by Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons has produced this nice short video explaining the differences in operation between open and closed bolt actions. While we tend to think that open bolt is for machine guns and closed bolt is for semi-automatic is the rule that isn’t always the case. Ian has examples of both closed bolt full auto submachine guns and open bolt semi-automatic rifles. The confusion may stem from a ruling by BATFE back in the 1980s which said no new open bolt semi-autos could be manufactured as they thought these would be easier to convert to full auto.
