What's the Difference Between a Machine Gun and an Automatic Weapon?

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The majority of firearms in this country are semi automatic, meaning you pull the trigger once and it fires a single round. A machine gun could be any type of weapon that has this fully automatic capability put on it. It's very dangerous and scaring those automatic weapons coud potentially take us out. We're talking 600 rounds per minute, all the way up to 12 hundred rounds per minute. That's 20 rounds a second with the single pull of a trigger.

For less than $20 plus shipping everyday people can turn their handguns into machine guns. The Trace’s Alain Stephens explains the rise of the “auto-sear.”

This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Richard Sima and Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram

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