The Thompson M1A1 Submachine Gun
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Edit: I should mention that I have had training with various weapon systems - I have fired the M16, M4 Carbine, M249 SAW, M240, and M27 IAR.
That said, it is more the legacy of the 'machine pistol' (which the Thompson is, given its pistol ammunition) which found service in special forces and security services around the globe, that is interesting to me. Looking at different defense manuals it is amazing just out deadly a modern warfighter is, against a wide variety of opponents, compared to the folks who carried one of these into battle. Like the gap between a cutlass and musket.
The Thompson, with a fixed-stock and foregrip is clearly an SMG by that definition.
[edit] Here's a machine pistol[1] (though you can get longer barrels and either a foldable or fixed stock, at which point it gets confusing)
Then there's the new Personal Defense Weapon category, with my favorite (in theory) being the P90. Not intended as a classical SMG, but more for people who's main weapon is not a small arm but say a tank. Short and compact to allow easy bailing out of a burning tank, with ballistics intended to give the bearer the best chance once out in the open.
I would truly love to have one as a $$$ toy, but as a self-defense weapon I can't justify it unless it's the full-auto P90.
Just out of curiosity, when did this word crop up? To me it seems like some kind of odd DoD invention to supplant more traditional words like "soldier", but I don't know anything about the etymology.
The Tommy Gun was the pre-war glimpse of what was to come. It used pistol ammunition, not rifle ammunition, and thus was suitable for close-in fights.
I, for one, am glad that large scale war with millions of human combatants, appears to be diminishing in likelihood.
I wonder if humanity would prefer more frequent but less severe wars vs. less frequent but more severe; with nuclear weapons the frequency/odds were very low but the severity of any war existential. From a species perspective, there's probably a strong argument for even 10-100x higher "expected deaths" if it removes infrequent complete destruction from the possibilities.
We did have a nice quiet period there, but I suspect China might be a real threat to world peace. Unfortunately China has growing up now a "forgotten" generation of young men who outnumber women their own age over 2:1, and what has history taught us societies do with a bunch of unhappy young men? Kill them in wars.
So while China might not be invading India or the US, there still might be a civil war if this bunch of unhappy men decide to turn on the government to force "change." That too would be a threat to world peace, as an unstable China is bad for everyone.
I think Russia's recent aggressive stance against Ukraine is worrying. But we'll have to wait and see if this is an "isolated incident" or some part of a USSR-mini-reformation. However the social makeup in that region of Ukraine (where many of the people living their speak Russian and want to be Russian) might be a unique one off rather than a specific change in Russia's overall international stance.
Let's also remember ISIL ("ISIS" as the US calls them). A group of mostly young poor men rampaging through multiple states because they feel their own governments have let them down, and are unhappy with the US's interference in the region and or drone strikes (that sometimes kill civilians, often with even an apology or investigation by the US).
Yes, there is a religious element to ISIL's increase in popularity, but it is often quite interesting to look at the social economic situation that allowed extremism to bread rather than simply looking at the extremism and pretending it gained popularity in a vacuum.
I general I suspect you'll see the US get involved on the ground with ISIL, you'll see the Ukraine situation simmer out with the Russian's holding the occupied land, and you'll see some major national or international incident with China in the next 15-30 years.
1. Modern nations would find engaging in a large conflict without a many alliance nations economically ruinous. Basically if all (or even some?) of your major trading partners cut you off, it will cripple you.
2. The long range and high precision nature of modern weapons make the idea of maintaining an industrial complex during a 1st world vs 1st world conflict very unlikely. I think this is going to severely limit the length of any such war.
>>US get involved on the ground with ISIL
Compared to 1st. world vs 1st world conflicts this is a low intensity conflict similar to what has been simmering for the past decade. Just a new face for the enemy.
>>you'll see the Ukraine situation simmer out with the Russian's holding the occupied land.
Note this supports the previous poster's comment.
>>and you'll see some major national or international incident with China in the next 15-30 years.
If you are basing this on the "numerous discontent young men" hypothesis you are on sound theoretical ground, but its worth pointing out that China often seems to operate under an alternate sociological law. Its also worth pointing out the immense power disparity between a Chinese civilian and their government is much greater than in say the US; In terms of communications and weapon availability.
Of course there is the issue of nuclear annihilation, which should not be easily dismissed, and still poses an existential risk for human civilization.
Beyond that though, conventional military capabilities are quite potent, and if they were ever leveled intentionally and with ferocity toward, say, civilian populations we would likely be shocked at the outcome. Modern militaries are capable of killing millions per day using only conventional weapons.
Cause serious damage and kill a lot of people, yes, especially during the several days it would require to disable the howitzers in their Hardened Artillery Sites (HARTS).
Possibly interesting subsequent history... In 1934, USA practically banned sale & possession of machine-guns (a $200 tax (equivalent to $6000 today) on a ~$50 product). In 1986, that became an actual ban (for post-'86 products). As such, the market incentive to develop modern & sophisticated automatic weapons pretty much ended with the M16 (the USA having by far the largest civilian market for firearms). A few non-USA automatics have been designed since (FN P90 and HK MP7 are of note), built around very lightweight ammunition and high capacity magazines in very compact platforms; these point to what could have been developed & available domestically, but was stifled for want of a market to experiment in. Should the bans be lifted, we may see some remarkable developments follow pent-up demand.
Even the M16 (AR-15) is an outlier after the 1934 NFA. And consider that it was designed in 1957. Contrast this with the USSR's AK47, designed in 1947. Taking the small private developers out of the gave seems to be big reason why the Soviets got there a decade before the USA.
Thus, it appears to me that the limitations on gun ownership in the USA is a liability in terms of national security. We can debate about how much it handicaps, and how important that is, but the effect is certainly there.
E.g. the AR-15 and its round, which were adopted as the M16 and 5.56x45mm came from the civilian market (and the round's parent was civilian). Most or all of the modern optics that have been used in the GWoT came from the civilian market. Our current and prior service handguns came from civilians, and the same civilian, perhaps with funding from the military during WWII, designed the heavy machine gun we still use to this day. He also designed the lighter crew serviced machine guns we used from WWI (at least in part) through the Korean War. Oh, and the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), our light machine gun prior to light versions of General Purpose Machine guns (and part of the internals of our current medium and light general purpose machine gun were inspired by the BAR).
Our sniper rifles are all militarized versions of civilian rifles, and I believe their scopes as well. The gold standard sniper bullet is from a civilian company, it's called the Match King, indicating its original purpose.
And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head from the 20th Century.
I can give you iffier examples of problems that we believe have come from places that extinguished or prevented the development of gun cultures, which is not to say that such places and governments haven't come up with good guns and rounds.
As a consequence, there are effectively no new designs available, meaning US national security (as far as small arms go) is stuck with a 50-year-old design improved only by minor tweaks (and most of those, to make the point, are the result of the civilian market for the closely related AR15 rifle). The US military keeps trying to improve over the M16/M4, but can't because there's nothing out there so deeply tested & known, and nothing with a comparably large infrastructure supporting it.
The massive .50BMG rifle ammunition was developed around 1910. Its primary use was established in WWII as an anti-aircraft machine-gun round, intended to throw a lot of lead in the air fast with little concern about accuracy.
In the 1970s, precision long-range rifle shooters were looking for something that could fire with interesting accuracy at very far targets, 1000-2000 meters. They repurposed the .50BMG ammo, built large long rifles to fire it, and put it to a completely new use from its original intent. In 1980, the Barrett M82 semi-automatic rifle was created - something that the military had no interest in the development of, and which was created solely by the civilian market.
The military suddenly took notice of this hard-hitting very long range rifle that used standard military ammo, and suddenly military snipers had a new tool - thanks to civilians - to enhance US national security using this one-man gun which could take out significant targets a mile away.
Had there been a ban on civilian ownership of .50BMG guns, which some groups have been pushing for hard for decades, the M82 would never have been developed, and a lot more military targets would have been taken out with far more expensive missiles with far more collateral damage & casualties.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning#M2_as_a_sniper_rif...
I've read that the Barrett M82 has been used a lot in explosive ordinance disposal, something for which a single aimed shot (at a very long distance) is ideal, whereas a full auto M2 would be gross overkill, not to mention not particularity man portable (30 pounds, a bit over the weight of our medium general purpose machine gun (but that also requires spare barrels and a lot of ammo), vs. 128 pounds with tripod).
I understand the interplay between the private and military markets. But to me, "national security" is a grander notion; it's about stopping attacks on a country or its interests abroad, not about the quality of its small arms...
I can see how having small arms in the hands of civilians would help mount a resistance movement against an occupying power, but that's not a matter of national security.
I think a lot of that has to do with the perception that PDWs are poor replacements for assault rifles - in a battle context greater range and accuracy will win out if you can only carry one weapon and a side arm
The MP44, some of which are supposedly still in use.
It was truly the worlds first assault rifle (the name assault rifle is a translation of what Hitler called it when he found out they'd built it despite him ordering them not to).
It also looks a lot like an AK47 (though internally very different) though in many ways is much more sophisticated internally.
http://youtu.be/4mcx8eR79dQ?t=19s good short history
Disc magazine was copied from Finns, PPSH itself was based on earlier PPD designs which were done roughly at the same time as Finns Suomi sub-guns were developed.
While not of the same magnitude of the actual moon landing, that must have seemed like quite a moonshot in 1918.
No -- in no models. Cyclic rate of fire != number of rounds you can put through the weapon within one minute. Even if you figured out a magazine that could reliably put 800 rounds through without a stoppage, you'd melt the barrel at about round 200-300.
In a feigned surrender you never get taken into custody.
That being said, the Geneva Convention didn't exist when this happened.
The concept of "the gun is always loaded" or "never point it at anything you don't want to shoot" is an old one however. But it took a while for the belt-and-suspenders approach to become popular, and historically people seemed comfortable enough with their finger on the trigger. (It's rare to see anything else in historical photos.)
A fair reminder for today, but nobody'd have told the General so at the time.
However I was taught by my father in the hunting domain, where Rule 2 rules, "Never let the muzzle cover something you're not willing to destroy", i.e. keep it pointed in a safe direction. That was because you never knew if a twig or the like might pull the trigger (see the problem with holstering striker fired handguns which catch e.g. a windbreaker cinch tie), and you don't trust safeties. The iffy history of the Remington 700 underlines the importance of Rule 2 (known to fire upon manipulating the safety).
But these specific firearms are (artificially) worth so much you'll never see them.