The ASSAULT RIFLE: FACT and FANTASY (A look at the history, the myths and the realities of the true assault rifle)...by Jim Thompson in GUNS Magazine 1990 Annual. If the assault rifle hadn't been produced in Germany or Russia first, it might have come from France, Hungary, or the United States, and perhaps twenty-five or so years earlier. The Frommer long recoil design was originally concocted for what might have been the world's first "short" rifle cartridge, but accepted in 8mm Lebel by the French, it was instead developed into the abominable Chauchat. John T. Thompson's first efforts at a "trench broom" were built around cartridges very like the 401 Winchester SLR necked to .30, but the Blish lock couldn't deal with the cartridge, so what actually happened turned into the Thompson Submachine Gun. It was too early for the assault rifle to develop...there was no tactical role prepared for it until the world urbanized, and an observer could fairly say most military recruits had never handled a firearm. The assault rifle is a military concept. What it very decidedly is not is a weapon, as the hypists of the antigun crowd claim, "designed only for killing people". The assault rifle arouse because its predecessors were too difficult for raw young men to handle well. Its conception, birth, and maturation accompanied the general purpose machine gun. Obviously, like any other military weapon, killing or disabling the enemy was its ultimate purpose, but the assault rifle in fact is less efficient than its predecessors at that job, owing to the reduced power of its ammunition. The assault rifle evolved to expedite training. An assault rifle---forget the AP Style Book definition, its dead wrong---is a reduced power rifle caliber, selective- fire, reasonably compact weapon smaller in size than a full- caliber rifle, capable of a reasonable degree of accuracy out to 400 yards. Generally, an assault rifle accepts a magazine of a least 20 rounds. One can construe certain full caliber rifles to meet this specification, but submachine guns can only loosely border on any definition of the true assault rifle. Beretta's M38A, the Hungarian 39M, and long-barreled versions of the Finnish Suomi come very close; at the other end of the spectrum, the U.S. Carbine M1 and M2 come very close, but in fact fall into their own very special category. In every case, the "pure" assault rifles replaced or supplemented much more powerful rifles...in U.S., M16 replaced M14, in the USSR, AK an SKS replaced the Nagant and Tokarev in 7.62x54R M91, and so on. Reanalysis of what is now accepted as excessive zeal for assault rifles in military establishments is creating \j\ interesting reversals of the rigorous "one unit-one weapon" trend of the 50's and 60's. A puffed up AK called Medvyed and various clones of the Russian original use Kalashnikov's basic system, "steroided" to older full caliber M91 loadings. The famous FAL was first prototyped in 7.92x33 Kurz, but saw service only in 7.62xS1 NATO...and now, via a "shrunken" version commercially known at the CAL, has reverted to the original style. Assault rifles promised to reduce small arms arrays, which had become complex in the years between the World Wars. Never realized, but approached in some armies, the ideal was to replace every small arm below the general purpose machine gun with a single weapon or system. The Soviets almost accomplished this, but very quickly backed off. Now the ubiquitous AK has borne offspring from the Medvyed-Dragunov to the Hungarian AMD submachine gun and the RPK, all based on a common system, but as specialized as the potpourri of small arms which preceded them. Most other assault rifles have spawned similar families. The assault rifle began rather simply with a German Luftwaffe requirement to provide a cross between a service rifle and the Lewis Gun of World War I fame. Developed by Rheinmetall but actually built by Kreighoff in two versions, FG.42 was not a true assault rifle in the purest, modern sense, but it was a much better weapon than most texts will admit. Expensive and difficult to produce, perhaps 7-10,000 were built for the German LW Paratroopers. FG.42 used a full power rifle round, the potent 7.92x57JS German service load, fully the equal of our own .30/06. While the FG.42 was inspired by and many of its internal mechanical details, including the gas system, indirectly copied from the Lewis, its features were acquired direct from the M.1941 Johnson, another underrated weapon which with some modification, could easily have been the "first" assault rifle. Far more modern in concept and still an effacious weapon today if an ammunition supply can be secured, the MP.43/44 weapons were the first assault rifles intended for general issue. There are three versions of the basic rifles, all essentially the same save for sight accommodations and fittings and often simultaneously marked MP.43, MP.44, and STG.44. The last abbreviation---supposedly straight from Hitler himself---means literally SturmGewehr or assault rifle. Too heavy at 11.3 pounds, unloaded, the weapon still proved immensely popular where introduced. Armies were beginning to understand that soldiers felt outgunned---and noise and tactical factors meant that was most of them--- would not fire their weapons. So a selective-fire weapon with some accuracy out to 400 meters or so could contribute to column fire, even if bullet weight and energy per shot was far below the old M98 Mauser turnbolt. And these weapons were cheap to build, easy to train with. MP.44 saw \j\ very heavy use in Russia, and figured in the Ardennes "Bulge" offensive of 1944. MP.44 had been preceded by prototypes from Walther and Haenel as early as 1944. The Haenel gun was eventually developed. But these prototypes saw actual service. By 1942, specimens of the Polte-developed Kurz (short) round were being studied by a convalescing soldier named Kalashnikov. Kalashnikov had worked on another "almost" assault rifle, the Fedyerov, a selective-fire gun in 6.5x50 Japanese, and his ideas meshed neatly with the German round. Like the Germans, he opted to retain the same bore size as the older, full-sized service rifle, 7.62mm. He called the new cartridge the M43, after the year of its adoption. Today we call it 7.62x39mm., or 7.62 Kalashnikov, and American ammunition for target shooting and hunting replicates the little 123-grain pellet he originally executed. The round is just a shade less potent that Winchester's ancient .30/30, but much smaller and, like its German forebear, rimless and sharply bottlenecked. The first rifle developed for the cartridge was the SKS, produced in great numbers in the Soviet Union, even more prolifically in China to this very day. SKS or the Chinese Type 56-1 is analogous to the American M1 Carbine, and is not a true assault rifle. By 1947, th AK was complete in principal, though four years' testing was necessary to allow major introduction to the Red Army. What we today call the "original" AK47 is probably at least the third major version, and the modified AKM is at least the tenth major production variant. Despite much doubletalk in the firearms media about the original forged receiver being superior, the newer versions are in fact stronger and lighter, and their stamped receivers. Latest standard rifles weigh a little over nine pounds. The United States came late and bleeding to this particular arms race. Gene Stoner's AR15 was purchased by the Air Force in small lots as early as 1962-3, only after Colt bought exclusive U.S. rights to manufacture the little .22. Using sophisticated alloys, the weapon was expensive and far more delicate than the original military briefings indicated. But during the entire period of research into M1 derivatives, all outside designs, especially Stoner's, had been rejected and no research of any serious dimension was done on intermediate cartridges. Many who like the M16 dislike the cartridge, and find only nominal improvement in the recent H-BAR M16A2 fixes. It would have been more convenient to use the well-developed Soviet 7.62x39 round, whose bore diameter was, conveniently, \j\ useably identical with our own .30/06 and 7.62x51 rounds. But this was given no consideration whatever. Still, the 5.56x.223 round is handy in fully automatic fire, and especially so in the little CAR-15/XM177 guns and Smith's M16K submachine gun. However, as any ballistics student can attest, most of the "tumbling" effect and the "bone shattering" from the high velocity .22 pellet used to hype the rifle in its early years is either exaggerated or merely a natural byproduct of any pointed bullet of nominal stability in any cartridge, under similar conditions of tissue penetration and velocity. Show a .223 round to someone who hasn't followed firearms or has been in suspended animation for a while and he'll correctly identify it as a "first class woodchuck round". Provided the range isn't too long. Even with the latest "improvements", I have not yet gotten a presentable group at 400 yards. On the international arms market---read that, between nations actually equipping troops---M16 sells for 2 to 4 times the price of an AK. The AK is generally somewhat more highly regarded and has lost all its politics along the way. It appears at least as often in the hands of rightwing insurrectionists and troops as it does among the left. Sam Cummings of Interarms said recently on CBS' Nightwatch that the Kalashnikov had become "the world's predominant military small arm." As this is written, virtually every firearms manufacturer on the planet who can legally do so is building or planning an assault rifle for an intermediate cartridge. The guns all look wicked and forbidding, for their technology is mostly borrowed from light machine guns, and their approach is no nonsense. Yes, despite their current popularity as a focal point for antigun hate literature, they are not particularly handy, even for the dopers and loons among whom they have become some kind of status symbol. Shotguns are easier to handle, buy, and murder with, for suitable civilian miscreants. And the across-the-counter guns sold in this country---if indeed there is such a thing by the time this piece sees ink---are not even real assault rifles. They are not selective-fire. And guns so modified after May of 1986 cannot be registered and are, therefore, already contraband. In most large cities, few actual crimes have seen assault rifles used. Here in the Phoenix area, a much publicized cop killing was executed with an illegally modified KG-9 submachine gun/machine pistol. Yet, on the boob tube, the local Ted Baxters have all dutifully droned on about "assault rifle murders" and used that killing as their sole example. And there is not other local example...To them, it's got a big magazine, it's an assault gun. Not one local media source has noted that the weapon used was already illegal, nor has anyone in the local media noted the \j\ enforcement dichotomy implicit in that weapon's use, namely that the gun's user was neither caught up front nor prosecuted afterwards for the firearms violation. What, then, prompts the conclusion of easy virtue that making "assault rifles" specifically unlawful would, could, or can make any meaningful difference? Druggies and other lunatics find assault rifles handy primarily for "showing off". Even Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates' tortured, much prolonged broadcast admonition---clueing us all that he seeks higher office---is mostly fiction. He's lost very few officers, if any, to assault rifles, and if he'd read a form 4473, checked his own hot sheets, and reviewed some of the alleged incidents, he's realize criminal use of otherwise legal "assault rifles" is extremely rare. The fiction of "special kinds of wounds" resulting from "assault rifles" flies in the face of what every hunter has seen. Real trauma from a .308 softpoint or .45 ACP Silvertip greatly exceeds anything encountered with the hardball spitzers usually loaded in .223 and 7.62x39 ammo. Close range shotgun wounds are downright grotesque. I know right now of the whereabouts of over 2000 semi- automatic assault rifle clones and about 100 legal, registered fully automatic real assault rifles. The most serious crime of which any of their custodians has been accused probably ranks up there with smoking on an elevator or red zone parking. Yet, whenever the owner of such a firearm is depicted in the general media, I see a slobber- mouthed moron who resembles no one I know personally. I am not especially fond of assault rifles. I own several, but I own them because I want to study their operating systems and durability. They are fascinating plinkers in their semiautomatic pseudo-assault rifle form, and shooting fully automatic has given me considerable insight into military tactics and their application. If I had to dispose of someone or something, it probably wouldn't be with any long gun. With my life in danger, though, a shotgun would ride my palms. If for some incredibly impossible, tangled, Armageddon-type reason I had to take up arms, you'd find an M1 Garand or M14 swinging at the end of my arm, a 10mm. Springfield Omega at my belt, and a .32 PPK, preferably suppressed, in my boot. None of this, except the suppressor, is legally restricted as this article goes to print. If such a disgusting scenario of necessity ever does happen, and I pray it won't, it'll probably happen because society, as a whole, forgot that random suppressive measures usually only affect the lawful. Assault rifles aren't causing insanity and they aren't causing the drug problem. If \j\ prohibiting drugs has merely made the business of the unprincipled more profitable, how can a different application of the same principle make us less violent? As a society, we need to respect ourselves and each other deeply. Just developing that attitude would cause a downturn in crime. Picking out a nonvocal minority like shooters and then dumping all over them is an inappropriate use of suppressive powers. In 1934, our parents and grandparents were told the National Firearms Act would cripple organized crime and stop violent back robberies. It was, at best, a miscalculation. In 1938, same place, same speakers, and then it became a lie with the Federal Firearms Act. In 1968, we were told GCA '68 would reduce violence in society, reduce crime, and somehow make us safer. That, too, was a lie. It is true that there are probably more illegal automatic weapons on the streets of major American cities than ever before. So we're told that a fourth or fifth or sixth set of lies and legislation will reverse that. As usual, if it happens, those of us who always obey the law will grudgingly comply. And those who never do never will. Assault rifles are probably the least "evil" of all firearms, at least in their semiautomatic configuration, for they attract attention all out of proportion to their real firepower. The lady who said on Geraldo these guns could deliver "100 rounds in 20 seconds" was not only lying, she was being irrelevant. Even the reduced power intermediate rounds won't allow accuracy at high semiautomatic rates, which more realistically hover around .5-1.3 rounds per second. As usual, the visual bark---which is what's being used fake to cynically manipulate this crisis by a power- hungry, wealthy elite---is far worse that the assault gun's genuine bite. ASSAULT GUNS '89 A GLOSSY GLOSSARY IN ORDER OF FICTIONAL IMPORTANCE FOR THOSE DISCHARGING VERBAL BULLETS IN THE BATTLE OF EASY VIRTUE. ASSAULT GUN---literally, a German or Russian tracked, armored vehicle capable of destroying an enemy tank. In advertising agency or antigun jargon, a vague term used to refer to more or less any firearm with a large magazine (20 or more rounds), usually semiautomatic, but usually construed in the media to mean easily converted to fully automatic fire. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, however, has been empowered to and certifies that none of the "assault weapons" currently on the U.S. market can easily be converted to fully automatic configuration. This term can, has, and frequently is used to describe relatively innocuous .22 "plinker" rifles such as Ruger's 10/22. \j\ ASSAULT RIFLE, real---a carbine-type weapon, generally smaller and always less powerful than the full-caliber rifles which preceded this generation in military service, weighing roughly between six and twelve pounds, and utilizing magazines between fifteen and sixty or so rounds' capacity. Real assault rifles are always selective fire--- that is, capable of fully automatic or semiautomatic fire at the shooter's option. These guns are accurate to rough service levels to 500 yards or less in the hands of an experienced rifleman, but are not as accurate as traditional semiautomatic rifles. AUTOMATIC FIRE---a mode of fire repetition in which more than one round may be fired with a single pull of the trigger. ASSAULT RIFLE, civilian---a rifle physically similar to an assault rifle, but modified internally extensively, such that a sear/disconnector mechanism and appropriate lockwork on the bolt and/or related parts prevents fully automatic fire without very significant modification---welding, remachining, insertion of new or altered illegal parts, etc., etc. REAL assault rifles must be registered, are taxable under the 1934 National Firearms Act, and are very heavily regulated, as are all automatic and selective fire weapons. Civilian assault rifles modified to fully automatic status are unlawful unless registered prior to May 16, 1986, and are contraband subject to prosecution and confiscation. SEMIAUTOMATIC FIRE---a mode of fire repetition in which one shot may be fired with each trigger release, but in which the physical operation of reloading is performed by the firearm's mechanism using residual gases, barrel recoil, or blowback of the cartridge casing in physical contact and synchronization with the bolt. Semiautomatic sporting firearms have been available to the public worldwide since the 1890's, have been used in matches since the 1930's, used by hunters in the U.S. since 1908. Their use by civilians in both short and long guns preceded military use everywhere by many years. Semiautomatics, in fact, are not a military idea applied to civilian firearms, but are a civilian idea applied to military firearms. CLIP---A rail or rail-like device used to contain cartridges before loading into the magazine of a firearm. MAGAZINE---a box-like container, fitted to a firearm during shooting, which contains the gun's ammunition supply. Magazines are often tubular, commonly rectangular on assault rifles and their semiautomatic clones. Magazines can usually be quickly detached. \j\ BULLET---a projectile, usually at least partially lead, but in assault rifles almost always jacketed with copper sheet, which has the effect of improving feed reliability, reducing bullet expansion, and reducing bore fouling. 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