AK-47 facts and fiction

I have to say this every time there's a media storm around a multiple-victim public shooting, but the gun used in Nebraska was not a real AK-47, as some media outlets have been implying. An AK-47 is an automatic weapon, meaning when you hold down the trigger it fires continuously and rapidly (in other words, a machine gun). Civilian versions, far more common in the U.S., are semiautomatic, meaning they fire once for each pull of the trigger.

In fact, the gun wasn't even a civilian AK-47. It was an SKS, a semiautomatic rifle that preceded the AK-47. The LA Times even calls it both in the same article.

Also, John Lott points out that the incident occurred in, not surprisingly, a "gun-free zone" where people can't defend themselves.

UPDATE: The LA Times has removed the SKS reference from its article, leaving only the AK-47. Different outlets are calling it different things, so I'm no longer sure it was an SKS rather than an AK-47 -- I suspect as much, since if half the media has it wrong, it's probably the half that's using the menacing-sounding, well-known name. Regardless, my main point stands: There is no evidence from any report that the gun was a true AK-47, even if it was an AK-47 in name. It was semiautomatic, making it no more or less lethal than a hunting rifle.

UPDATE II: It appears the LA Times got it right; it was an AK-47, "which [investigators] initially had identified as an SKS assault rifle." I'm really of two minds about a few grafs from the story:

The AK-47 is a semiautomatic assault weapon that generally is used by the military or collected by gun enthusiasts.

It is not accurate for long-range shooting, which makes the gun impractical as a hunting rifle. The automatic version is popular for military use because it is dependable and easy to manufacture.

On the plus side, it makes it clear that the gun was semiautomatic (as opposed to the military version), but it doesn't define the term. Also, it doesn't mention that it uses a bullet size comparable to that of a hunting rifle -- same bullets + same firing speed + less accuracy = less dangerous, so that's important information. It seems like the writer cared more about the "you can't use this for hunting!!!!!" argument than the "this gun is no more dangerous than regular hunting guns" fact.