious. But we need to keep recycling the facts for these people because we cannot let them just skate by on this drivel. It’s a narrative that must be fought and destroyed every time they try to pull stuff like this—and every time the Second Amendment crowd has prevailed.