SKS Reports

This is odd.

A man looking for aluminum cans in school trash cans found a backpack bulging with guns on Monday, a discovery that triggered a campus lockdown while authorities searched for more weapons.

According to Merced County Sheriff's Deputy Ed Katen, a man found a backpack containing one SKS automatic weapon and three hand guns just after 9 a.m. Monday.

The unidentified man found the bag on the edge of the Delhi Educational Facility, a combined high school and middle school with about 1,000 students.

Has there ever been a fully auto version of the SKS?

Even Wikipedia has states that it's NOT an automatic weapon.

The SKS has a conventional carbine layout, with a wooden stock and no pistol grip. Most versions are fitted with an integral folding bayonet which hinges down from the end of the barrel, and some versions, such as the Yugoslavian-made M59/66 variant are equipped with a grenade launching attachment. As with the American M1 Carbine, the SKS is shorter and less powerful than the semi-automatic rifles which preceded it - most notably, the Soviet SVT series and the American M1 Garand. Contrary to popular belief it is not a modern assault rifle. This is because it does not meet all of the criteria of a true assault rifle (though, there are some variants that fall closer to the definition). It does not possess the capability for selective fire, and the basic design does not possess a removable magazine. Some selective-fire variants were produced in the PRC, however, the basic design of the SKS is semi-automatic in nature. The carbine's ten-round box magazine is fed from a stripper clip (see below), and rounds stored in the magazine can be removed by depressing a magazine catch (thus opening the "floor" of the magazine and allowing the rounds to fall out) located forward of the trigger guard.

I'm going to remain skeptical that whoever staged these guns has a Chinese version of the SKS. Mainly due to their rarity and the very unlikely prospect that they were ever allowed for import into this country.

So what does that leave us? Well, looks like the Press is again distorting the reality of a situation, or is just bloody lazy.

Here's a report where the SKS is an evil Assault Weapon. This is close to the norm for the reporting. No surprise that this is the line that the AssPress is using in general.

Then there's this one that states:

Merced County Sheriff's deputies locked down the Delhi High School and Delhi Middle School this morning after a backpack stuffed with three handguns and a fully automatic assault rifle was found on school grounds.

Am I wrong here?