[Nowhere Man]

You deserve to get flamed considering the "AK-47" sold in America isn't anything more dangerous than what was sold 50 or 75 years ago to anyone over 18.

A little futher than that, I saw a Winchester SLR (Self Loading Rifle) of 1907 in a 1908 Sears Catalog. It was in a .351 caliber IIRC, sort of looks a little like an M-14 from the drawing. I think Denmark was the first to use semi-auto rifles in their army back in the 1890's

[Spktyr]

The Browning-designed Colt Model 1895 Automatic Machine Gun (using the Maxim-type action) was out in, surprise, 1895. Fully legal for civvie ownership until 1934, was used in several wars.

Browning went on to design the world's first successful autoloading high-power rifle. Patent 659786 was granted on October 6, 1900, and was manufactured and sold by Remington starting in 1906 as the Model 8. An earlier attempt was the first widely sold autoloader - a Winchester, based on pirated Browning designs, sold in 1903.

The first country to adopt a self-loading rifle for general issue was the US on January 6, 1936; the weapon was the M1 Garand. "bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bangKAPIIIIINNNNGGGGGGGG!"