4 ms·
The meanings of all the various words describing firearms has been, particularly in the last 100 years or so, fairly loose. There aren't really hard definition
by edrxty 4y ago
The meanings of all the various words describing firearms has been, particularly in the last 100 years or so, fairly loose. There aren't really hard definitions for "assault rifle", "machine gun", "sub machine gun", "pistol", etc, and they're even frequently used interchangeably for some platforms. They mean different things to different people in various legal and social contexts as well, to spite what internet keyboard commandos will say.
In particular, even if you use the "internet keyboard commando" definitions, a real AK-47 is both an assault rifle and a machine gun.
- simonh 4y agoThere’s also the fact that Soviet military doctrine actually treated the AK as a sub machine gun. The Red Army in WW2 made heavy use of SMGs, much more than the western armies, perhaps to compensate for their relatively low level of marksmanship and tactical training. Their assaults relied on getting large numbers of soldiers up as close as possible and belting out as many bullets as they could.
- hackeraccount 4y agoI'm not a firearm expert by any means but still have a vague understanding of the those groupings - "assault rifle", "machine gun", "sub machine gun", "pistol" with one excpetion. Carbine. The best line I've read on it was something like - it's a relatively low powered shoulder fired weapon but can only be called a carbine if it's manufactured in the Carbine region of France. I thought that was funny but honestly I've got nothing better.
- edrxty 4y agoYeah it's a heavily overused term. Best I can tell, it's come to mean a particular barrel length, somewhere between 14 and 16 inches but it can be any caliber or cartridge type really. It's supposed to be a short handy rifle, where a full size rifle is somewhere at 20+ inches.