"Why did nobody design an LMG like this?" Topic

Huge missed opportunity surely?

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Maybe have a look at the Stoner 63 system:

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"Why did nobody design an LMG like this?"

Probably because plastic ammunition propelled by springs just wasn't lethal enough. But on a more serious note, I soooo wanted one of these when I was a child. I never got one though.

@ deephorse

Me too. Kid down the road had one and oo did we envy that guy.

Probably better off without it, you could put your eye out.

I did, in fact, buy my son the battery powered, tripod mounted, full auto Nerf gun when he was a kid. So my conscience is clear.

Growing up in a (liberal) army family, they decided no toy guns. Got enough of that thru dad. Then one day Mom sees me in the yard running with a stick yelling "blam! blam! you're dead!"

Got a plastic tommy gun the next year!

… I never understood how the "Secret Cap Firing Pistol" could be a secret after being advertised on the TV. I remember some years back Jonathon Ross bought one of these off ebay to fulfil a dream.

I've had a million toy guns, basic six shooter western cap guns. Water gun uzi that makes full auto sound when fired.
I had a PPK cap gun with a silencer official james bond toy.
I had a M16A1 toy gun that made sounds.
But I had very few nerf guns.

Because it would weigh so much that you couldn't carry the ammo?

Now I think back, most of my toy guns where "Cowboy" guns. One of my brothers had a cool all black SLR, with bayonet & detachable magazine, I think it fired hard plastic bullets :)

This could probably have a thread of it's own, "Toy guns we loved" lol

I remember being very jealous when i realised a friend of mine had one of those. Too expensive for my parents to buy me one.

Extra Crispy,
I had the same result with my son and I promised to take him to the rifle range to learn how to shoot real guns when he was 5 years old.

When he was in 2nd grade we got called in for a teacher's conference. She showed us pictures he was drawing of nuke mushroom clouds and customized sniper rifles. She said she was scared and was afraid to discipline him. When we got home I told my kid to keep up the drawings as it will keep the teacher from bugging him.

Wolfhag

When I was a kid in the 1950s and early 1960s I had a rifle and a submachine gun that my father had made of wood. I still have the rifle, I think.

Jim

If you want to feed a toy gun addiction how about this rubber band firing minigun!
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One of my brothers had a cool all black SLR, with bayonet & detachable magazine, I think it fired hard plastic bullets :)

That gun was made by Airfix. They made a Thompson too, which I did get. Unfortunately I managed to break off the lower portion of the trigger somehow. I guess the plastic wasn't up to the pressure a 10 year old could put on it. I spent a lot of time loading the grey plastic bullets into the magazine and then taking them out again. Many years later I would do the same thing with real bullets and a real SLR.

Yep, FN Rifle:

Tommy gun:

always preferred the SLR with the wooden Furniture it just felt solid and I thought if I have to strike someone with the Butt it would stand up to it better than the plastic one

I was also the product of parents who thought in the 60's that not giving children toy guns would make them peace loving. I am as you may guess from my name and icon, an Army Colonel and U.S. Army Ranger – it didn't work.

When i started having children my mom asked if I was going to let my children have toy weapons and when I said yes she said good. None of my five children are in the military. There are all very safe and good shots with real weapons as well.

I had the SLR too. First the strap broke, then the barrel. Pretty soon after the spring went so the bullets just made it out of the stumpy barrel. Didn't stop me charging around the house with it, pretending to fight off terrorists with my school friends as imaginary assistants.

Done when the rest of the family was out, of course.

I had one or these. It had plastic bullets that could be fired out of the casings that had springs inside them. Load the magazine up and go.

I had a "J7" in my youth. I liked my Mattel M16 too.

Also I had a big weapon that looked like RR. You'd pump it up and it would fire a powerful blast of air. Forgot who made that ?

Plus an M1919 .30 MG with tripod. Again forgot who made it. But it was battery powered and fed a plastic belt of MG rds. And made a DAKKA DAKKA sound !

Even a 2 "man" cardboard camo'ed bunker for the deliberate defense !

Back in the early 60's, My brother and I had the Johnny Eagle M1911 pistols. Spring loaded bullets shot about 10 feet.
We also had various "cap guns" both western and modern. Greenie stickum caps, red rolled caps, and the 6 shot type for the snub nosed police pistol.
We also had the spring loaded tommy guns that made the rat-ta-tat sound and even a bazooka that shot blue rockets.
Great memories.

Oh my, it is hard to list all the toy guns that I had. The common cowboy cap pistols, rifles, the seven guns in one assault weapon, the cap grenades and Molotov cocktails, we even had a Jonny reb cannon which fired plastic cannon balls.

We had to make our own dakka-dakka noises….

Surprised no one has mentioned spud-guns. Never run out of ammo.

I had a M16A1 toy gun that made sounds.

Oh man, do I remember my toy M16. It was named "M16 Marauder" on the box (I vaguely remember seeing a comic-book style user manual for the CAR-15 carbine of the 1960s/70s that called it the "zipper" or some such, but really, has any military ever adopted a pet name for their rifle?). There was a cocking lug out the right side (like on your stereotypical SMG) that you pulled back. Then when you pulled the trigger: Rattattattattatt

When I was about 8 or 9, we had a patrolman stop at our house one day after he saw me running through the bushes in the front yard with it. Fortunately, he was not panicked by the observation. Just wanted to talk to my parents.

I had one or these. It had plastic bullets that could be fired out of the casings that had springs inside them. Load the magazine up and go.

I had a friend who had one of those. I think, when I was there to play with it, we had about a 20 or 30% loss-per-use rate on the "bullets". Basically every time you loaded and fired it, your supply went down because you just couldn't find them all. Although eventually the vacuum cleaner or lawn mower did.

Also IIRC you could put caps (the round paper peel-and-press kind, not the paper rolled kind) on the backs of the loaded rounds, to make it go BANG with each spring-loaded shot. But I'm not on firm ground with that recollection, as it wasn't my gun, and by the second or third time I got to play with it, there weren't any more bullets to be fired.

When I was about 10 years old, we had cops draw their guns on my older brother and cart him (and me, and 2 friends) off to the station for a few hours in a holding cell after he turned around with his CO2 pellet rifle at his hip just as their car rounded a corner and came into view. It was not a military replica, but a realistic looking bolt action long arm, and not entirely harmless at that.

When I was a bit older (maybe 12), my second BB gun looked like a replica M1 Carbine. VERY realistic looking. I have to wonder whether my parents actually loved me, giving me such a toy, after the experiences of prior years. In more recent times kids have been shot dead for playing with such toys.

By the time I was 14 I had an actual Mauser, so of course all those toy guns kind of fell by the wayside…

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I had on of these

plus a Crossman BB gun that looked like an M-1 Carbine. I shot many a sassy bandit.

Neat !

"Thrush" gun? If you were hit did you have to apply ointment?

really, has any military ever adopted a pet name for their rifle?
No, unless you count the "Tommy" or "grease" guns, but in Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars there is an account of an MG42 crew who called their machine-gun "Shouty" and made little items for it like a camouflage jacket for cold days.

It has a name: ‘Shouty' they call it. And it gets all kinds of special treatment. They make presents for it like a specially adapted tripod…They treat its camouflage like decoration: ‘Shouty's party clothes' they call it…In battle it is ‘well done Shouty', ‘steady now Shouty' or telling the rest of us to ‘hurry now, bring Shouty's bullets' or ‘make way! Let Shouty through!' Normal squads abandon guns when things get too tricky but we've had to risk our lives carrying lumps of that precious gun for them. When we really had to leave it behind they brought back a spare barrel or something and then built another gun round that so they could imagine it was still Shouty.

Murray, Leo. Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars (Kindle Locations 2213-2215). Biteback Publishing. Kindle Edition.

When we really had to leave it behind they brought back a spare barrel or something and then built another gun round that so they could imagine it was still Shouty.

Like the Ship of Theseus! :)

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Sounds like Trigger's Broom.

I had quite an arsenal as a child. I had a .38, a Colt Peacemaker and a double-barrelled pirate pistol (all cap firing). Added to that was a wooden rifle and a very dangerous wooden sword, hand made by my dad.

really, has any military ever adopted a pet name for their rifle?

Whether they did or not … they knew their weapon was key to their and their comrades' survival.

Many Tanks/AFVs have "nicknames" generally with the letter of their Company designations. E.g. B Co. = Bruiser, etc.

It's a minigun not a rifle but there is this:
youtu.be/wgzxSr6l9Y4?t=18

How times change !

If a kid were to bring any of these guns out onto the street today he would risk being shot for real.