Category:Assault Rifle

If you're creating a new page for an assault rifle make sure to add [[Category:Gun]], [[Category:Rifle]] and [[Category:Assault Rifle]] to the page so that it will be listed here.

Despite being a 'politically charged' term by the media and gun control proponents, the term "assault rifle" is used to describe a series of weapons which have certain characteristics. Unfortunately this is a very loose term since there are tons of exceptions to any rule that people can think of.

Here is a short primer on the term and how IMFDB uses it:

(a) It fires an intermediate cartridge (examples, 5.56mm/5.45mm/7.62x39mm/7.62x51mm/etc), aka, larger than a handgun round but smaller than the full sized rifle rounds of past conflicts (i.e. 7.92 Mauser, 30.06, etc.)

(i) Exception: Some ultra short assault rifles are called Submachine guns, which is technically wrong, but people still do because they are used in the Submachine gun role (only with larger caliber ammunition). Conversely some submachine guns are erroneously called 'assault rifles'. The 7.62x51mm is arguably closer to a main battle round than the others. It was developed in the 1950s when much of the military hierarchy was resisting the transition to smaller calibers and this was their 'compromise'. The 7.62x51mm round is still used as a sniper or belt fed support weapon round.

(b) it is shorter and more compact than traditional Battle rifles prior to the 1960s

(i)In the case of the AK-47 and M16 that is true, but rifles like the G3 or FN FAL are sometimes just a long as the 'long older battle rifles they replaced'. In that case, the characteristics of box magazine and select fire and improved ergonomics are the only change.

(c) It is select fire

(i)True that bolt actions like the M1903 or the Karabiner 98K don't have this as well as the Semi auto M1 Garand, but there are always 'neither fish nor fowl' versions like the Type 56 Carbine/SKS or the British L1A1 which are Semi auto only, however most firearms authors refer to those as either 'carbines' or 'self loading rifles' and not assault rifles. True assault rifles are 'select fire'. Semiautomatic just means one shot per pull of trigger. This difference is many times lost on the mainstream media and the gun control lobby.

(d) It has a box magazine (or drum).

(i) People don't realize how revolutionary this was during World War II. Up to that time, only submachine guns and larger machine guns (like the Bren and BAR) used detachable box magazines. Guns like the M1 Carbine were technically support weapons. Everyone else used internal top load magazines for the most part for the main battle rifle. No longer. Now the only difference is the type of detachable magazine, whether a tube like the Calico series of guns or a top loading box like the FN P90.