But Col. Colt Made Them Equal

Yes, yes, it is time for further ruminations upon the great equalizer (no, not death).

• It would be difficult to find a more steampunk firearm than the French MAS 1873 Chamelot-Delvigne, at least without replacing the powder load of each cartridge with a water tank (which will, of course, be instantaneously brought to boiling...somehow). Seriously, it looks like a Webley as souped up by a mad scientist. Brass-plate it and engrave a trilobite on there, seriously, what do you think Jaegermonsters use as a sidearm?


• Difficult, but not impossible: I give you the Steyr-Mannlicher M1894, a very early semi-auto pistol. It's more steampunk simply by virtue of being something we think of as modern, done a very 19th-century way. It's a pistol with a box magazine, but that magazine is not detachable; rather, it loads from the top, like a Mauser pistol. But look at the shape of it: since the frame is shaped like that of a contemporary European revolver (much more Webley than Colt, just look at it), it can't be loaded with a clip, only round-by-round. Yes it's weird but it's also awesome.
  
  Late Addendum: Turns out it can be loaded with a stripper clip. Weird. The thing's shape must be really odd.


• From the early steampunk graspings to the highest modern tech, I realized, if you wanted a bullpup AR variant, you'd just take the basic shape of the M4 carbine and stick the magazine in the very end of the stock. Its overall length, being as long as the M4 with stock retracted, is only 1.3 cm longer than the wz. 2005 Jantar (the bullpup Kalashnikov Poland experimented with), but its barrel, running the same length as the gun itself, is not only 29.9 cm longer than that of the Jantar, it's even 24.8 longer than that of the M16A4. No more of those "barrel too short to properly stabilize the round" complaints.
  
  And you know what? Ship the thing with a derned ejector conversion kit, for southpaws, the way FAMAS does. Or just man up and make the switch to caseless.


• I must confess I find the M4 intriguing. Not as a battle weapon—I'd opt to use the full-length M16, thank you, if remotely possible. But I'm fascinated by the fact the Marine Corps is so committed to the idea that "every Marine is a rifleman" that their officers carry M4s as sidearms, rather than pistols (which may just be because a lot of Marines appear not to like their Beretta M9s—consider that Force Recon's sidearm is an M1911 variant). I'd say it's open to debate whether a carbine qualifies as a "sidearm", but that would mean debating Marines, and I've done that, so they can call it whatever they want.


• So, due to how their weapons function, my felinoid aliens use round bullets, dimpled for stability like golf balls. And, because the bullets are round, they use tubular magazines in their long guns, which basically look like Henry rifles or Winchester '73s (they prefer the extra reach, when using their guns as melee weapons). But their tubular magazines are detachable—each of their soldiers carries a "quiver" with a couple of 'em. Of course, they also have guys using SAWs, but their SAW is just the standard rifle on full-auto, with a helical magazine instead of a tubular one, giving it six times the ammo.
  
  Their handguns basically look like certain 19th-century revolvers, like the Webley Mk. II or the S&W No. 3 "Schofield", but instead of being revolvers, they have a helical magazine about the size of a revolver's cylinder, with three twists' worth of ammo (probably 15-18 rounds, in a handgun no less!). It's actually a conscious design choice on my part, that their weapons look sort of old-fashioned by human standards...until you notice their muzzle flash is glowing plasma, accompanied by a slight ripple of space-time distortion.


• So apparently the main trouble with magnetically-accelerated guns, whether rail or coil, is wear and charge buildup in the barrels. I'm not certain it would work, but...why not rotate between several barrels?
  
  Yes, that's right, an actual reason to have a rotary, Gatling-style electromagnetic gun. Don't say I never gave you anything.