Your lingo lesson and speculation into what Hill meant will not change the transcript showing "Automatic" referred to the weapon.
You are technically correct, but I needed to get the nomenclature issue out of the way first. I also helps that you acknowledged what I said.
Hill would later say that he assumed they were from an automatic because of the way they were scattered. I think there may be more to it than that. Think of Summers' transmission about a ".32 dark finish automatic." Some witness at the scene had to be talking about an auto, and I wouldn't be surprised if Hill heard that description ,or about it, and it influenced his thinking. He hears about a witness describing a .32 auto, sees the .38 Special cases scattered about (and no .32 cases or reports of extra gunmen), and figures that no witness would really be able to tell the caliber of the pistol simply from looking at it from 20 feet away. Therefore, an automatic pistol firing .38 special.
BTW, any more, Ted Callaway is generally held to be the witness responsible for the .32 dark finish automatic . He never got closer to it than the width of Patton Ave, which Google tells me is 30' curb to curb and 45' from sidewalk to sidewalk*. I wouldn't put that much significance to his ID, other than the two things easily divined at that distance: it's size and color. A .32 auto is a relatively compact weapon, and Summers said it best: "dark finish". Both of which happen to fit the description of Oswald's stubby-barreled pistol.
* sidewalks along that stretch of Patton have been redone, so may not be where they were in 1963.
