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A semi-automatic rifle is a rifle that fires a single bullet with each pull of the trigger. For comparison, a bolt action rifle requires the user to cycle the bolt manually before they can fire a second time, and a fully automatic rifle, provided it has ammunition, will continue to fire until the trigger is released. Most modern automatic rifles are selective fire, meaning the user can fire semi-automatically if desired.
The M1 Garand or M1 Rifle is a .30-06 caliber semi-automatic rifle that was the standard U.S. service rifle during World War II and the Korean War and also saw limited service during the Vietnam War. Most M1 rifles were issued to U.S. forces, though many hundreds of thousands were also provided as foreign aid to American allies. The Garand is still used by drill teams and military honor guards. It is also widely used by civilians for hunting, target shooting, and as a military collectible.
The M1 carbine is a lightweight semi-automatic carbine that was a standard firearm for the U.S. military during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The M1 carbine was produced in several variants and was widely used by paramilitary and police forces around the world, and also became a popular civilian firearm after World War II.
Jean Cantius Garand, also known as John C. Garand, was a Canadian-born American designer of firearms who created the M1 Garand, a semi-automatic rifle that was widely used by the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps during both World War II and the Korean War.
The M14 rifle, officially the United States Rifle, Caliber 7.62 mm, M14, is an American select-fire battle rifle that fires 7.62×51mm NATO ammunition. It became the standard-issue rifle for the U.S. military in 1959 replacing the M1 Garand rifle in the U.S. Army by 1958 and the U.S. Marine Corps by 1965 until being replaced by the M16 rifle beginning in 1968. The M14 was used by U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps for basic and advanced individual training (AIT) from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.
A semi-automatic firearm, also called a self-loading or autoloading firearm, is a repeating firearm whose action mechanism automatically loads a following round of cartridge into the chamber (self-loading) and prepares it for subsequent firing, but requires the shooter to manually actuate the trigger in order to discharge each shot. Typically, this involves the weapon's action utilizing the excess energy released during the preceding shot to unlock and move the bolt, extracting and ejecting the spent cartridge case from the chamber, re-cocking the firing mechanism, and loading a new cartridge into the firing chamber, all without input from the user. To fire again, however, the user must actively release the trigger, allow it to "reset", before pulling the trigger again to fire off the next round. As a result, each trigger-pull only discharges a single round from a semi-automatic weapon, as opposed to a fully automatic weapon, which will shoot continuously as long as the ammunition is replete and the trigger is kept depressed.
The Browning Automatic Rifle is a family of American automatic rifles and machine guns used by the United States and numerous other countries during the 20th century. The primary variant of the BAR series was the M1918, chambered for the .30-06 Springfield rifle cartridge and designed by John Browning in 1917 for the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe as a replacement for the French-made Chauchat and M1909 Benét–Mercié machine guns that US forces had previously been issued.
The M1903 Springfield, officially the United States Rifle, Caliber .30-06, Model 1903, is an American five-round magazine fed, bolt-action service repeating rifle, used primarily during the first half of the 20th century.
The ArmaLite AR-10 is a 7.62×51mm NATO battle rifle developed by Eugene Stoner in the late 1950s and manufactured by ArmaLite, then a division of the Fairchild Aircraft Corporation. When first introduced in 1956, the AR-10 used an innovative straight-line barrel/stock design with phenolic composite and forged alloy parts resulting in a small arm significantly easier to control in automatic fire and over 1 lb (0.45 kg) lighter than other infantry rifles of the day. Over its production life, the original AR-10 was built in relatively small numbers, with fewer than 10,000 rifles assembled. However, the ArmaLite AR-10 would become the progenitor for a wide range of firearms.
The .30 Carbine (7.62×33mm) is a rimless carbine/rifle cartridge used in the M1 carbine introduced in the 1940s. It is a light rifle round designed to be fired from the M1 carbine's 18-inch (458 mm) barrel.
John Douglas Pedersen was a prolific arms designer who worked for Remington Arms, and later for the United States Government. Famed gun designer John Moses Browning told Maj. Gen. Julian S. Hatcher of U.S. Army Ordnance that Pedersen "was the greatest gun designer in the world".
The AVS-36 was a Soviet automatic rifle which saw service in the early years of World War II. It was among the early selective fire infantry rifles formally adopted for military service.
The Pedersen Rifle, officially known in final form as the T1E3 rifle, was a United States semi-automatic rifle designed by John Pedersen that was made in small numbers for testing by the United States Army during the 1920s as part of a program to standardize and adopt a replacement for the M1903 Springfield.
David Marshall Williams was a convicted murderer and was the American firearms designer of the floating chamber and the short-stroke piston. Both designs used the high-pressure gas generated in or near the breech of the firearm to operate the action of semi-automatic firearms like the M1 Carbine.
The M1941 Johnson Rifle is an American short-recoil operated semi-automatic rifle designed by Melvin Johnson prior to World War II. The M1941 competed unsuccessfully with the U.S. M1 Rifle.
The M7 grenade launcher, formally rifle grenade launcher, M7, was a 22 mm rifle grenade launcher attachment for the M1 Garand rifle that saw widespread use throughout World War II and the Korean War. The M7 was a tube-shaped device, with one end slotting over the muzzle of the rifle and attaching to the bayonet mount, and the other end holding the grenade in place. Blank cartridges were loaded into the rifle prior to firing. When fired, the expanding gases generated by the cartridges propelled the grenade forward with considerable force. The M7 could fire grenades up to 200 metres, compared with the maximum of 30 metres achieved by a hand-thrown grenade.
ArmaLite, or Armalite, is an American small arms engineering company founded in the mid 1950s in Hollywood, California. It ceased business in the 1980s. The company was revived in 1996 by Mark Westrom.
