praying to budda-budda
[response to gun talk in sff.net]
That’s a good url, Geoff, about gun myths in movies. An interesting thing to me, though, was the statement that modern US soldiers carry only 210 rounds for their assault rifles. The ref was this -
“Most American soldiers carry an M4 or M16 rifle, which contains a 5.56mm round (.223 caliber). This weapon carries ammunition in a 30-round magazine. If the weapon is fired on full automatic capability, a full magazine can be burnt up in just a few seconds. Since the standard combat load for a soldier is seven magazines (210 rounds), soldiers have been trained and disciplined not to waste ammunition in this manner.”
That does sound reasonable. But I remember when we went out on patrol for small unit search-and-destroy missions, each soldier would draw 400 rounds (I think eight fifty-round cardboard boxes), which was a heavy load. Then most people would also carry a linked belt of 7.62-mm ammunition, a yard or so long, for the M-60 machine gun. (I didn’t have to because I was carrying a 20-pound demolition bag.)
We didn’t have those 30-round magazines, either. We had twenty-round ones, about the size of the palm of your hand, usually loaded with only eighteen rounds, so they wouldn’t jam. We carried a lot of them, some taped back-to-back so you could empty one and then quickly reverse it.
Of course we didn’t fire at the cyclic rate, budda-budda-budda, which would mean you’d run out of ammo every 1.8 seconds or so. We were trained to touch off bursts of three shots. (Which training often evaporated as soon as you drew fire.)
Joe
That’s a good url, Geoff, about gun myths in movies. An interesting thing to me, though, was the statement that modern US soldiers carry only 210 rounds for their assault rifles. The ref was this -
“Most American soldiers carry an M4 or M16 rifle, which contains a 5.56mm round (.223 caliber). This weapon carries ammunition in a 30-round magazine. If the weapon is fired on full automatic capability, a full magazine can be burnt up in just a few seconds. Since the standard combat load for a soldier is seven magazines (210 rounds), soldiers have been trained and disciplined not to waste ammunition in this manner.”
That does sound reasonable. But I remember when we went out on patrol for small unit search-and-destroy missions, each soldier would draw 400 rounds (I think eight fifty-round cardboard boxes), which was a heavy load. Then most people would also carry a linked belt of 7.62-mm ammunition, a yard or so long, for the M-60 machine gun. (I didn’t have to because I was carrying a 20-pound demolition bag.)
We didn’t have those 30-round magazines, either. We had twenty-round ones, about the size of the palm of your hand, usually loaded with only eighteen rounds, so they wouldn’t jam. We carried a lot of them, some taped back-to-back so you could empty one and then quickly reverse it.
Of course we didn’t fire at the cyclic rate, budda-budda-budda, which would mean you’d run out of ammo every 1.8 seconds or so. We were trained to touch off bursts of three shots. (Which training often evaporated as soon as you drew fire.)
Joe