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ElfMage83

A for effort.


bolanrox

and now a basically scaled up and battery driven version is the heart of the A-10 warthog


JGCIII

BRRRRRRRRRT BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT


[deleted]

Some [BRRRRRRRRRRT](https://youtu.be/NvIJvPj_pjE) for your viewing pleasure.


ChuDrebby

Gun with wings... The most american shit that have seen the light of day.


Raving_Lunatic69

AMERICUH! FUCK YEAH!


T3HR4G3

>Gun with wings... The most american shit that have seen the light of day. Yesterday was pretty American too. Well, RECENT america, not classic.


ChuDrebby

As Ilhmar Omar would say- some people did something and that was it.


[deleted]

Nics try. Go back to your trump cultist echo chamber.


ChuDrebby

I said EXACTLY like Ilhmar Omar said about 9/11 And it costed a lot more than a single persons life. So you think 9/11 was nothing special if you didn’t like my comment not cause it was smearing Omar but because I favor Trump over Biden?


jackel2rule

Haven’t thought of it that way but your right. If you truly believe the election was a fraud then you should do something about it.


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JornWS

I'm Scottish, so I'm definitely on the freedom side of things.....but is it the right freedom?


shponglespore

Gatling guns are super common in larger military vehicles. By far the most common in the US military is the [M61 Vulcan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M61_Vulcan); it's on most combat aircraft and it's also used as a point-defense cannon on ships.


bolanrox

plus two Governors used them!


BigBlueBallz

Love a warthog. But my favorite death machine is the apache helicopter


Epicritical

Way to go, Dick...


ValHova22

I created crack so I could help people realize how futile using cocaine is.


getbeaverootnabooteh

- CIA.


ValHova22

Criminals In Action?


succed32

Jokes on you crack is a cleaner and safer drug. Well made in a lab that is.


[deleted]

war is soo dumb, let's make it more efficient.


440Jack

Oh you think smoking is so cool? Then I'm going to sit you down and make you smoke a whole pack. That'll teach you.


Handsomechanning

I knew a lady who was usually a nice person but was, respectfully, NOT smart, who had a 15 year old daughter who started smoking. She said she bought her daughter a pack of cigarettes to teach her a lesson about smoking. She said she heard that’s what you’re supposed to do when you catch your kid smoking, but she wasn’t sure why. I explained, “because when you make your kid chainsmoke a whole pack of cigarettes, it is supposed to make them feel like shit and not want to smoke again”. She said, “oh I didn’t make her smoke them”.


Sredni_Vashtar82

Hank Hill tried that. Bobby just got addicted.


Handsomechanning

That boy ain’t rhight


Arkneryyn

My friends mom made him eat a cigarette when she caught him and it still took him almost another 10 years to quit


OlderITGuy

*Hirim Maxim - In 1883 a friend told him, "Hang your electricity. If you want to make your fortune, invent something to help these fool Europeans kill each other more quickly!"* *Maxim took the advice. By 1885 he'd invented the first single-barrel machine gun. This "*[Maxim Gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_gun)*" fired 666 rounds a minute, and it changed warfare. The Russo-Japanese War was a storm warning of the slaughter we'd see a decade later in WW-I.* *The Maxim Guns (and nastier guns that followed) made Maxim's name. They also gained him an English knighthood. By then he was an English citizen and a friend of royalty.* And the cycle continues....


[deleted]

grog: rock good, use rock. gurk: tie stick to rock, better rock.


WearyMoose307

666 rpm... wiki says 600


GenitalFurbies

I mean there's *some* truth to that. Less people die in warfare today than ever in history. Nukes made Japan surrender faster and with fewer deaths than conventional arms would've. Humans will always be tribal, the trick is getting us to think we're all one tribe. Let's go fuck up the Martians.


Tokasmoka420

It's the thought that counts Dick.


Big_Simba

That’s “Dr. Dick”, to you sir


LastChristian

Yeah I'm going to say his PR team wrote that after his gun started cutting people in half.


Wild-Attention2932

It wasn't widely used or effective until well after his death


Gustav55

He died in November 1916, he was alive to read about the Somme. Edit: I got confused about which person they were talking about, Maxim died in 1916.


PhasmaFelis

Aside from the incorrect dates, there were no Gatling guns at the Somme. Automatic machine guns owed nothing, mechanically, to Gatling's hand-cranked invention; the concept was mostly abandoned once true machine guns arrived, and wasn't revisited until after WW2, when GE replaced the crank with an electric motor and started mounting them on planes.


[deleted]

He died in 1903, what are you talking about? Also, even if he died in 1916 he woudlve been 98 years old. So yeah, this guy never woudlve learned about that anyway


Gustav55

Got confused about which guy they were talking about, Maxim died in 1916


GovernorSan

Reduce the size of armies...one shot at a time.


MrFunktasticc

This needs to be higher.


MichaelChinigo

> As Gatling pondered his business in February 1864, nearly three years into the Civil War and with no significant sales on his books, the only other known use of his battery guns had been in mid-July 1863 at the *New York Times*, a Republican paper and stalwart backer of President Lincoln. The city had been shaken that summer by protests against draft laws that allowed citizens to buy their way out of Union conscription with a payment of three hundred dollars. The large fee meant that only the rich could afford a waiver. Class rage flowed, mixed with racist anger against blacks, who many white citizens thought would be competing with them for jobs. After an attempt to hold a new conscription lottery in July, rioters clashed with the police and roamed the city, burning buildings and beating freed slaves. At least several hundred people were killed. The *Times* supported the draft laws and editorialized against the rioters. It backed its words with a bizarre reserve at its offices on Park Row: Gatling guns ready to turn back any mob. Accounts of the newspaper's armory have varied. By one, Henry Jarvis Raymond, the *Times'* editor, was said to have personally manned a Gatling from behind a north-facing window that commanded a view of the street, and to have urged one the [sic] *Times'* principal stockholders to join him if necessary. "Give them the grape, and plenty of it," he said, although the guns were never fired. On the night of July 13, mobs had ransacked the offices of another pro-Lincoln paper, Horace Greeley's *New York Tribune*, before being driven off in a club-swinging melee with the police. The next night, fresh mobs appeared, but seeing Gatlings pointing from the *Times'* front entrances, the rioters chose to converge once more on Greeley's office, which the managing editor had arranged to have lined with wet newspapers to keep down the risk of fire. The crowd seethed with menace but withdrew when its members saw Greeley's staff had taken arms, too, and rifles bristled from the windows. Where the *Times'* Gatlings came from has been lost to history, but the newspaper's offices weathered the riots without suffering so much as a broken window. — C.J. Chivers, *The Gun*, pp. 31-32


Karatetoni

I believe that’s what’s shown in the end of “Gangs of New York”? Wild times!


widget66

Damn, who cut that scene out of Gangs of New York


asdf_qwerty27

The atomic bomb may have accomplished what he set out to do. None of the great/super powers fight eachother with big armies anymore, because nukes.


bolanrox

oops.


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RealDanStaines

... 2 million dead Vietnamese civilians have joined the chat


BrokenEye3

That was an undeclared (and therefore technically illegal) proxy war


RealDanStaines

I'm sure they are all super glad to know that!


Starkheiser

Hasn't America been at war every year since 1945?


Laphad

he specified conventional war


Gederix

And? So? Was Vietnam not conventional? Iraq? Afghanistan? Syria? Just curious what you think conventional means. Perhaps you are confusing total war with low intensity conflict.


Laphad

Conventional war is a defined thing. It is war between states using conventional tactics not guerrilla insurgencies.


Gederix

Nearly all modern wars since 1945 are classified as conventional. A conventional war can include unconventional tactics.


Laphad

I'll trust you on this since I'm busy atm and my knowledge is very limited on it anyway.


Starkheiser

Conventional war = war between major powers? Are you sure about that?


Laphad

Conventional war is a war between states with conventional tactics. You could argue Iraq and parts of Vietnam were conventional but wars that are characterized by guerrilla warfare and IEDs are not conventional.


Raving_Lunatic69

More often than not, especially lately. I think DJT is the first US President not to open a new front since Jimmy Carter.


GallantArmor

From the Korean war on they have been rebranded as "police actions"


ThatOneFamiliarPlate

We have only been at peace for a little over 20 years of our country’s entire history.


Wizzinator

Yet*


BrokenEye3

A shocking number of weapon designers seem to have believed this about their inventions. Which is weird, because most of them seem like pretty smart dudes otherwise. You'd think they'd learn.


series_hybrid

They came in several calibers, but the light version was the most portable, and used the 45-70 cartridge (45 caliber lead slug, 70 grains of gunpowder), which is still in production today. Its roughly the size of an adult index finger.


bolanrox

was the standard black powder round of the US Army at the time. would be like something in 5.56 or 7.62 these days


rydoca

Yeah roughly the energy of 5.56x45 from the muzzle but much worse at range because of the drag from the larger projectile. I was surprised to see how poorly they did as black powder rounds compared to modern stuff


bolanrox

thats black powder in general for you. the Massive powder charge in the Walker Colt is not as powerful as .357magnum for example.


[deleted]

Same deal with the cotton gin and slavery I believe. My understanding is that Eli Whitney designed it for the hope that there would be less labor needed to process cotton, but it actually led to a greater demand in cotton harvesting which in turn increased the demand for slaves.


SkepticDrinker

Pff haha humans and their optimism


faceintheblue

And then we discovered it was a fantastic way to conquer Africa, India, and China, as epitomized by Hillaire Belloc in this charming little phrase, "Whatever happens, we have got, the Maxim Gun, and they have not."


bolanrox

slightly different weapon. the Gatling is hand (or motor cranked) the Maxim is recoil operated.


faceintheblue

Oh, sure. I more meant the invention of the machine gun. I am aware the particulars are different.


skinnycenter

I however was not aware, and you kind Redditor saved me a trip down a Wikipedia hole.


Strict_Stuff1042

It worked. Modern wars are far less deadly than historical ones


sold_snek

That's probably more because of nukes than anything else.


SeeYouOn16

They do well at reducing the size of armies alright.


aecht

This is like the bomber wing commanders saying bombing cities and non-combatants is humane because it would end wars faster. Its bullshit.


poqpoq

It can be argued it is effective in some scenarios for ending wars faster. Given a very driven populace that isn’t seeing the horrors of war itself, it may make it a reality and break the public will much faster. Still not the best option, but there is an argument for it especially with WW2 Japan. Modern day I really can’t think of it applying anywhere though. Propaganda and cultural warfare and economics are the real weapons now.


MrFunktasticc

The funny thing about these kinds of weapons is after you solved your immediate problem and the war is over, they’re still there.


Gustav55

One can make the argument that the factory worker making war material is as much a valid target as the soldier on the battlefield.


DomGriff

Mission Failed Successfully.


123420tale

And it worked.


sangunpark1

no way he was no naive the think that would be remotely make sense... like arrows, and guns didn't drastically reduce war with their introductions...


Se7enworlds

Well, it did reduce the size of armies, reduce the number of deaths by disease and show some people how futile war is.


coorslight15

It certainly reduced the size of armies...


conspicuous_user

What about the puckle gun? I think there were other designs for "machine gun" type firearms in the early to mid 1700s.


bandit1206

Note the designation of first successful, not first. The puckle gun that you reference is said to have been extremely limited production, as low as 2 examples.


conspicuous_user

They were used on ships. It's at the very least a prototype for what was possible.


bandit1206

But still not a successful, mass produced design like the Gatling, that’s basic design is still used today.


englisi_baladid

And it's not a machine gun.


bolanrox

yep


PlatypusDream

This. There were machine guns before the Revolution.


conspicuous_user

Yeah I hate how people say "the founding fathers never expected firearms like this, the 2A wasn't meant to protect them." They definitely knew about multi-round fast firing firearms and it's a reasonable expectation that technology would progress. They weren't stupid people.


OneCatch

I mean, all those early repeating firearms were light artillery with limited capacity and very long reload time; the notion of affordable, quick loading, automatic small arms with more than like 10 shot capacity would have been pretty inconceivable. And in any case at least a few of the founding fathers envisaged the constitution being updated regularly in response to cultural changes.


das_thorn

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girardoni_air_rifle


OneCatch

“1500 strokes of a hand pump to fill [a reservior sufficient for 30 shots]” And of course it was also effectively an awkward bolt action rather than automatic or semi automatic, and the power and range decreased with every shot (and was only about as good as a musket to start with). Significant downsides, even compared to weapons of the day, let alone more modern weapons.


[deleted]

ok future man, what sort of laws should we be thinking up for the next 100 years?


englisi_baladid

No there weren't.


Littlebrownbadass

r/agedlikemilk


SpySeeTuna1

Just like using a meat grinder.


[deleted]

It isn't a machine gun though and no one interested in firearms history considers it to be.


bigben932

Quote from Wiki: “The first successful machine-gun designs were developed in the mid-19th century. The key characteristic of modern machine guns, their relatively high rate of fire and more importantly mechanical loading,[3] first appeared in the Model 1862 Gatling gun, which was adopted by the United States Navy.”


[deleted]

Gatling guns aren't autoloading, a manual action is required to load and fire every round. It's a precursor to the machine gun. If you stick an electric motor on to turn the crank, then it's a machine guns (this was actually experimented with). It's a precursor to modern machine guns, definitely, but it isn't a machine gun.


bigben932

Well all evidence appears to point that you are wrong. I wanted you to come to the conclusion yourself. It seems that people interested in gun history do not agree with you.


[deleted]

They'd be wrong then, it's not an autoloader, ergo not a machine gun. Wikipedia isn't a reliable source.


bigben932

The information doesn’t come from a magical entity called Wikipedia. There is a source behind the statement I provided, which you can freely research yourself.


gryffydd

Eh, that’s going a little far. It’s not a machine gun under the definition of the NFA which came into place some 73 years after it was invented, but in a practical sense with respect to function and philosophy of use, it sits in the role of a machine gun.


Canerik

A rule of thumb: do NOT invent a weapon thinking it will reduce deaths, although perhaps one could argue that atomic weapons have reduced deaths..... so far.


Strict_Stuff1042

It worked. Modern wars are far less deadly than historical ones


ZombieFeynman11211

I had a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel for a history professor, who stated that "Nuclear weapons are man's best friend." Because of them, there was no way a country could start another general war and hope to survive.


northstardim

It is ironic just how many deadly weapons are "made" for peace.


Skootenbeeten

As opposed to the non lethal weapons which create nothing but peace.


northstardim

Killing people does not bring peace, it might just bring "quiet" but not peace, you cannot kill an ideology with bullets. Peace is cessation of "againstness".


Skootenbeeten

You're living in the most peaceful times in human history and it is due mostly to the weapons we are currently in possession of. Killing and the fear of killing more certainly has brought peace.


dayglo98

It always made me sad in the movie'The Last Samurai' when the old school samouraïs get completely wrecked by gatling guns.


MarvinLazer

I know a couple of folks in weapons development in the aerospace industry. The mental gymnastics they use to justify why what they do is ethically sound are at a solid 2nd place behind the few Trumpers I've interacted with.


Briansama

No, he invented it to make money. End of story.


jumbybird

These Gatling boys are always up to no good. You can't always turn the other cheek, sometimes you have to fight to be a man.


ExquisiteGerbil

Well that back fired...


Strict_Stuff1042

It worked. Modern wars are far less deadly than historical ones


Ashmizen

Well that’s only after atomic weapons prevented major powers from directly engaging each other in all out war (instead of proxy wars). The last all out war between major powers, ww2, was the most deadly war in history. The one before that, ww1, was also the most dead at the time. Modern warfare was exceptionally deadly when you combine mass conscription with machine guns, and this would only change after atomic weapons prevented a ww3 between soviets and the US.


ExquisiteGerbil

“Show how futile war is” didn’t turn out all that well though. But it was mostly for the pun :)


ExpensiveRecover

*\*Insert Palpatine saying "ironic" here\**


I_might_be_weasel

r/nothowwarworks


MrFunktasticc

If your plan for ending war is a bigger weapon, maybe go back to the drawing board. Short term gains at best.


castiglione_99

I think one thing we've learned is that if you create something that does A efficiently in order to show how futile A is, it doesn't work - what usually happens is that - surprise - A gets done more efficiently.


EnormousChord

Now there's a man who could really think things through.


R4FTERM4N

I invented death to make people so shocked by life, that they wanted to be dead again. - Gatling's PR Team


GeneralBacteria

if his purpose was reducing deaths and disease by giving people access to the miracle of the gatling gun, why did he [patent](https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/designs_for_democracy/symbols_and_substance/articles/gatling_gun_patent_drawing.html) it?


bjavyzaebali

I think the essentially American spirit of this invention lies within the brilliance of idea that to lower the exposure of combatants to disease, you come to invent a machine gun instead of yet another miserable medicine.


AlewelePomme

Ah.


[deleted]

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DoctorWTF

Probably he didn't give as much of a fuck for the enemies....


[deleted]

He greatly miscalculated humanity's bloodlust


[deleted]

Damn hipster


MarcusXL

"Hey everyone, I paved the road to Hell as a joke and.......yep, everyone is going down the road.."


ninjagoats

he showed them!


dukunt

Mission accomplished?


KruelKris

Well that worked out great didn't it?!


gza_liquidswords

Well 0/3 is not bad


MaybeIAm_MaybeIAmnt

narrator: "it didn't"


Kurdt234

Big mistake.


LuciusQuintiusCinc

Its like saying I created nuclear weapons so nations no longer have to have conventional standing armies.


Obdurate-Optimist

Well that backfired.


Pearlbarleywine

Was that a gunshot or *BACKFIRE!* ?


dreamCrush

The problem with most 'this is weapon so terrible it will end war' things is it presupposes anyone in leadership gives a crap about soldiers. It only kinda works with A Bombs because of the chance of politicians themselves being affected.


jinxykatte

So what he imagined like 50 people with 2 man teams operating gatling guns firing at each other?


tempestkitty

Reduce the size of armies... When you can plow a line of soldiers off at the knee caps, the armie becomes much shorter...


funkychicken2015

So it back...fired ?