When I was young, my dad owned a bolt action 30-06 rifle and a lever action 30-30 rifle, which he used only for hunting, as we were poor and needed the food, and ammunition was expensive.
Both rifles required manually operating the bolt or the lever to eject a spent cartridge and load the next bullet, then pull the trigger. They held just a few bullets in their internal magazines. I suppose they were semi-manual.
And guess what? The government didn’t try to take his guns, the Russians never invaded, and he never had to shoot anybody.
When I was an infantryman in Vietnam and carried the M-16, I could empty a 10-round magazine with the rifle set on “automatic” in 2 seconds. I could empty that same 10-round magazine with it set on “semi automatic “ in 4 seconds. Whether you held the trigger down or pulled the trigger 10 times as fast as you could, the rifle did everything else, automatically. The distinction between full and semi automatic is fallacious. That war rifle is an automatic weapon and should be banned.
Manny Garcia, Salt Lake City