From the Seattle Times:
A fully loaded hand gun was found in a student's backpack at Evergreen High School this morning, according to the King County sheriff's department.The same incident, as described by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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A King County sheriff's deputy who works at the school searched the student's pack, expecting to find a bottle of alcohol but instead found the "Mac-10," 9 mm assault pistol.
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King County Sheriff Dave Reichert said the gun will be tested to determine if it is a semi-automatic weapon or a gun that has been altered to fire automatically.
A White Center high school sophomore who brought a loaded machine gun to school in his backpack yesterday ...So what was it? A handgun or a machine gun? Did one of the newspapers get it wrong?Officials said the weapon was a Mac-10 machine gun, but they did not yet know whether it was fully- or semi-automatic
Not necessarily. The Mac-10 seems to be both a handgun and a machine gun. It is a handheld machine gun.! (Not that we want our high school students bringing them at school, however they're classified). Any of my readers more knowledgeable about guns care to comment on the newspapers' choice of terminology?
Either way, the hottest chicks seem to prefer the bigger guns in the Mac family.
UPDATE Reader Daniel Schwartz adds
I've never used the Ingram Mac-10 myself. Technically, however, it falls under the classification of "submachine gun" -- a small weapon, of limited accuracy (as compared to, say, an automatic rifle), with automatic fire (which is sometimes disabled). The Israeli Uzi falls into this category, as does the belgian MP5.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 23, 2003 08:33 AMThe Germans in World War II had a more accurate term for this sort of weapon, one which translates as "machine pistol". In other words, it's a weapon comparable in size to a pistol, but capable (at least in theory) of automatic fire.
Many of these weapons have been sold with the automatic fire option disabled, so as to avoid automatic weapon restrictions. As the newspaper articles you cite have pointed out, it makes an important difference if the Evergreen High School weapon is capable of automatic fire or not.
I guess one could quibble on the use of terminology by the papers you quoted. In essence, though, they captured the crucial facts -- the kid was caught with a weapon, and it's a weapon at least in theory capable of automatic fire (and thus capable of doing a lot more damage, a lot more quickly, than a pistol).
The Post-Intelligencer buggered this one up in a big way. Kinda surprising, really, seeing as gun control is one of the few knee-jerk liberal positions for which Seattle is not particularly well known.
Chances are that the student had a semi-automatic Mac 10. That is not a "machine gun" by any stretch of the imagination. It is techncially an "assault" weapon, but only because it's on a long list of "ugly guns" that are legally considered "assault" weapons - though they won't be once the 1994 law expires. Well, they will be for me, but not for you, now that you've left California and gone to live in the United States instead.
If it turns out that the student had the fully automatic variety, then the term "machine gun" would be more justifiable. It would still be incorrect, however. Machine guns fire rifle calibers; 9 MM is a pistol caliber. That makes a fully-automatic Mac 10 a "sub-machine gun," not a true "machine gun."
Posted by: Xrlq on May 23, 2003 11:48 AMDipnut recently posted an interesting Media Guide to Handgun Reporting that explores various gun designations, and more besides...
Posted by: Brian Swisher on May 23, 2003 01:57 PMA 9mm semi-automatic is most certainly a machine-pistol but the articles illustrate the fear-mongering of the gun-haters...
Do they fear their cars too? Automobiles kill 100 people a day in America... many times how many are slain by fire-arms... and people aren't even tryingg to kill with their cars.
Posted by: DANEgerus on May 23, 2003 09:19 PMIf the term "machine pistol" were applied to all semiautomatic pistols with a caliber of 9 mm or greater, most privately owned handguns (read: almost all that aren't .22s or revolvers) would be classified as "machine pistols" and the term would lose all meaning.
The one thing that makes the Mac-10 stand out among handguns is the fact that it takes a detachable magazine, which in this case allowed the student to slap on an unusually magazine; 32 rounds IIRC. But I've never heard anyone describe a gun as a "machine" gun based on the fact that it takes a detachable magazine.
Posted by: Xrlq on May 24, 2003 09:06 PMXrlq,
Detachable magazines are a feature of all modern pistols (as opposed to revolvers). I can legally buy 30+ round magazines for a number of them. Unless the MAC-10 is automatic there's very little functional difference between it and the many other pistols on the market except for its looks.
Posted by: Erich Boldt on May 28, 2003 10:00 AMMost of these comments are pure rot. A machine gun is defined by the NFA as anyfirearm which Will fire more than one round with a single pullu of the trigger. It will fire as long as the trigger is depressed. A submachinegun is simply any machinegun that shoots pistol ammo.A MAC10 manufacyured to be semi has a different seer system and is in no way a machinegun. It is incorrect to refer to any semi auto as a machinegun although Gun haters commmit this lie constantly.
Posted by: M Sobel on July 12, 2003 04:44 PM>instead found the "Mac-10," 9 mm assault pistol
Chances are that this was an SWD/Leinad/Cobray M-11/9mm pistol.
Unlike the submachine-gun version of the M-11/9mm, which fires from an open-bolt, these fire from a closed-bolt and can NOT be modified to fire fully-automatic without putting the shooter at serious risk of injury and/or death.
Just because something looks like a submachine-gun, doesn't make it a submachine-gun. The M-11/9mm is just like any other pistol, the only difference is it's physical appearance.
Also, there has never been a gun with the model designation "MAC-10". This is a nickname given to Ingram-style guns. Whoever wrote that story has been listening to too many rap songs.
Regardless, where did a high-school age kid obtain a pistol from?
That should be the real issue, not what the pistol looks like.
>The one thing that makes the Mac-10
>stand out among handguns is the fact
>that it takes a detachable magazine
Wow, just like 90% of the handguns on earth.
A detachable mag is nothing special.