What is obsolete in terms of small arms?

Or in other words, what is the oldest design that can perform acceptly? Specifically in three contexts
>hunting/ sport shooting
>LEO/personal defense
>Infantry weaponry
As I do believe the answer changes depending on context, like a rolling block is fine for deer hunting but is worthless on a modern battlefield

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

LifeStraw Water Filter for Hiking and Preparedness

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    If it can kill, it's not obsolete. Even a sharp stick can have use if you can get the drop on someone, stab their fricking eyes out and take their gun. If it's not able to be used as an effective frontline weapon, use it for ambushes

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    everything will do the job as long as you hit the target

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >Hunting
    My brother has taken game with a Belgian carbine from the Napoleonic Wars. Cutoff is in the late 1500s.

    >Personal defense
    Depends on the user, but if it can kill someone it ain't obsolete. Realistic cutoff is somewhere in the 1850s with the advent of repeating percussion pocket guns.

    >Infantry
    Needs to be able to suppress an enemy firebase and then carry enough ammo to hold the position for 12 hours while reinforcements or supplies get to you. Someone needs to be able to deal with plates. The most arguable cutoff depends on whether or not you think detachable mags are important, in which case it's either the 1890s or the 1950s

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    hell, even kentucky long rifles wouldn't be obsolete if you can make the shot

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >hunting/sport shooting
    black powder works fine here
    >LEO/personal defense
    i think there's a definitive answer for double-action revolvers, they're still totally fine despite being antiquated
    the M1877 is, as far as i know, the first double-action revolver
    however it's mechanism was dogshit and if the trigger spring failed, it would revert your pistol to single-action, i think this firmly places it out of acceptable performance
    i think the point where double-action revolvers started to become more feasible began with the M1898, so I suppose you could point to this as one of the "oldest designs that can perform acceptably"
    >Infantry weaponry
    This totally depends, if facing a peer-to-peer rival you would want the best things you can get your hands on
    If you were stuck in some third-world shithole, whatever you can get your hands on is better than nothing
    A rusty shitbucket Enfield is better than some homebrew blackpowder smoothbore
    A properly maintained SKS is better than the shitty Enfield

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Honestly pretty much anything works here, plenty of people hunt with muzzleloaders for fun. I will say that hunting birds with shotguns was a serious fricking challenge until the percussion cap was invented though. IMHO a flintlock shotgun or more appropriately a "fowling piece" does not perform acceptably because of the very long time for ignition, that makes it hard to hit fast moving targets. Also birds can see and react to the flash in the pan before the shot goes off, so I will say that a flintlock shotgun is obsolete. Percussion shotgun is fine though.

    shooting
    literally anything, whatever floats your boat.

    defense
    I'd be wary of anything earlier than a good reliable percussion revolver or pepperbox.

    weaponry
    Obviously this is going to depend on if the conflict is near-peer or not but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a self-loader that can be reloaded with mags or clips would probably be sufficient for most contexts.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I disagree on personal defense. I think the oldest acceptable design is something like a Smith and Wesson hand ejector model, Webley or similar revolver that uses cartridges and has a swinging cylinder or break top over a single loading gate

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        I can see the benefit in a rapid reload, and for someone who would actively be looking for trouble (i.e. LEO) then that does make sense. But for the average person defending themselves? Statistically the average shooting is between 2 and 3 shots. Even a 5-shot percussion revolver has that covered.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Webley mentioned

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Everything but the very best option available.
    If something better exists, everything before it is obsolete.
    But being obsolete does NOT mean something can't perform acceptably. Outside computer shit, being obsolete isn't that big of a deal. The word just has an unnecessary stigma in modern times because of how hilariously unusable obsolete computers are.

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    For infantry weaponry it's gotta be self loading these days. Any of the early 20th century SMGs would be just fine in the same role they were originally designed for but for regular infantry rifles things like the M1 Garand, SVT-40, and G43 are probably the earliest things that would still be effective on a modern battlefield. Mostly your limiting factor would be the amount of ammo you could carry but many militaries today still use 7.62x51 as their standard cartridge which is not significantly lighter than the battle rifle cartridges of old.

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >hunting/ sport shooting
    Honestly this section is wide open. If is a tube, containing a projectile, that can go boom with a power and a light, then in theory it's still viable. Look at the black power hunting scene, it's still alive and well today.

    >LEO/personal defense
    I'd say that the minimum cut off would be with repeating weapons (with maybe the exception of double barreled shotguns) for personal defense. Again, if it can go boom and put a projectile into a jogger, then it still has value. However joggers tend to come in packs of 2 to 8, so having the ability to put multiple rounds down range quickly.
    Same logic applies to LEO in regards to firearms. And LEO would need to have a greater than or equal weapon in order to match criminals in the advent of a shooting. Wheel guns and shotguns can only do so much with today's weaponry.

    weaponry
    Select fire, magazine fed weapons are the only answer tbh. The reasoning is the same as the LEO with being a greater than or equal force then the opposing force, though even more so given the profession is purely about combat.

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >hunting/ sport shooting
    You can hunt with an atlatl or a sling or a hand-made wooden shortbow
    >LEO/personal defense
    At least a DA revolver and/or pump-action shotgun
    >Infantry weaponry
    At least a semi-auto self-loading rifle like an SKS

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      The bizzare American hunting seasons with windows given over to muzzleloaders, bows and crossbows really shows that no weapon is ever obsolete because in each of those categories people who do use authentic period weapons take wild deer. the French still use spears and swords to finish boar. People are murdered with caveman era clubs, rocks and crude edged weapons like blunt axes and knives all over the world daily.

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The M110, like every fricking thing fielded by the military, especially the damn SCAR, has issues.

    I am a gunsmith. I have worked on SR-25's, FN-SCAR's, and M14's. The SR-25 is the objective best option of the three.

    Most of the complaints regarding the SR-25's accuracy came from snipers, whom are used to bolt guns explicitly engineered for accuracy and nothing else.
    Most of the complaints regarding reliability come from SCARgays, who don't like how the AR-platform's intended configuration is several magnitudes more effective than the SCAR, and use the SCAR's one half-decent leg up as justification.

    Fact is, the AR-10 platform was engineered to have light weight, low recoil, and amazing accuracy for a semi-auto design. Eugene Stoner succeeded, and proceeded to watch the military force him to downsize his achievement to the AR-15.

    The SCAR, meanwhile, was made to be an M14 in disguise, and has all of the same fundamental engineering failings.

    Over reliance on weight to reduce recoil.
    A shitty hybrid short-stroke long-stroke piston system that has the benefits of neither system.

    These are the two cornerstones of the SCAR and M14; heavy and impractical abominations designed by committee, not engineers.

    The AR platform was engineered specifically to solve the problem, every single marksman that had me fix their SR-25 likes theirs, and every single "operator" I knew that owned a SCAR tried to pawn it off to me when the damn things inevitably lost their charm and reality set in that they got scammed.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      > SCAR
      > heavy
      wat

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >What is obsolete in terms of small arms?
    Revolvers

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      There is no good competition to revolvers for delivering magnum calibres.

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >Or in other words, what is the oldest design that can perform acceptly?
    I have a flintlock holster pistol made somewhere between 1625 and 1650 in Brescia in Northern Italy. I have fired it twice over a chrono, it delivers about 630 ft/lbs/ Roughly the same a s a 367 Magnum. It would have been intended to shoot through steel breastplates and infantry armour that was intended to try and stop pistols at fairly close range. If any man thinks any weapon that was designed to kill and worked is ever 'obsolete' he should consider standing in front of one and testing to see if it still works and that applies to any design of firearm, bow, gas, poison, edged weapon or air gun.

  14. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    if it's not an AR or glock it's obsolete. Good enough maybe for shooting into piles of trash at the range maybe. Revolvers turn their owners into gays, and AK owners become troons.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Look at you will your small prissy little brain that responds so well to marketing but has no disenable capacity for thought or reasoning. If it is advertised at you you believe it 100%.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >if it's not an AR or glock it's obsolete
      What if you want to reliably shoot over 500M or shoot at flying birds or running small game?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        sounds like larping, maybe you should stop larping and use guns for their intended purposes, killing people

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          That's impressive and powerful dialog. How many people have you killed?

  15. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Guns have been a fairly mature technology since the mid to late 1800's probably. But with some notable advances that came with the invention of machine guns and the path to intermediate cartridges becoming mainstream. Also, if you think of something from early on like the thompson, it's heavy as all hell and unwieldy to boot. Garbage compared to anything modern that does the same job.
    >hunting/ sport shooting
    Late 1800's, probably earlier. With the first rifled barrels and pointed bullets. Probably any rifle that used self contained centerfire cartridges shot through a rifled barrel was a huge improvement over previous tech. The mosin and early german kar98s come to mind as solid designs in that time period, but I doubt they're the absolute firsts. I'm no gun historian.
    >LEO/personal defense
    Ideally early 1900's-1970's? There's probably some 1800's designs that were adequate when it came to handguns. I feel like handguns matured earlier than the long guns and guns with full auto, the best improvements came decades later.
    >Infantry weaponry
    1960's or 1970's? I'd say that's more a product of intermediate cartridges becoming mainstream. Germany had their chance in the 40's with the mp44 idea, but it was too late by then, and that gun definitely was a mostly complete beta version of modern infantry guns, ready for improvements they'd have probably made shortly after.

  16. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >hunting
    Most primitive tech and upwards
    >defense
    Any cartridge repeater and upwards
    >infantry
    Any selfloader and upwards

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *