A discussion of the semi-automatic firearm

[unixronin]

This is the continuation of a discussion from a comment thread in a previous post, wherein the question was asked "Why would someone need a semi-automatic firearm?"

To answer this, let's begin with a brief discussion of firearm action types in the broader sense.

When asked to divide firearms into types, most people think something like "pistol, rifle, shotgun."  But there are two more basic divisions:  breech-loader vs. muzzle-loader, and single-shot vs. repeater.  We'll skip the discussion of muzzle-loaders for now, since they aren't really germane to this discussion, and confine ourselves strictly to breech-loaders firing fixed metallic-cartridge ammunition.

Now, a single-shot firearm is one with which, after each and every shot, you must manually open the action, extract the empty case of the just-fired round, insert a new unfired round, and close the action before you can fire again.  The US Army's 1870s-vintage Trapdoor Springfield was a single-shot rifle.  So was the Martini-Henry rifle with which the British Army fought the Zulu War (and with which 129 Welsh Borderers broke a five-thousand man Zulu army at Rourke's Drift), and so was the Sharps buffalo rifle.  These days, single-shot hunting rifles such as the Ruger No.1 and the Thompson/Center Encore are still popular.  Olympic 50-meter pistols and most of the world's most expensive and accurate precision smallbore target rifles are also single-shot.

A repeater is, in principle, any firearm which carries more than one round of ammunition within it and has a mechanism for rapidly loading those additional rounds into the chamber ready to fire.  (For the moment, for the sake of simplicity, we'll simply class things like double-barrelled shotguns, double rifles and drillings and other combination guns as being multiple-barrel single-shot weapons.)

There are many types of repeating firearms.  A revolver is a repeater.  So is a lever-action carbine, a bolt-action rifle or pistol, a pump-action shotgun, a semi-automatic pistol or rifle, or a belt-fed machine gun.  (We'll discuss the differences between a semi-automatic and a machine gun in a minute.)  These all share one important feature that distinguishes them from single-shots: the capacity to have two or more rapid follow-up shots, without stopping to reload, should you need them.  That one difference from single-shots is far more significant than the differences between the different types of repeating actions.

Many people would like you to think that simply being semi-automatic inherently makes a firearm many times more deadly and turns it into a ravening fountain of death and destruction.  This, however, is simply not true.  It is true that a semi-automatic action performs the act of reloading the action faster, and with less disturbance of the shooter's firing position, than most other actions.

But wait, didn't I just say "most"?  Not "all"?  Did I really mean that?

Arguments still continue about which is better, the semi-automatic pistol or the revolver.  The revolver is less prone to jams during firing, will not suffer a stoppage if a round fails to fire, and does not have ejected brass flying or a heavy metal slide shuttling rapidly back and forth.  Both can be operated extremely fast by an expert.  I have a video of a speed-shooting exhibition by revolver expert Jerry Miculek, in which he first fires eight aimed shots on one target in one second, followed by eight shots on four targets in 1.04 seconds, followed by (with a different revolver) six shots, reload, and six shots more on the same target in 2.99 seconds.

Granted, Miculek is an extreme example.  But nevertheless, all of these repeating actions have one thing in common:  All of them can be cycled faster than the average shooter can actually aim in the first place.  None of them are to be underestimated.  The Boer War was fought with bolt-action rifles on the Boer side; every nation involved in the First World War fought it using bolt-action rifles; every nation involved in the Second World War used bolt-action rifles.  (Of all the nations involved in World War 2, only Germany, the US, and Russia fielded semi-automatic rifles during the war.  Of those, Germany developed them relatively late in the war and still issued bolt-action rifles to most troops, while Russia entered the war using mainly the bolt-action Mosin-Nagant M91-30 and began issuing the Tokarev SVT-40 only after 1940.  The United States primarily used the M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle, but some troops still carried the bolt-action M1903 Springfield.)  Lever-action rifles were ubiquitous in the post-Civil War American west, and are still used by hunters today to take game as large as moose.  There are purpose-designed semi-automatic hunting rifles, that differ functionally from such things as semi-auto civilian-market AK copies in only two regards:  smaller magazine capacity (usually four rounds or less, comparable to most bolt-action hunting rifles) and considerably greater power.  Essentially everything else is cosmetic.  The German arms firm Heckler und Koch sells, or used to sell, a semi-auto hunting rifle that was based on precisely the same action as their G-3 battle rifle (as well as the HK91, a semi-automatic G-3 for the civilian market).  Visibly, it has a traditional sporter-styled walnut stock instead of a military-styled stock; internally, the mechanism is identical except that the safety does not have a full-auto position.  Many other firearms manufacturers, both American and not, manufacture purpose-designed semi-automatic hunting rifles that look just like a "traditional" hunting rifle unless you look at the actual breech area of the rifle and know how to tell the difference.

There's another important thing that all of these action types have in common.  With each of them, each time you pull the trigger, the weapon goes BANG ... once.  Then nothing happens until you release the trigger, cycle the action if necessary, and pull the trigger again.  Granted, with a semi-auto, a moderately skilled shooter can fire two or possibly even three shots a second.  But a skilled rifleman with a lever-action rifle can also get off two shots a second, and the internal mechanism of the Winchester Model 12 shotgun was such that if you simply held the trigger back, it would fire as fast as you could slam the pump slide back and forth.  (First world war GI "doughboys" called it the Trench Broom.)  This characteristic was shared by the earlier Winchester Model 1897.

The TV news likes to deliberately muddy the issue by showing footage of rifles that, when the trigger is pulled, fire repeatedly until you release the trigger.  But this is something else altogether.  That is a fully automatic weapon, also known as a machine gun — and, unless you have a Federal Class III license and you've paid the transfer tax on the weapon, it's illegal for civilians to own in the US.  Showing footage of full-automatic weapons — machine guns — while talking about semi-automatic weapons is at best misinformation, if not a deliberate lie of omission.

There's an important point here that we have to consider, though.  All firearms recoil when fired.  That means before you can fire another effective shot, you've got to bring the sights back on target.  And that, at pretty much anything much beyond arms' length, takes anyone but an expert shooter from one to several seconds.  So that brings us to another common characteristic shared by all repeating firearms — all of them are capable of being cycled faster than most shooters can aim the next shot anyway.

Yes, with a semi-auto you can simply yank the trigger as fast as you possibly can.  Shooters call this technique "spray and pray" — because only through the agency of divine intervention or sheer dumb luck are any of your shots going to hit your target.  I once watched a yahoo with a HK91 empty a 20-round magazine at a one-gallon milk jug at a range of maybe twenty yards, pretty much as fast as he could pull the trigger, and miss with every shot.

You can do exactly the same thing with a double-action revolver, or with a little more work, a lever-action rifle or a pump shotgun.  And with pretty much the same results (or lack thereof).  Military snipers know it isn't the hundred shots you miss your enemy with that matter.  It's the one carefully aimed shot that hits.  The sniper's motto is "One shot, one kill."

There are shooters who can fire a repeater — be it lever-action, pump-action, bolt-action, revolver or semi-auto — just about as fast as the action will cycle, and actually hit their targets with every shot.  Every one of these shooters rates the term "expert".  See the example of Jerry Miculek, above.

Now, it is true that the various types of semi-auto action lend themselves particularly readily to detachable box magazines that hold as many as thirty rounds.  But a British Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle designed in the early 1900s, for just one example, also has a detachable box magazine, one that holds ten rounds.  However, British troops carrying the Lee-Enfield were not issued spare magazines unless theirs became damaged, because the rifle was designed to be reloadable from the top, even just to top off a part-empty magazine, either by loading single rounds or by using a sheet-metal "stripper clip".  A stripper clip held five rounds, and the magazine could be reloaded with stripper clips as fast as — and much more cheaply than — by changing the magazine, and without moving the rifle out of firing position.

Which is more "deadly" — an AK copy with a single thirty-round magazine, that's not really accurate beyond about 400 yards; or a hundred-year-old Lee Enfield, considered "effective" to 550 yards and capable of hitting targets out to a thousand yards, with a full magazine and a pocketful of extra stripper clips?

This applies to pistols too.  The M1911 Colt pistol, among the oldest and best semi-automatic pistols, carries a seven-round magazine that can be quickly replaced with a full one when empty ... but a double-action revolver can be reloaded just as quickly using a speedloader or, in some cases, a moon clip.  Modern high-capacity semi-automatic pistols may hold as many as eighteen rounds; a double-action revolver and two speedloaders will give you that same eighteen rounds, and the only case in which the slight extra reloading time will matter is if you're trying to fire it all at once at a single target.

Now, another thing that is seldom mentioned about semi-automatics is a crucial factor related to their design.  Things like the AK — Avtomat Kalashnikova — were originally designed as relatively-close-range combat rifles.  The first ones were German designs, the MP43, MP44, StG44, and StG45.  Their key functional innovation was to combine most of the power and accuracy of a rifle with the full-automatic fire of a submachinegun.  (In fact, they were originally designed to counter the very effective Russian PPSh-41 submachinegun.)  But, there's a key problem with this.  A traditional full-size rifle cartridge such as is used in most hunting rifles — of any action type — is too powerful to use in a full-auto weapon.  The recoil of a full-power round makes it uncontrollable in full-automatic fire.  The US rediscovered this with the 7.62x51mm NATO round of the M14 service rifle in Vietnam, which is a major reason why the M14 was abandoned in favor of the M16 rifle.

So what's to do?  Well, the solution for all of these "assault" rifles (a term coined by the Germans) was to use a smaller, reduced-power cartridge.  In the German case, this was the 7.92x33mm Kurz, the world's first "intermediate" cartridge.  Drastically cutting the power of the cartridge compared to the full-size 7.92x57mm Mauser cut down on the recoil, which made the weapon controllable in full-automatic fire.  A soldier could also carry more of the smaller, lighter cartridges.

That characteristic continues to this day.  Almost without exception, the semi-automatic rifles that you hear called "assault weapons" fire one of two cartridges: the 7.62x39mm M1943 Russian round fired by the Kalashnikov and its predecessor the SKS (Samozaryadniy Karabin sistemi Simonova), or the 5.56x45mm NATO round fired by the M16/AR15 and related weapons.

Among the least powerful of the centerfire rounds used in "traditional" hunting rifles is the .30-30 Winchester.  It's pretty much considered the lower end of cartridges adequate for deer hunting in most states.  But the .30-30 Winchester is about 20% more powerful than the 7.62x39 M1943.

There's another factor involved here.  Part of the reason why the idea of a less powerful rifle cartridge was accepted in the first place was the realization that if you kill an enemy soldier, you reduce his combat strength by one man.  But if you wound that soldier, on average it takes two men to get him to medical care and treat his wound.  So by wounding one man, you reduce your enemy's combat strength by three.

The reduced power of Sturmgewehr ammunition was acceptable because it wasn't designed to kill.  It was designed to wound.  In fact, after thirty years of complaints from troops, the US Army is finally acknowledging that with the 5.56mm round of the M16, it went too far — the ammunition isn't powerful enough, and will not reliably stop an opponent with a single hit.  There's a very good chance the US Army's next rifle will use a more powerful 6.5mm round, and in fact in Iraq, designated marksmen among US troops are being re-equipped with the 7.62mm M14/M21 rifle (pending full introduction of the 7.62mm M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System), because they need a rifle that is effective beyond 400 meters, and the current M4 carbine isn't.  The 5.56x45mm round is so lacking in power that it is not legal to hunt deer with it in most states, because it is considered inhumane — it won't reliably kill a deer with a single hit.

But wait, there's more!  Yes, still ANOTHER factor to consider.  Repeating rifles are readily available at the drop of a hat in calibers such as .338 Winchester Magnum, .375 Holland & Holland, .378 Weatherby Magnum, .416 Rigby, all the way up to rounds like .460 Weatherby Magnum that can drop a rhino or a Cape buffalo.  Most of the larger calibers are found only in bolt-action or single-shot rifles (including the double rifles we previously briefly mentioned).  These rifles can be compact and relatively light-weight — because they're strong.  Semi-automatic rifles chambered in calibers more powerful than .300 Winchester are rare, because as the cartridge grows more powerful, a semi-automatic action has to rapidly grow larger and heavier to contain the power of the cartridge.  There are very powerful semi-automatic rifles, some of which even fire the massive .50 Browning Machine Gun cartridge, such as the Barrett M82.  But, just like the cartridge, they're huge — the M82 is 57 inches long and weighs 30 pounds unloaded.

For similar reasons, the majority of semi-automatic pistols fire compact cartridges at best no more powerful, and usually much less powerful, than cartridges readily available in revolvers.  .357 Magnum is one of the most widely-used revolver cartridges of modern times; only recently did the .357 SIG come close to matching it in power.  Only 10mm Auto comes close to matching up to the .41 Remington Magnum, and the 10mm has never been a commercial success.  Semi-automatic pistols firing high-powered cartridges have been comparatively rare, have usually been expensive, and have sold poorly, because most shooters have found them difficult to control, and because the sheer bulk of the largest pistol cartridges makes them infeasible to build a semi-automatic pistol around.  You could build a semi-automatic pistol to chamber something like .475 Linebaugh or .480 Ruger, but if it used anything resembling a conventional semi-automatic pistol layout, you wouldn't be able to get your hand around the grip.

(Recently, some semi-automatic "pistols" have come onto the market that fire 5.56x45mm and other small rifle cartridges.  They are typically modified AR15 rifle actions with a short barrel and no stock, with the magazine well in the standard rifle position in front of the trigger guard.  I personally consider them something of an aberration, and am unable to see any point to them other than "Because we can".)

So, we've come up with the following key points about semi-automatic weapons:

• They can cycle faster than the vast majority of shooters can aim anyway ... but so can most other repeating firearms.
• They fire ammunition that is at best no more powerful than other readily available repeating firearms, and in the case of the most highly publicized types, usually considerably less powerful.
• In many cases, their magazine capacity is no higher than repeating firearms designed using other action types.
• They can be reloaded rapidly ... but so can several other types of repeating firearms.
• They don't necessarily look at all like modern military assault rifles.
• Even those that do look like military machine guns differ functionally from them in crucial respects; they will not fire continuously as long as the trigger is held.

So, knowing what we do now about semi-automatic firearms, we can re-examine the original question, "Why does anyone need a semi-automatic firearm?", and we can ask another question in reply:  "What is so special about semi-automatic firearms, that anyone should have to have a special need in order to have a semi-automatic firearm rather than any other kind of repeater?"

And, honestly, the answer to that question is, "Well, nothing, really."

---

By request, the quick identification guide to action types by functional characteristics and legal status:

Single shot:

• Holds one cartridge at a time.  (But see the note above about double rifles etc, which can be functionally considered multiple-barrel single-shot rifles.)
• Must be manually reloaded by the shooter after every shot.
• One pull of the trigger yields one shot.
• Legal for civilians in the US to own.
• Need not be registered.
• Legal for new firearms to be offered for sale to civilians in the US.

Repeater (other than semi-automatic):

(This category includes pump actions, lever actions, revolvers and bolt actions, among others.)

• Holds more than one cartridge at a time (may be as few as two, or as many as twenty for some .22 rimfire pump-action rifles).
• Once loaded, requires a single additional action by the shooter to chamber the next round.
• One pull of the trigger yields one shot.
• Legal for civilians in the US to own.
• Need not be registered.
• Legal for new firearms to be offered for sale to civilians in the US.

Repeater (semi-automatic):

• Holds more than one cartridge at a time (may be as few as five, or in rare cases as many as fifty).
• Once loaded, the act of firing a shot causes the mechanism to automatically advance the next cartridge into firing position without an additional action by the shooter.
• One pull of the trigger yields one shot.
• Legal for civilians in the US to own.
• Need not be registered.
• Legal for new firearms to be offered for sale to civilians in the US.

(Note:  Under this functional definition, a double-action revolver could be considered functionally the same as a semi-automatic.  Unlike a semi-automatic, though, no additional action by the firer is necessary to continue firing in the event of a misfire; the double-action revolver shooter need only pull the trigger again, whereas with a semi-automatic, the shooter must manually cycle the action to clear the misfired round.)

Fully automatic, aka machine gun:

• Holds many cartridges, usually from twenty to several hundred (in the case of belt-fed weapons).
• Firing a shot automatically causes the mechanism to advance the next round into firing position and immediately fire it, unless the trigger is released.
• When the trigger is pulled, fires shots continuously at a high rate until the trigger is released or the ammunition supply runs out.
• NOT LEGAL for civilians in the US to own without specific Federal permits.
• MUST BE REGISTERED.
• New full-automatic firearms not already registered when the registry was closed in 1986 MAY NOT BE SOLD to civilians, and are legal ONLY for military and law enforcement purchase.

Comments

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

.45 WinMag is about the upper limit of what you can build a semi-auto pistol around, IMO. Anyone with hands smaller than me is going to have a hard time holding onto it.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the .45 Win Mag (aka .45 Wildey Mag) and .50AE are about the furthest anyone has pushed it to my knowledge. Not that .50AE is anything to sneeze at; it's pretty much ballistically equivalent to a .50-120 Sharps.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

I just heard of someone building a semi-auto belt fed 1919 with a pistol grip and 10" barrel. :)

Whole new meaning to "grind organ".

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

Thanks for all the explanation and demystification. I could have done with a capsule-summary list somewhere quickly showing the significant differences between single-shot, repeaters, semi-automatics, and automatics (for those of us who skipped Firearms 101).

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

Your capsule summary:


Single shot: — Holds one cartridge at a time. (Well, see the note about double rifles etc.) Must be manually reloaded between individual shots. One pull of the trigger yields one shot. Legal for civilians in the US to own. Need not be registered. Legal for new firearms to be offered for sale in the US.

Repeater (other than semi-automatic): — Holds more than one cartridge at a time, may be as few as two or as many as twenty (for some .22 rimfire pump-action rifles). Once loaded, requires a single additional action by the shooter to chamber the next round. One pull of the trigger yields one shot. (This category includes pump guns, lever actions, revolvers and bolt actions, among others.) Legal for civilians in the US to own. Need not be registered. Legal for new firearms to be offered for sale in the US.

Repeater, semi-automatic: — Holds more than one cartridge at a time; may be as few as five or as many as fifty. Once loaded, the act of firing a shot causes the mechanism to automatically advance the next cartridge into firing position without an additional action by the shooter. One pull of the trigger yields one shot. Legal for civilians in the US to own. Need not be registered. Legal for new firearms to be offered for sale in the US.

(NOTE: By this functional definition, a double-action revolver could be considered semi-automatic.)

Fully automatic: — aka machine gun. Holds many cartridges, usually from twenty to several hundred (in the case of belt-fed weapons). Firing a shot automatically causes the mechanism to advance the next round into firing position and fire it, unless the trigger is released. When the trigger is pulled, fires shots continuously at a high rate until the trigger is released or the ammunition supply runs out. NOT LEGAL for civilians in the US to own without specific Federal permits. MUST BE REGISTERED. New full-automatic firearms not already registered when the registry was closed in 1986 MAY NOT BE SOLD to civilians, and are legal ONLY for military and law enforcement purchase.



Does that answer your question?

[databeast.livejournal.com]

Heh, that's definately the point of this.

Most anti-firearms backlash, as a general rule, seems to be mouthed by people that visibly demonstrate a willful lack of knowledge about the realities of the subject. For such a 'crazy gun-toting nation' as the US, it still surprises me the percentage of your population that doesnt know even the basics truths about them beyond what hollywood and screaming political harridans shove through the media.

As a Brit, who didnt grow up around firearms at all, and has crammed as much knowledge about them into my head in the short time I've been here (just over a decade) and as such, bears something of a cliched stereotype of 'uh oh, a Brit with a gun, that's GOT to be dangerous!", some of the best compliments I've ever recieved, have been when gun-neutral or even gun-scared people have let me take them out shooting, teach them the basics of operation, impact and general realities, and finished the day up by telling me they dont intend to go shooting again, will likely never own a gun in their lives, but they're very happy to actually know the realities of them. Every single one of them from that point on, never exhibitted the slightest bit of nervousnous or disagreement about being in my presence while a gun was involved, from that point on.

And there's few things cooler than watching some 90lb, 5'2" gal, afraid of the big boomy things, fire a 12ga shotgun slug, recover her decorum from the recoil, fill with pride and then look over a range full of hulking guys with their little 9mm's and call them wimps ;)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

BTW, I just added an "identification guide by function and legal status" on the end, while making a few other corrections anyway.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Here's a simple answer for "why does anyone need an assault rifle, anyway?"

Coyotes.

Coyotes are pack animals that run in groups of between four and twelve. They are violent, as all predators necessarily are, and are frequently found on farmland. They are communal eaters, many of them tearing chunks off of prey simultaneously.

Rabies is spread via saliva. If one coyote is rabid, odds are good the others are infected, too, just not as symptomatic.

If you're a rancher or farmer and you're out on your property after dark, hearing the howls of coyote is one of the loveliest things you'll ever hear. They are intelligent, complex, beautiful animals. But when you hear the rout of coyote coming your way, you want a rifle which will reliably put down a rabid coyote with a single shot, and which you will not have to reload until the coyotes are in full retreat.

That's an AR-15 with a thirty-round magazine. In the eyes of the media, it is an "assault rifle". Ranchers and farmers call it by a different name: it is a "ranch rifle." It's light, it's effective, and it can be used to save your life or the lives of your livestock.

(It is true that very few people die from coyote attacks. Only a dozen or so have been reported in the last decade. This statistic is very little consolation to you when you're a few miles from home, it's night, and you hear the coyotes howling.)

So-called "assault weapons" are legitimate agricultural tools. All claims to the contrary are urban provincialism and anti-rural bias.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

these days, my definition of an assault weapon is "a carelessly driven vehicle". accidental vehicular murder is pretty much a freebie. you might pay a fine, but a good lawyer will keep you out of a jail term.

making something "tactical" is pretty silly too. i have a black LED flashlight. it's *TACTICAL* though. mostly because it's black. it's pretty ruggeded, and unless you let me drop it on your head a few hundreds of time, it's probably not lethal. omg, it's evil and black. hahahah.

#

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

"Ranch rifle" is Ruger's name for their Mini-14...

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

nice written.

a capsule summary might be: civilians don't NEED machine guns, but everything else? why not?

and while it might be ridiculously amusing to fire one, machine guns are expensive to own (legally), really expensive to fire in that mode, not accurate enough for evil overlords, and well, pretty useless overall.

#

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

We have a local gun shop that will rent fully automatic weapons one night a month. We did it with a group of people from work, many from out of the country for a project. It was a total blast! It did run about $120 per person for the night.

[lonewolf545.livejournal.com]

Correction, in World War II, the majority of US troops were issued the M1 Garand, particularly by 1943. The M1 Garand was originally adopted in 1936 as the standard infantry battle rifle, as far as I know, the only troops who did NOT carry the M1 into battle were some of the Marine units at the beginning of the war.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Correction noted. I also took the opportunity to remedy my omission of the SVT-40 Tokarev while I was at it.

[mzmadmike.livejournal.com]

I respond to such people two ways.

First: Constitution fail. Political theory fail. Common sense fail. We don't have "needs" in America (unlike socialist shitholes). We have "Rights." And a "right" is anything that is not given to the government as a "power."

Part two is the demonstration.

Explain to me why someone "needs" a car that does 100+MPH, "needs" alcohol, "needs" tobacco, "needs" a blowjob, "needs" a car at all in urban environments with developed mass transit systems, "needs" meat when vegetables are better for the environment, "needs" a second car, fancy glassware or a vacation when their money could be better spent feeding the poor.

When they can explain why they have a "need" and a "right" to such things, I will explain why I "need" any particular type of gun. (To kill people who demand "needs" for any of the above kind of behavior or others. Next question, please.)

Footnote: I spent all day today at a "Build Party" where somewhere around 90 M1919A4 belt fed "rifles," a dozen AK47s, a Bren, an MG42 "rifle," a couple of AR15s and an FAL were legally, privately manufactured by about 50 civilians, with no paperwork and no registration.

We also drank beer and ate pork.

And we're willing to kill to maintain those rights. About 1/3 of us were veterans who have a record of being willing to kill or die for a cause.

And more importantly, we all vote.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

My first thought on reading the original post -- even before I read the material under the cut tag -- was, "In this country, I don't have to show that I 'need' a particular weapon* -- if it's legal at all and my record is clean, I have a right to possess it." And I'm a Berkeley liberal who'll probably never own a gun. Not all of us are screaming nellies.

unixronin gets credit for some of that attitude, of course.

*Not counting the concealed-carry laws some places have.

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

I'll buy the rest of it, but are you implying that there are people who don't need blowjobs?

small, nerdy correction:

[milktree.livejournal.com]

Even though they use the same ammo and look similar, there's actually no lineage between the SKS and AK-47.

The 7.62x39 round was developed for the SKS and then used in the AK, but that's about the only connection.

Re: small, nerdy correction:

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Very true. And that's why I said "predecessor", rather than "parent" or "ancestor". While not mechanically related to the AK, the SKS did precede it.

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

Interesting read. Not really a gun guy myself, but still a science/engineering geek, so I tend to absorb a bit of gun stuff along the way. And I've long been impressed by the technological achievements of the 3rd reich. Thankfully their commonsense and politics were nowhere near the excellence of their science.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

What excellence of science? This is the same nation that refused to accept relativity, despite significant evidence supporting it, on the grounds that it was Juedischwissenschaft, or "Jewish science." (When Einstein was told the Reich had published a book of one hundred physics Ph.Ds condemning relativity, he's said to have remarked "one would suffice, if he was right.")

One of the reasons why Germany failed to develop the Bomb is they were engaged in the Final Solution. The United States benefited incredibly from this: we got all manner of highly-educated German and Eastern European emigres who were quite willing to help us out in our pursuit of the Bomb.

The Reich's vaunted excellence in engineering and science is the product of historical myth more than reality. The jet engine had been invented years before by Buckminster Fuller and/or Frank Whittle; Germany's achievement in this field consisted of deploying a jet-powered aircraft in the front lines. The StG-44 was a logical outgrowth of previous ideas in infantry weapons, with the Beretta MAB38 as an obvious precursor. The American M2 carbine, had it been loaded with a very slightly hotter round, would have qualified as an assault rifle.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Thankfully, or unfortunately?

Corrections

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

A couple of corrections, a couple of clarifications...

Designated marksmen in the Army are not being re-equipped with the M14. The Army has adopted the M110 as their new standard semiauto 7.62mm sniper rifle. It's essentially an accurized AR-10, more or less identical to the one I have in my closet. It's also called the SASS, for "Semi-Automatic Sniper System."

Those troops which are being equipped with the M14 are actually being equipped with the M21, which is the designation for a semiautomatic M14 outfitted with a telescopic scope and used in a marksman role. The differences between the M14 and the M21 are really only of interest to hardcore firearms geeks. They are visually identical from a first glance and are overwhelmingly parts-interchangeable. The M21 is being used as a stopgap measure while M110s are procured.

The M16 is effective up to 550 meters, which is the maximum range possible for a 5.56mm round. Past 550m the round tumbles and accuracy goes to hell. This maximum effective range is dependent on weather conditions and environmental factors, of course.

The M4, due to its much shorter barrel, has a much shorter effective range. The rounds tumble at a much shorter distance due to the reduced velocity. I've heard anywhere between 300m and 400m of effective range, which may be where you get your 400m number from.

By comparison, when my gunsmith was serving in the early part of the Vietnam War, he was a participant in 1000-yard (914m) rifle competitions using an M21 sniper rifle. According to him, 1000 yards is pushing the M21 weapon platform pretty damned hard, but a very skilled shooter can make those shots. The official by-the-book maximum effective range is 750 yards (690m). Either way, you're getting substantial improved range and massively enhanced lethality.

In Mark Bowden's book Black Hawk Down he talks about a Delta Force sniper who went into an extremely hot firefight armed with an M21. The Army Rangers he went in with were mocking him for his archaic weapon choice: it was semiauto only, it was big, it was heavy, it had less ammunition than their M16A2s, and so on. The M21 turned into the heavy firepower for the unit: while the Rangers were having to put multiple bursts of 5.56mm into Somali insurgents to put them down, the Delta Force sniper was scoring one-shot incapacitations with every round fired. Part of this is no doubt due to the sniper's remarkable accuracy (memo to self: hit the range again soon, there is no substitute for accuracy). But given that a shot to the thigh with a 5.56mm will be a painful but generally non-life-threatening wound, whereas a shot to the thigh with a 7.62mm round will stand an excellent chance of mangling the limb to the point of amputation... the raw and nearly unholy power of the 7.62mm NATO round is not to be underestimated.

Snipers worship at the altar of "one shot, one kill." It makes sense they would want to use a rifle chambered for a round which would make follow-up shots unnecessary.

Re: Corrections

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I believe that the army also issued some heavy-barrel Remington target-model bolt action rifles to snipers in 'Nam. 7.62mm chambering.

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

I will take the time to read your posting this afternoon. I'm off to a baby show this morning and managed to convince David to come with me. Seize the moment and all that.

However, thank you for taking my question seriously and not as an attempt to stir up anything. Given the number of postings and the amount of work you put into your answer, will I be banned from asking questions in your journal again? :)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Of course not. Please continue! :)

[smandal.livejournal.com]

A naive question:

If fast-repeating weapons are excessive since they can put out rounds faster than people can aim, what's wrong with banning such weapons?

An AK-47 is a poor self-defense or occupation-resistance weapon, but excellent for something like the VaTech shooting.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

If fast-repeating weapons are excessive since they can put out rounds faster than people can aim, what's wrong with banning such weapons?

The point is that all repeating firearms are, in the right hands, capable of being cycled faster than most people can aim them. This doesn't mean semi-automatics are unnecessary and should be banned. The point is more that there is nothing about a semi-automatic that makes it inherently any more deadly than a revolver or a bolt-action, and in fact, many of the military-styled semi-automatic rifles are actually LESS lethal than more "traditional" equivalents. Even in the world's militaries, there is not an assault rifle in the world that has the per-shot power of Uncle John's elk rifle.

Indeed, when you actually study most of the highly publicized mass shootings, what stands out is not how many people the shooters killed — it's how FEW most of them manage to kill given the number of shots fired. Klebold and Harris, in their rampage at Columbine, managed to kill only 12 people despite having multiple firearms, several bombs, and twenty to thirty minutes to roam the school unopposed, and left twenty-three wounded. Almost all of those killed were shot at point-blank range. Had they been actually firing aimed shots instead of spraying wild shots around, the death toll could easily have been three times higher, even had they been carrying only revolvers. Patrick Purdy, shooting at comparatively short range with his Chinese Type 56 AKM copy, wounded thirty but managed to kill only five. Compare that to Charles Whitman, who in 1966 killed 14 and wounded 31 at long range from the University of Texas clock tower with a scoped, bolt-action Remington 700, after first murdering his wife and his mother with a knife.

An AK-47 is a poor self-defense or occupation-resistance weapon, but excellent for something like the VaTech shooting.

Rubbish. It's a rather difficult thing to a deranged mass-killer to conceal, for starters. There's a reason why both Harris and Klebold, and Cho at Virginia Tech, used pistols that could be easily concealed. Cho was able to kill as many as he did largely because the VA Tech administration completely failed, for two hours, to issue a warning that there was a deranged shooter on campus or take any action to find Cho, lest they alarm anyone. By comparison, Peter Odighizuwa at the Appalachian School of Law in 2002 managed to kill only three people (again, at point-blank range) before being stopped by two other students with their own personal weapons, because unlike VA Tech, Appalachian School of Law allowed them to have weapons on campus. VA Tech prohibited weapons on campus, but of course, this failed to stop Cho — he was planning on committing mass murder anyway, what did he care about breaking a campus rule? (This is the most blind, facepalm-inducing failure of gun control laws¹: They assume that violent criminals, people who have already chosen to violate the laws, will obey laws that make it more difficult for them to commit their crimes. The law-abiding citizens who are the only ones who obey the laws aren't the problem in the first place. It's like trying to prevent flood losses by sandbagging buildings on hilltops while ignoring the ones on the flood plain.)


If the AK-47 is such a poor occupation-resistance weapon, why is it so popular among insurgents and resistance groups worldwide? If it's such a great weapon for mass shootings, why are so few mass shootings — let alone other violent crimes — committed with such weapons? Joseph Constance, deputy police chief of Trenton, NJ, is on record as stating that "Since police started keeping statistics, we now know that assault weapons are/were used in an underwhelming 0.026 of 1% of crimes in New Jersey. This means that my officers are more likely to encounter an escaped tiger from the zoo than to confront an assault weapon in the hands of a drug-crazed killer on the streets."



[1] If, of course, you accept the premise that gun control is about reducing crime in the first place. Much of the evidence seems to indicate it isn't.