Machine Gun Trivia Quiz Questions

Trivia quiz questions with answers about machine guns

Machine Gun Trivia Quiz Questions

What is a machine gun?
A: A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm designed to fire rifle cartridges in rapid succession from an ammunition belt or magazine for the purpose of suppressive fire.

Submachine guns, rifles, assault rifles, battle rifles, shotguns, pistols or cannons may be capable of fully automatic fire, but are not what?
A: Designed for sustained fire.

As a class of military rapid-fire guns, machine guns are fully automatic weapons designed to be used as support weapons and generally used when attached to what?
A: A mount- or fired from the ground on a bipod or tripod.

Many machine guns also use belt feeding and open bolt operation, features not normally found on what?
A: Rifles.

John Browning's design has been one of the what?
A: The longest serving and most successful machine gun designs.

Civilian possession of machine guns manufactured prior to 1986 is not prohibited by what?
A: By any federal law and not illegal in many states, but they must be registered as Title II weapons under the National Firearms Act and have a tax stamp paid.

Machine guns manufactured after 1986 are prohibited by what?
A: The Hughes Amendment to the Gun Owners Protection Act.

Unlike semi-automatic firearms, which require one trigger pull per round fired, a machine gun is designed to do what?
A: To fire for as long as the trigger is held down.

Nowadays the term is restricted to what?
A: Relatively heavy weapons, able to provide continuous or frequent bursts of automatic fire for as long as ammunition lasts.

Machine guns are normally used against what?
A: Personnel, aircraft and light vehicles, or to provide suppressive fire, either directly or indirectly.

They are commonly mounted on what?
A: Fast attack vehicles such as technicals to provide heavy mobile firepower.

They are mounted on armored vehicles such as tanks for engaging targets that are what?
A: Too small to justify use of the primary weaponry or too fast to effectively engage with it.

Machine guns are mounted on aircraft as what?
A: Defensive armament or for strafing ground targets.

On fighter aircraft true machine guns have mostly been supplanted by what?
A: Large-caliber rotary guns.

Some machine guns have in practice sustained fire almost continuously for how long?
A: For hours; other automatic weapons overheat after less than a minute of use.

Because they become very hot, practically all machine guns fire from a what?
A: An open bolt, to permit air cooling from the breech between bursts.

They also usually have either a barrel cooling system, slow-heating heavyweight barrel, or what?
A: Removable barrels which allow a hot barrel to be replaced.

Although subdivided into "light", "medium", "heavy" or "general-purpose", even the lightest machine guns tend to be what?
A: Substantially larger and heavier than standard infantry arms.

Medium and heavy machine guns are either mounted on a tripod or on a vehicle; when carried on foot, the machine gun and associated equipment (tripod, ammunition, spare barrels) require what?
A: Additional crew members.

Light machine guns are designed to provide mobile fire support to a what?
A: A squad and are typically air-cooled weapons fitted with a box magazine or drum and a bipod.

Medium machine guns use full-sized what?
A: Rifle rounds and are designed to be used from fixed positions mounted on a tripod.

Heavy machine gun is a term originating in World War I to describe what?
A: Heavyweight medium machine guns and persisted into World War II with Japanese Hotchkiss M1914 clones.

Today, what does it refer to?
A: Automatic weapons with a caliber of at least .50 in (12.7 mm) but less than 20 mm.

A general-purpose machine gun is usually a lightweight medium machine gun which can either be used with a bipod and drum in the light machine gun role or what?
A: A tripod and belt feed in the medium machine gun role.

Machine guns usually have simple iron what?
A: Sights, though the use of optics is becoming more common.

A common aiming system for direct fire is to do what?
A: Alternate solid ("ball") rounds and tracer ammunition rounds (usually one tracer round for every four ball rounds), so shooters can see the trajectory and "walk" the fire into the target, and direct the fire of other soldiers.

This led to the introduction of what?
A: .50 caliber anti-materiel sniper rifles, such as the Barrett M82.

Other automatic weapons are subdivided into several categories based on the size of what?
A: The bullet used, whether the cartridge is fired from a closed bolt or an open bolt, and whether the action used is locked or is some form of blowback.

Fully automatic firearms using pistol-caliber ammunition are called what?
A: Machine pistols or submachine guns largely on the basis of size.

Those using shotgun cartridges are almost always referred to as what?
A: Automatic shotguns.

The term personal defense weapon (PDW) is sometimes applied to weapons firing what?
A: Dedicated armor-piercing rounds which would otherwise be regarded as machine pistols or SMGs.

Selective fire rifles firing a full-power rifle cartridge from a closed bolt are called what?
A: Automatic rifles or battle rifles, while rifles that fire an intermediate cartridge are called assault rifles.

Assault rifles are a compromise between the size and weight of a pistol-caliber submachine gun and a what?
A: Full size battle rifle, firing intermediate cartridges and allowing semi-automatic and burst or full-automatic fire options (selective fire), sometimes with both of the latter present.

There are also multi-chambered formats, such as what?
A: The revolver cannon, and some automatic weapons, including many submachine guns, that do not lock at all but instead use simple blowback or some type of delayed blowback.

Most modern machine guns use gas-operated reloading, which does what?
A: It taps off some of the propellant gas from the fired cartridge, using its mechanical pressure to unlock the bolt and cycle the action.

Another efficient and widely used format is the recoil actuated type, which does what?
A: It uses the guns recoil energy for the same purpose.

A cam, lever or actuator absorbs part of the energy of the recoil to what?
A: Operate the gun mechanism.

An externally actuated weapon uses what to move its mechanism through the firing sequence?
A: An external power source such as an electric motor or even a hand crank.

Most modern weapons of this type are called what?
A: Gatling guns or, in reference to their driving mechanism, chain guns.

Gatling guns have several barrels each with an associated action on a rotating carousel and a system of cams that do what?
A: Load, c*ck, and fire each mechanism progressively as it rotates through the sequence; essentially each barrel is a separate bolt-action rifle using a common feed source.

The continuous nature of the rotary action allows for what?
A: An incredibly high cyclic rate of fire, often several thousand rounds per minute.

Rotary guns are less prone to jamming than a gun operated by what?
A: Gas or recoil, as the external power source will eject misfired rounds with no further trouble, but this is not possible in the rare cases of self-powered rotary guns.

Rotary guns are generally used with what?
A: Large rounds, 20mm in diameter or more, offering benefits of reliability and firepower.

The weight and size of the power source and driving mechanism makes them impractical for use where?
A: Outside of a vehicle or aircraft mount.

When were revolver cannons, such as the Mauser MK 213, developed?
A: In World War II by the Germans to provide high-caliber cannons with a reasonable rate of fire and reliability.

The action is very similar to that of the revolver pistols common in the 19th and 20th centuries, giving this type of weapon its what?
A: Its name.

Firing a machine gun for prolonged periods produces large amounts of what?
A: Heat.

In a worst-case scenario this may cause a cartridge to overheat and detonate even when the trigger is what?
A: Not pulled, potentially leading to damage or causing the gun to cycle its action and keep firing until it has exhausted its ammunition supply or jammed (this is known as cooking off, distinct from runaway fire where the sear fails to disengage when the trigger is released).

To prevent this, some kind of “what” is required?
A: Cooling system.

Early machine guns were often water-cooled; while very effective, the water also did what?
A: Added considerable weight to an already bulky design.

Air-cooled machine guns often feature what?
A: Quick-change barrels (often carried by a crew member), passive cooling fins, or in some designs forced-air cooling, such as that employed by the Lewis Gun.

The higher the rate of fire, the more often barrels must be what?
A: Changed and allowed to cool.

To minimize this, most air-cooled guns are fired only in what?
A: Short bursts or at a reduced rate of fire.

Some designs , such as the many variants of the MG42, are capable of rates of fire in excess of what?
A: 1,200 rounds per minute.