Automatic firearm

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An automatic firearm is a firearm that uses the energy of firing to extract and eject the fired cartridge case, and load a new case. 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 as long as the trigger (or other activating device) is pressed or until the ammunition is exhausted. Which meaning is intended is generally discernible by context. "Automatic pistol" or "automatic shotgun" generally refers to a semi-automatic design, while "automatic rifle" more often means a fully automatic or selective fire design.

Fully automatic weapons tend to be restricted to military and police organizations in most developed countries. In the United States, machine guns registered after 1986 have been off the public market since the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986. See Gun politics for more information.

Fully automatic firearms are covered in these articles:

Other similar designs not usually classified as automatic firearms are:

Autocannon, which are over 20 mm in bore diameter 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.
Metal Storm, an electrically fired system that uses the same principle as Roman candle fireworks.