i have heard that semis can freeze up in the winter.. maybe just a myth?
Maybe, but maybe not. Depending on what type of lubricant you use, the cold weather can cause it to gum up. Any firearm is potentially vulnerable to having it happen, but manually operated gun usually survive it a bit better since you can power through the stiffness easier than your gas system can exert more pressure or your spring exert more force.
Grease especially can thicken up and basically turn into tar in cold weather.
A properly maintained semiauto gun can be one of the most reliable systems in existence, you just need to adapt it to your environment and that might require switching ammunition or lubricant or even different springs.
It's like how you can talk to five people about the best way to lubricate an AR15 and you'll get five different answers and three of them will conflict the others. The guys in humid regions will tell you to pour buckets of lube in there and chrome plate everything or it'll rust, the guys in sandy environments will tell you to lube sparingly, the guys in the arctic may very well tell you to not use any lube at all and to use magnum primers.
It also plays a big part in why rumors go around about certain guns not being suited for certain environments, and why in some cases high quality guns have more malfunctions than low quality ones. If you have tight tolerances, and suddenly your lube is now many times more viscous, your gun might malfunction more often than a cheap counterpart that hasn't seen any lube in months and has loose tolerances.
Just like how you may very well have to rezero your rifle if you go hunt mountain sheep, so too might you have to switch up your cleaning and lubrication schedule and technique. I think in some cases where a guy gets fantastic accuracy and performance out of his century old, beaten up rifle. Then he takes it to a different place to visit some people and the accuracy goes all to hell and he sounds like a liar.



















































