Unfortunately, there is often confusion among the press and public and even among handgun restriction advocates regarding the various types of firearms. He may just not know any better.
Firearms refer to weapons that use a powder charge to fire a projectile.
Long guns are weapons designed to be fired from the shoulder. Manually operating the bolt, lever, pump, or other mechanism extracts and ejects the empty case after the cartridge has been fired. It then reloads a fresh shell or cartridge from the magazine into the chamber and cocks the gun. Semi-automatic guns do this automatically when they fire. Although a semi-automatic will fire only one cartridge per trigger pull, an automatic will continue to fire cartridges as long as the trigger is pulled.