rimmed cases do not not work well in semi auto guns generally.
I've been hearing this my entire life since I started listening to such things, and I've come to the conclusion, that, as stated, its simply not true, and most people are just repeating something they heard from the distant past.
Not picking on any one, I used to say it too, but over the years I've been studying such things, I've come to realize that while it is not as mechanically easy to make rimmed rounds work in semi and full auto weapons, when they are correctly designed for rimmed rounds, they work just fine.
Consider all the semi and full auto weapons firing rimmed rounds that were used in WWII. The Soviet SVT 40 rifles and all their 7.62x54R machine guns, The British Bren gun and Vickers machine guns in .303 British are major examples.
On a more modern note, the Desert Eagle pistols shoot rimmed rounds and they work just fine, also, or at least the 5 that I've had worked fine, with the correct ammunition. I also had an LAR Grizzly in .44 Magnum, and that one worked fine as well.
The point here is that the rimmed round, in and of itself is not a detriment, and does not prevent a properly designed semi or full auto action from working.
I think it likely that the origin of " rimmed cases do not not work well in semi auto guns" was probably something more like "rimmed cases are not as easy to make work in semi auto guns" and over time with countless repetitions that "not as easy" changed into "doesn't work well" and has been repeated without thought by a lot of people every since.
Think about this, as well, isn't the semi auto .22LR one of the most popular and prolific firearms on the planet? The .22LR is most certainly a rimmed round. And, then, there's also all those semi auto shotguns out there, every one of which is shooting a rimmed round....
I think the most likely reason you don't see a .30-30 semi auto or any of the other older rimmed rifle rounds is a combination of the age old rivalry between gun makers and the simple fact that rimless rounds that out perform the classic rimmed ones became available about the time the buying public was getting interested in semi autos.
Do note that until the later 50s-early 60s , Winchester would not chamber their guns for a Remington cartridge, and Remington wound not make a gun in a Winchester cartridge. Even Savage wouldn't put Winchester's name on their guns. Savage marked their .30-30s as ".30-30" and not .30 WCF or ,30-30 Win.
Remington "broke" the pattern when they decided not making .308 Win was costing them money, and Winchester held out until the popularity of the 7mm Rem Mag basically forced them to chamber it.
Its often talked about, the Remington line of rimless rounds created as direct competition for the Winchester rimmed rounds in .25..30, and .32 cals, and I've often heard it said Remington did that because it was "too difficult" to put a rimmed round in their model 8 semi auto, and I suppose that's possible, but I think its more likely that they didn't even consider trying that. They created their own line of rimless rounds to match the performance of the Winchester ones, so they didn't have to chamber their rival's cartridges in their rifles.
And I think that the "too difficult" is just a made up thing, especially when you look at the contemporary Remington pumps and the engineering that went into creating a tubular magazine that could safely manage spitzer bullets. I think that level of engineering talent could have created a semi auto for rimmed rounds, had they been interested in doing that. They weren't...