An automatic pistol is a type of weapon, a hand-held projectile weapon that is a variant of pistol designed to automatically ready another bullet or other projectile during the process of firing.
History and specifications[]
The automatic pistol was a advancement over more primitive pistols which would require the user to hand-load another projectile or manipulate a loading mechanism after each shot to move another projectile from a magazine or cartridge into the chamber it would be fired from. (FASA RPG module: Trader Captains and Merchant Princes, 1st edition)