No full auto day would be complete without talking about the rifle that set the pattern, giving meaning to the life of we Evil Black Rifle shooters. The Sturmgewehr 44:
The SG44 was the first assault rifle, and the concept was later adopted by the Soviets in the famous and ubiquitous AK-47. Unfortunately for the Germans, and fortunately for us, they weren’t able to produce them in large enough numbers to affect the outcome of the war. The SG44 was originally called the Maschinenpistol 43, but Hitler canceled the project, but the army wanted it badly enough that they saved it by renaming it Sturmgewehr, or “Assault Rifle”. The SG44 fires a medium power version of the German 8mm, the 7.92 ‘Kurz’ round.
Here’s some crappy video of a lucky bloke firing one.
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=r1xVQg9suPA[/youtube]
I think if you ever have the opportunity to shoot a rarely encountered piece of history such as this, you should take care to get good video!
The Sturmgewehr 44 (StG44) was the world’s first truly effective assault rifle. It was introduced by the German army late in WWII, and if the war had continued another year, the SG44 would have replaced every other rifle, light machine gun, and submachine gun in the Wehrmacht, including the antique Karabiner 98k and MP38. After the war the StG44 resulted in the outright replacement of almost every infantry gun in the western world, serving as the direct inspiration for the Russian AK47, the most prolific gun in the world, and the indirect inspiration for practically everything else.