Mao Tse Tung said change must come

[venta]

One question: why is it called an "assault rifle" ? Are there other kinds of rifle used for non-assault purposes ? Friendly-greeting rifles ?

Comments

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

The depths of my memory says that it's called an assault rifle because Hitler was a bit mad, and didn't think the German military needed a new submachine gun. So the military chaps, being enlightened thinkers, made the barrel slightly longer and came back to him saying; "Forget that smelly old sub-machine gun we showed you, that was rubbish, you're right. However, look at this bright shiny, new assault rifle. Assault! How cool and buch and macho is that you mad bastard. Also, the name is probably significant numerogically."

I may now do some google and see if there's any truth in this story. It might of course be something my dad made up.

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a convoluted and fairly boring read, but there seems to be something in the mix: Wikipedia tells us, amongst other things that Hitler was cancelling weapons projects, being kept in the dark about what weapons were being developed, but that it was he who coined the term Sturmgewehr.

In other news, there are two key differences between an assault rifle and a traditional battlefield rifle. Firstly they're shorter, so better for close quarters, and getting through narrow doorways, and secondly, they can fire lots of bullets with one press of the trigger, rather than one bullet.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I liked the first version better :)

I had looked at the Wiki page and concluded that an assault rifle did differ from battle (and presumably hunting) rifles. I couldn't quite fathom the name, though, since I'd assumed it to be descriptive in some way rather than spin. However it seems "it sounded cool" is about the size of it.

[chrisvenus]

Well surely from what secondhand_rick said an assault rifle is better for assaults. You know, you're going into a building and running through corridors and doorways and generally assaulting places and you'd want the shorter rifle to not keep banging it on doors and things I expect... You probably wouldn't care about this distinction so much if you weren't assaulting places.