Well the news lists everything as a AK-47 or a Glock or some other buzz word but that does not make it true. Just because an old ad says it does not make it a automatic pistol, it is a semi-automatic. By the way do you own one? If you do own one, have you registered it and paid your tax as would be required if it was an automatic.
I’m waiting on a phone call from a gun mag that I’d called earlier. At some point rifle nomenclature has become more common when referring to pistols. Semi-auto pistols were always referred to as automatic when I was growing up. I can readily remember that my father’s gun magazines in the 1970’s and 1980’s referred to fully automatic pistols as machine pistols, while calling semi-autos, automatics. Hopefully this person will be able to tell me when. As central_va pointed out, referring to shotguns as semi-auto is also fairly recent. They used to be referred to and marketed as automatic shotguns.
I get everything that you’re saying, but you’re just taking it for granted that this was always the case. I can assure you that it was not. I can remember when semi-auto only applied to rifles. Pistols were revolvers or automatics, with machine pistols like the Mac 10 existing strictly in the military world. Shotguns were either breakable, pump or automatic. I don’t think fully automatic shotguns like the USA12 or AA12 even existed.