Quote:
Originally Posted by cartman
Aren't those considered short barreled rifles?
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Just for funsies:
No. In rough order of development:
Rifles are a long-barreled gun with a rifled barrel. Comes from the transition from smoothbores to rifled barrels. Fire one round per pull of the trigger.
Carbines are short-barreled rifles, sometimes firing less powerful ammunition. M1 from WWII, and the M4 these days - M4 can be full auto, but the short barrel tends to put it in the "Carbine" designation.
Machine guns were the early fully-automatic weapons, that continuously fired by holding the trigger down. Ma Duece, the MG42 from WWII, etc.
Submachine guns are machineguns that fire pistol ammunition, so they generally have less kick which made them controllable enough to carry, not have to get mounted. Tommy Gun, Schmeisser MP-40, MP5, etc.
Automatic rifles are shrunk machine guns that can fire from a bipod with a magazine, not belt-fed like most machine guns. Then you get things like the SAW that put the belt in a magazine and are more portable than the machineguns but fire like them. BAR is the most famous and original prototype, and the current SAW is considered one but you have the blurred line towards "Light Machinegun".
Assault rifles are the cross-breed, that fire full automatic with rifle rounds like machine guns do. 3-round burst modes were introduced because you can't fire more rounds than that accurately from something like that. AK-47, M-16, etc.
Things like barrel length, size of round, and firing modes tend to be the key differentiators, but there are also lots of hybrids that can make classification tricky. For example, is an AR-15 really an assault rifle, when the whole point of an assault rifle was the automatic fire for suppression that a regular rifle could not do? And an Uzi is not a machinegun.
That's why it's more important to talk about the specifics you are worried about, such as how many rounds can you fire before reloading. But even if you limit magazine size, that just asks for the shooter to carry more guns - most of these guys are already doing that.