As a side bet, how long do you think before some bright fellow decides to either omit or, more likely, "redefine" the word "continuous" in the above statement??? (or just drop the word "semiautomatic"??)
Every repeating firearm begins its "continuous" firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger.
It's bad enough that we are at the mercy of the Congress taking the authority to redefine the English language as it suits them (and we LET them do it...) but now the Executive is redefining things, without even bothering to consult, or adhere to the words of Congress!
Things have been sliding downhill for some time, but ever since a sitting President publicly defended himself by challenging the meaning of the word "is", things have been going downhill faster and faster.
the language used is a time bomb, and requires only a slight "redefinition" to trigger it. And when some future administration decides they can survive the political fallout, they will detonate it, and then say good bye to privately owned semi autos. And if they stay true to form, it will be turn them in or destroy them, without compensation.
A somewhat similar time bomb was planted in the 94 AWB. We sort of disarmed that one when THAT law sunset, however, several state laws have the same language, and did NOT sunset.
The bomb I am talking about here is the language used declaring the Stryker-12 / Streetsweeper shotgun to be assault weapons. Those guns, and "any other design substantially similar to" then were defined as assault weapons, even though they are not semi autos, or full autos, they are manually operated repeaters!
And guess what boys and girls, EVERY DA REVOLVER is "substantially similar to" those shotguns. The big "drum" magazine of those guns is not a drum magazine, it just looks like one. It is a cylinder, like a revolver, in fact the entire firing system was copied from the DA revolver.
SO, in that law (now surviving at state level in several states) there is the legal basis to regulate and restrict revolvers, over and above all other regulations. And, its been law for many years now, without challenge, primarily because no one has YET attempted to use it to restrict revolvers.
YET.
And, when, in the future, they do move to use this kind of language as legal grounds for further restrictions and enforcement, they will have the (actually valid) argument that "this law has been on the books for years (perhaps decades), and nobody has objected before..."
Once passed, nobody objects to an unpopular or even an illegal law, if it is not enforced.