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Yeah one of those would be nice in my collection...Christmas is coming...
Yeah one of those would be nice in my collection...Christmas is coming...
Well nevermind...I ain't been that good....
Andy
Well actually there were quite a number of "machinegun" designs from the 1700-1780s era. Sure some where multi-barreled, but others had cylinders that revolved to fire though a fixed barrel (the Pickle machinegun even had two cylinders, one with square cylinders and bore for use on non-Christians and one with round cylinders and a round bored barrel for use on "civilized" persons. Best not kill civilized people too dead you know!) so our Founding Fathers sure DID know about machineguns and rapid fire weapons!
What is pictured above is a volley gun and not a machine gun. Remember in the movie "The Alamo" with John Wayne? They had a British volley gun that was used on ships to clear the rigging of enemy ships. They were used, but were not popular as the standard load was a full measure of powder as used in a single shot rifle, and setting of a dozen charges all at once was not fun! Finally the load was reduced to half loads of powder, but recoil was still vicious when hanging on rigging or in the crow's nest. There is absolutely no proof there ever was a volley gun at the Alamo as they were rare when in use by the Brits and no one has ever found anything to make them believe there was one in the US at at time, much less Texas.