Long guns and automatic weapons?

Question

Can you please explain the difference between long guns and assault rifles?

Answer 1

Assault rifles have selective fire (semi-auto, three round burst, and full-auto). The military M-16, AK-47, M-4. Magazine fed

Sub-machine guns are full auto weapons that fire pistol ammo. Thompson or Tommie gun, MP-5

Then there is the machine pistol which is a full auto pistol. The Glock 18,

There are light machine guns such as the Squad automatic weapon (the gun that Zarqawi was trying to fire in that video) and the M-60. They are full auto, belt fed.

Machine guns are generally considered to heavy to shoot with out a tripod or being mounted on a vehicle the browning .50 cal for instance.

"Long guns" are mainly deer rifles, the Barrett's .50 cal, and shot guns. Long guns is really a slang tern rather than a classification. The civilian versions of M-16 (AR-15) ect would fall under this category because with out the BATF stamp civilians can only own the semi-auto versions

Answer 2

Assault rifles are generally automatic. The specific use, or target buyer of military weapons usually buy assault weapons.

Assault weapons are not used to be accurate as they can lay down so many rounds per bursts they get everything in their path. Long guns are usually semi automatic which you have to pull the trigger for each shot.

An M-14 can be both. The automatic capability is removed.

I am sure the government has a list of assault weapons.

Answer 3

Long guns, by definition are shoulder fired firearms- they can be rifles, or shotguns, or a combination of both. They are designed to be fired from the shoulder, as opposed to handguns, (pistols and revolvers). Assault rifles are long guns. Assault rifles were defined as a military select fire weapon, using a smaller caliber than a main battle rifle, But larger than a sub-machine gun. Today they are defined in the US as being semi-automatic weapons with certain physical and mechanical characteristics- many of them cosmetic only. Assault rifles were pioneered by the Germans in WWII.

Answer 4

A "long gun" to me would be something like a high-powered sniper rifle, where an assault rifle would be something more like an AK-47.

The word "assault" implies that it's probably an automatic/semiautomatic weapon capable of mowing down a school yard full of kids.

The word "long" implies it's a rifle for long-distance (or has a longer than normal barrel, which makes it better for distance shooting), like a sniper rifle, which generally shoot one bullet at a time before you have to reload.

Make sense?

Answer 5

Typically, long guns have long barrels to be accurate for longer distances. Assault rifles have to be shorter, for lightness, and manuverability, and they usually have bigger clips to hold more rounds.