Well I read the article 36 years ago and was going by memory and thinking that it had died out.
I did get the part about being fully automatic correct and 30 years is pretty close to 36 years, in this casual context.
The first in Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise novel Dragon's Claw(1978) got the usage mostly right.
The second in the UK TV series The Professionals "Hunter/Hunted" got it totally wrong. "A fully automatic laser-sight sniper rifle firing a 22LR cartridge effective to 1,000 yards - at least".