"NOT AUTOMATIC"

-By Jim Culp

February 28, 2016

 

Good morning readers; a merry Sunday to you all.

The shooting in Hesston, Kansas was a terrible thing, and it's way cool that a brave guy took center stage and ended it with some guts, a keen shooting style, and a GUN.

Later yesterday, I caught the five o'clock news, and this newsperson was showing us the footage of the killer (in a earlier recorded video).

It showed him shooting his rifle at a plowed field somewhere in the county side.
The newsperson immediately commented that the man had an "AUTOMATIC AK-47 Assault Rifle". Here goes that blind ignorance again.
A little about me. For several years of my Army career, I was an Armor Instructor. I was also an avid gun collector and school trained gunsmith, my collection being at a whopping 42 rifles, 12 shotguns, and 9 pistols at the time I sold most of it off. You can easily say I was a gun buff, or whatever you call it.
I worked gun shows all over Kansas for 12 years, and documented thousands of rounds of .44 Magnum, .223 Remington, and tens of other calibers on a private range that a rancher in the Davis Creek area graciously allowed me to use in exchange for killing coyotes that harassed his cattle.
When in Army mode, I taught soldiers a lot of stuff, but among the subjects I taught were pistols and machine guns, two things a tanker has to know well.
So let me impart some of that knowledge to you, and maybe that ignorant newsperson will read it too.
An AK-47 is the brainchild of Mikhail Kalashnikov, a Russian designer that had brilliant designs all of his life, and in 1948 released the early version of the rifle we know today. This rifle fires a cartridge that is a stubby 7.62 variant that is only 39 millimeters long. That makes it a 7.62 X 39 cartridge. In contrast, the coaxial machine gun (the M240C) on the Abrams Tank fires a 7.62 cartridge also, but it's the NATO version, and it is 7.62X 51, which gives it better range. Anyhoo, AK-47s are a very simple weapon, they are easy to disassemble, easy to clean, and parts for them are everywhere in the world. Millions of troops, police, and pirates across the world use these rifles. Key point here. These rifles have a selector switch that makes the rifle do one of three things; 1) Safe the weapon. 2) Allow single shot mode, or 3) fire in full automatic mode.
That's the military version of the rifle.
Then, there is a sporting version of the rifle, and it's roughly the same gun, but it only has two options, Safe and Fire. "Fire" on this rifle lets the gunner fire ONE SHOT at a time, just like a Semi-Automatic deer rifle, target rifle, or whatever rifle.
These rifles don't fire in automatic mode. They are easy to buy, as long as you do a background form, and it is approved by the BATF, and you have the scratch to pay for it, they run anywhere from $300 to $800, depending where you are and who is selling them. Now, let's get back to the AUTOMATIC version. These rifles fire automatic (if selected), but NO, they are not a machine gun. Machine guns  (of this caliber and smaller) fire at VERY rapid rates of fire (750 to 950 rounds per minute), and are highly destructive and very expensive and almost impossible to obtain without military contracts. AK-47's fire at much slower rates in automatic mode (about 100 rounds per minute), or in single shot mode (about 40 rounds per minute). THE VIDEO that was shown yesterday of the Hesston killer shooting into the crop field was in SINGLE SHOT MODE. Moving on, these rifles are VERY HARD TO OBTAIN ON THE STREET, regardless of what bullshit the media tells you. You sure as hell cant walk into a gun show and buy one. If you want to buy one legally, you obtain a Class III Machine Gun License from the BATF, pay $3,000 for that license, and sign forms that allow that agency to search your home or place of business at will.
Now, in all fairness, there are a lot of people out there that think they are gunsmiths. They do some really stupid shit, and one of the things they do is
take sporting version AK-47's and other semi-automatic rifles, and tinker them to fire automatic. Yes, you can do this. But let me explain the reality of that.
You don't take a file and scrape a surface off, and get a fully automatic rifle for life. That rifle was not built to handle the pressures of automatic fire, and it's parts were not designed to handle the wear and tear that automatic fire causes.
It's worthless after firing a few magazines. Do punks and gangs do this? Sure; for one time shootings. Do some well funded gangs have real AK-47's? Sure. Money talks, bullshit walks.
Does every Tom, Dick, and Harry have a fully automatic rifle at their disposal? Of course not. I know two people (non dealers) in the entire UNITED STATES that have automatic weapons, and they have Class III licenses. Yes, I used to know someone that owned a fully automatic AR-15; he's in Leavenworth doing 25 years as I write this.
My point through all of this is that the media LIES all the time. They may not do it with bad intent, but people who do not know guns get the wrong impression of what it out there and what isn't. I hate that. I hate ignorance. So I hope this helped.
-Jim