Les armes à feu spéculatives

SF and guns.

• Decided, my felinoids don't use finger triggers—they use thumb-triggers, located roughly where the hammer is on most guns (the hammers on their guns, when their guns still had hammers, were located just above the triggers—indeed, the trigger was probably something like the trigger on a mousetrap—or alternatively they used pinfire right up until autoloaders replaced revolvers and repeaters, and had side-hammers).
  
  Anyway, this led me to look for a model of their gun, since the Smith & Wesson N^o. 3 Schofield I'd been using was less than ideal. I found that the S&W No. 1 had had a much smoother back, and often had birdshead grips, something I'd always liked about the Webley Mk. 1. Only, I hated the tip-up design of the N^o. 1, where the barrel swings up, on a hinge at the top, and the cylinder is removed and reloaded. I much preferred the top-break of the Schofield, and indeed had that be how the felinoids reloaded their pistols (the revolver's cylinder becomes a squat helical magazine—the felinoids' bullets, remember, are spherical, so the mag can hold—I did the math—18 rounds).
  
  I was in luck, though; I found a picture of a top-break revolver with the same rounded butt and birdshead grip, and weird little spur-trigger, as the S&W N^o. 1. It was the S&W "baby Russian", designed for the concealed-carry market and, apparently, the most popular S&W revolver of all time.Now if only it wasn't in .32 S&W—anyone who calls .40 S&W "Short and Weak", when its hotter loads easily break 650 J (well over any normal Parabellum loading, and as strong as their precious .45 ACP), should have a look at the .32's measly 156 J. Still, "weak gun" beats "no gun".
• Of course, the felinoids (since they don't use finger-triggers) don't have that spur-trigger. Nope, they have a lever, much like that on the Volcanic repeating pistol (a pistol with a tube mag, how weird is that?), except only used to chamber the first round. Did you know the Volcanic was also made by Smith & Wesson? Yeah, they were co-founders of the company that would later become Winchester Repeating Arms—and, as the New Haven Arms Co., produced the Henry rifle, AKA "that damned Yankee rifle they load on Sunday and shoot all week". I think Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson probably have a better claim than Col. Colt to being mentioned in the quote about making men equal.
  
  The lever, incidentally, lets my felinoids twirl their guns, always a bonus (and without a finger-trigger, quite safe). I think their civilians also have a gun that looks like a triggerless Volcanic, and another that looks like the Remington double-barrel derringer, except the bottom barrel is a tube magazine. Their main rifle, remember, also resembles a Winchester (or rather, a Marlin lever-action), with its tube mag. If you're not using Spitze rounds and percussion primers, there's no reason not to use a tube mag, indeed the tube mag, flush against the barrel, greatly reduces the area of the gun compared to a box mag (we might be able to switch back once we switch to electronically-fired caseless rounds). But what about speed of loading? Ah, well (and I'm amazed nobody's thought of this for shotguns), how about detachable tube magazines? Each of my felinoids carries a few, in a quiver-like pouch.
• You know that Ayn Rand quote, "Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins"? Yeah, well, aside from that being all the justification a sane society would need to take Objectivists' guns (they themselves admit they are incapable of thought and morals while armed), it gave me a great idea for a line. The villain in my last book, remember the felinoid who talks like John Galt and acts like Oliver Cromwell (so still a much better person than Galt), says something to the same effect. And the hero, also a felinoid, replies, "Force is morality in action. The morals of the unarmed are largely theoretical."
• Someone needs to explain to me how, precisely, the Spanish have managed to get the Covenant to design a rifle for them. I.e., this:It's called the Fusil Automatico Doble, and it's quite plainly the answer to the question "what did Sangheili assault rifles look like?"
• Conceding for the moment that Star Wars is science fiction (rather than a mix of good fantasy and terrible political fiction set in something-that-vaguely-resembles-space), did you know the Imperial blaster rifle is a British L2A3 Sterling submachine gun? Yes, and apparently the real ones aren't any more accurate. I guess it actually is the guns' fault this time.
  
  Similarly, everyone knows Han's gun is a Mauser "broomhandle" C96, but did you know the Stormtroopers' heavy rifle is a Wehrmacht MG-34 machinegun? And apparently the Rebel forces' main rifle is the blank piece of paper on Mikhail Kalashnikov's desk Sturmgewehr 44. Presumably without the banana magazines.
• Hmm. While most of the problems with bullpup firearms are solvable by caseless ammo—since the main problem is the ejected casings, and things that come out along with them, being so close to your face—apparently they usually have mushy, sloppy, heavy (9 lb!) trigger-pulls. That might not be the sort of thing a 24th-century USMC Peacekeeper cadre would tolerate.
  
  The latest version I've done of the standard PK rifle (a bullpup Kalashnikov, remember) is 49 cm long, as long as the AKS-74U with its stock folded. Now, the barrel is the same length, and that's the length of the barrel in the Army's Squad Designated Marksman Rifle. But...the overall length of the SDM-R without its stock is only 75 cm, the same length as the M4 carbine with its stock retracted. Interesting but pointless you say? Ah, but you forget, there's an alternative to both bullpups and retracting stocks: the folding stock.
  
  Now, I'd be the first to tell you, the side-folding stocks on AKS's or the FNC look ridiculous—I don't know about you but I don't like having a part of my weapon attached by what is, in essence, a cabinet hinge. But worry not, there's an alternative. Namely, the top-folding stock as seen on the Szkorpion vz. 61 (actually, there's almost certainly some way to make that stock even sturdier, but it's a good starting point).
  
  Oh, you may be asking why the majority of Peacekeepers don't use that, instead of their bullpup AKs? Well, basically, the British Army's take on the (problem-plagued) SA-80 rifle sums it up best: "Designed by the Ignorant, Built by the Incompetent, Issued to the Unfortunate". But then again, not even my rather dystopian future society deserves to be compared to Britain. Hell, even Japan could say "Hey, we might be a self-absorbed island nation off the coast of Eurasia with a history of monstrous war-crimes, but comparing us to Britain is going too far!"
• Bwahaha, not actually about SF except incidentally, but this list of gun mistakes writers make, by the comics writer Chuck Dixon, makes me happy. Why? Well, 'cause my geekery is such as to let me say, e.g., "The Nagant revolver can be silenced, actually." Everyone ought to know that by now (also, "safety on the revolver": it must be a Webley-Fosbery autorevolver, so it's really only justified in period pieces—which come to think of it, so is the Nagant, and that, only in Russia).
  
  But I just wanted to say, I have the correct version of the empty automatic, in my book: rather than the gun being empty, the guy got distracted, and forgot to chamber the first round when he put in a new magazine. Remember that, and use it in good health.
• Is it weird that in my dark-fantasy book I actually have a character think "the Mozambique Drill is a big help in this business"? That business being vampire hunting. I mean, hey, "Aim for the head or the heart, anything else and it's your ass" (Blade)—and guess where you're aiming, with the Mozambique Drill? Sorry, but since the main characters are civilians with firearms, they're gonna talk like them—and that's the kind of thing 'armed citizens' (or as Hollywood prefers to portray them, 'gun nuts') actually say.
  
  It's funny to me that Buffy once said guns were "never that helpful". Huh. Somehow I think multiple hollow-points have a better chance of destroying the head or heart of a vampire than a wooden stake does of going through a sternum in one smooth stroke, but then again, I don't hate guns as a phallic symbol (Whedon's probably better disposed to small-caliber snubbies, if you know what I mean). I'm also aware of what implement women actually use to redress the power disparity between the sexes, and it ain't magic.
  
  Sorry Whedon, but remember: God made men and women, Col. Colt (or, again, Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson) made them equal.