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Comment by dharmach | Hacker News Reader

How a gun as a weapon of defense differs from a one used as a weapon of offense, from design perspective? Or there are no differences in design?

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A defensive weapon is typically designed to provide suppressive fire. Suppressive fire is typically high volume (think machine gun) and aimed over a larger area, with the intent of keeping the enemies heads' down (thus not firing), providing covering fire so that friendly forces can maneuver.

The AK still is an assault rifle and will be used in such way. You seem to referring to heavy machine guns like German MG 1 or 2 which have far bigger magazines.

Also suppressive fire is not only an defensive strategy. It binds enemy troops and gives your troops the freedom to prepare an assault.

Before this comment gets sniped a third time, I'll note that suppressive fire can just as well cover a unit disengaging from action as it can a unit preparing to move into closer contact.

Yes you are right. I would even go as far as stating that the term "defensive weapon" makes no sense in the context of assault rifles.

I'll go further, and state that "defensive weapon" is a contradiction in terms and semantically null however applied. A weapon is a tool; offense and defense are perhaps the two broadest categories of the ways in which such a tool may be employed.

No doubt true in general, but how about land mines? That seems fairly close to a "defensive weapon".

Nothing of the sort! A minefield makes a lousy area denial weapon, because it's consumable; every mine that goes off is one fewer between the attacker and the objective. It's a considerable obstacle, sure, but it won't stop an attacker; at best, it'll slow him down for a while. If he's really determined, it may not even do much of that; he might just order his infantry to march through the minefield anyway, which is a very effective if rather expensive clearing method. If he's really determined and also short of soldiers, he might do the same, but with a regiment of children -- Iran used this method during their war with Iraq in the 80s. Horrifying as it is, it does work.

No, the point of a minefield is to funnel attackers into predefined areas where you've arranged to bring your heavy weapons, specifically artillery or machine guns, to bear with best effect. These areas rejoice in the name "killing zones", and their purpose is to maximize the effect of said heavy weapons by concentrating their targets in a single compact mass which can be saturated with fire. Granted, being a static emplacement, a minefield can only be effective when someone has to go through it or find a way around it; that said, and while the point is certainly arguable, I have a hard time considering a weapon, whose sole purpose is to make it as easy as possible to slaughter one's opponents en masse, as being particularly "defensive".

Well, defense is simply killing your enemy when they're the ones who are attacking. It's hard to imagine using land mines to attack, while you nicely described how effective they can be to defend.

I suppose it depends on the scope in which you define the terms 'attack' and 'defend'. If I lay a minefield ahead of a position, so that it may better absorb and break a counterattack intended to slow or halt my invading army, then am I attacking, or defending, or both at once?

I'd say that you're defending at the tactical level, attacking at the strategic level, and then it all comes down to how much context you want to include when looking at the weapon. I could certainly see arguments for both.

> No doubt true in general, but how about land mines?

Not when you throw them at someone.

An old instructor of mine who was in logistics in Vietnam used to use suppressive fire to get his butt out of trouble. In fact, he used to say it was best to scare the enemy and not kill anyone in that particular situation. (His purpose was not to directly kill anyone.) He thought that killing someone's best friend was a great motivation for an enemy to go hero-mode on you, but instilling fear always worked out to his advantage.

Your instructor was so close as makes no odds to stating the only workable doctrine for a nation involved in a guerrilla war. Kill a man's brother, and he'll spend every breath from then until his last looking to kill you back; show him convincingly that his cause is hopeless, and you open the way to, if not friendship, then at least the possibility of coexistence without either side feeling it needs to engage in sporadic attempts at murder.

Funny you should say that. We used to think of him as jolly but affably mushy in the head. In retrospect, he was pretty wise, but he made no attempt to come across as being especially smart. I later related what he said to a retired Marine, who responded to the effect, that must've been an Army story -- his family had been joining the Marines for 3 generations to kill.

I recommend reading "on killing", a book about effects that killing has in soldiers and how it has evolved since WW2. The modern warrior-killer mindset and training is responsible for a great part of the PTSD.

Fancy words there, but I wonder if you have any idea what you're talking about. The best way to stop someone is not to fire Rambo style over their heads and scare them away. The best way to stop someone is to land a bullet where it counts. I've never heard of a general retreat because they were shooting too many bullets over their heads. Armies don't advance in linear form. A squad formation isn't likely to be stopped by "suppressive" fire. And in urban combat, it seems like it would be an utterly useless strategy.

The difference between a well trained soldier and rabble is that soldiers don't lift their guns over their heads and fire. They look at what they shoot and they aim to hit the enemy.

You've been playing too much Xbox.

Nope, US Marine.

Did you not have a SAW gunner in your fire team? Suppressing fire is a pretty much text book use, as I understand.

/brother was a Marine in Iraq, I think a fire team leader and eventually squadron leader

I carried an M249. You do not hold the trigger down and shoot randomly with it aka "spray and pray". You shoot 2 to 3 round bursts for accurate shots. Also I think the original post I replied to was edited, but I'm not sure. It seems a lot more sane than what I originally remembered it to be when I replied to it yesterday.

Nope that's all I wrote. Keep up the good work!

You didn't write the post he originally replied to. Keep up the good work!

I mean the post by "chrissnell". I don't have any disagreements with what it says now.

Whether you are defending or attacking a gun's function is to fire rounds and kill or injure the target. With the exception of certain scenarios like riots, it gets that job done, and that's why armed forces, swat teams, and gangbangers all use them.

At a civilian level, AIUI law enforcement and the like tend to prefer shorter-range, more accurate weapons than the AK47. In a war situation I'm not sure how much difference there is.

Depends on the war. As I understand matters from the perspective of a civilian who reads a lot of history, the purpose of an assault rifle is to combine at least decent accuracy at medium to long range, so that on a battlefield you can shoot the fellow who's trying to shoot you while he's still a couple hundred meters thataway, with the sort of concentrated firepower previously only available from a machine gun proper, so that you can clear rooms in house-to-house fighting and otherwise deal with close-in situations which call for more firepower than a semi-automatic battle rifle can provide.

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