I’m Lance Rankin, owner of Western Sport in Roanoke, Texas, and as a Type 07 FFL with an SOT, actual machine guns are part of my licensed world, which is rarer than the evening news would have you believe. The video above is a practical test: a transferable Colt M16A1 carbine with an 11.5-inch barrel, run on full auto against paper up close and a dead beer keg at distance. The shooting is the creator’s; the commentary is mine.
First, the term itself
“Assault rifle” makes gun folks flinch because the media applies it to everything with a black stock. But the term has a real technical meaning, going back to the German Sturmgewehr: a select-fire rifle chambered in an intermediate cartridge, feeding from detachable magazines, sitting between a full-power rifle and a submachine gun. By that definition, the M16A1 in this video genuinely is an assault rifle. Your neighbor’s AR-15 genuinely is not, because it lacks the defining feature: select-fire capability. Semi-autos fire once per trigger pull, and civilian ownership of actual select-fire guns has been heavily restricted for decades, frozen to pre-1986 registered examples that cost as much as a truck. Precision with words matters in this debate, in both directions.
The test
At 5 yards, the shooter dumped a 30-round magazine on full auto. The whole group landed slightly low of the bullseye, which he attributed to overcompensating to hold the muzzle down. That matches what I’ve seen every time I’ve put someone behind a full auto: your brain fights the climb, and you usually win too hard. Still, at that distance, the group was combat-effective by any standard.
Then the fun part: a half-barrel beer keg at roughly 50 yards, another full 30-round magazine, full auto. Final score: about eight hits out of thirty, with one particularly clean hole. Muzzle flash made it nearly impossible to see impacts while firing. Eight of thirty sounds either impressive or terrible depending on your expectations, and that’s exactly the point.
What the numbers actually teach
Here’s the takeaway I wish more people absorbed, on both sides of the political argument. Full auto is not a magic death ray. It’s a specialized tool that burns a magazine in about two seconds and sprays most of those rounds somewhere other than the target once you’re past bad-breath distance. Militaries know this, which is why training doctrine leans on semi-auto and controlled bursts. A rifle fired semi-automatically, with aimed shots, is more accurate, more ammunition-efficient, and frankly more dangerous to a specific threat than a mag dump will ever be.
That cuts one way against Hollywood-fed fears about full auto, and it cuts the other way against range bravado. If eight of thirty hits a keg, imagine the other 22 rounds in a neighborhood. It’s also why, for home defense, a plain semi-auto carbine with good sights beats fantasy hardware every time. My home defense AR-15 setup guide covers what actually matters there.
The video ends with a couple more magazines through the keg for fun, and 5.56 chewed through the aluminum without complaint. Educational and entertaining is a good combination.
Want the full-auto experience legally?
Transferables are collector-priced, but suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and other NFA items are within normal reach, and that paperwork is my daily bread. Start with what an FFL and SOT dealer does, or if you’re newer to this, my beginner AR guide and how to buy a gun in Texas. Questions? [email protected] or 817-393-4000, shop’s in Roanoke just north of Fort Worth.
Lance Rankin is the owner and Chief Gunsmith of Western Sport, a family-run Type 07 FFL and Class 3/SOT dealer in Roanoke, Texas, serving shooters since 2007. Born and raised in Texas with over 50 years of experience handling firearms, Lance purchased Western Sport in 2017 and turned his lifelong passion into his profession. He specializes in AR-15 and AR-10 platform rifles, manufactures Western Sport’s own AR-15 line under the Rankin Industries brand, and runs the shop’s in-house Cerakote coating operation. When he’s not behind the counter or the workbench, you’ll find him on his ranch deep into the night, hunting coyotes with an AR-15 and thermal optics. Lance holds an MBA and personally shoots and tests the products Western Sport sells.
