jimpeel:
You are right, the links are clear, possibly I should have read through them before posting.
What it seemingly boils down to is the following. If it goes BANG, the VPC and similar organizations will find something about it to complain over. The rate of fire is to high, therefore inaccurate. Next will come a ban on those deadly accurate, slow firing bolt action rifles. Then some are to large, while others are to small. Then comes the fact that gun fire is to loud, or if "silenced", isn't loud enough, and when almost all is said and done, they are either to powerful, or not sufficiently powerful. There is simply no pleasing those people.
Actually I got a good laugh at their reference to "minor differences" between the M-16 service arm, and the AR-15 commercial semi-automatic rifle, where the former has selective fire capability, and therefore is a machinegun, while the latter doesn't and therefore isn't.
As to the lies of the gun industry, and the cosmetic changes VPC criticizes, essentially the problem that VPC has is that the gun makers didn't vanish during the night. Next day, when the sun rose, they the gun makers, were still there. Of course, even more interesting is their reference to "cosmetic changes". Given that VPC seems to admit that the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban dealt with cosmeic features, they being defined as non-functional considerations, exactly what did they expect gun makers who wished to continue to serve a particular market to do, other than to make such cosmetic changes as would satisfy the requirements of the law?
Actually, I do believe that you are correct, respecting your observation to the effect that VPC operates on the basis that people do not know the difference between full automatic and semi-automatric fire capability.
The term "cyclic rate of fire", used to get a large play from the anti-gunners, though it isn't much heard these days. Of course, this might be due to the fact that many people began to recognize what the term cyclic rate ment, a theoretical rate of fire, assuming an unnbroken supply of ammunition. Given that even a belt fed machine gun exhausts the cartridges in it's ammunition belt, which has to be replaced, cyclic rate of fire, and actually attainable rates of fire are two different animals. This becomes especially obvious, perhaps even interesting, when one realizes that magazines have to be changed. Of course, one might then consider the concept known as "aimed fire", which really slows things down, but that is another thing altogether.
In-so-far as you might be aware, has anyone ever determined the "cyclic rate of fire" attainable from the bolt action rifle, assuming that one could ignore operator fatigue, and that arrangements for a continuous supply of ammunition were made?
