We really cant design a better gun?

[BlueTrain]

One of the problems with the gyrojet was that it really did accelerate after it left the muzzle. But that also meant that the muzzle velocity was going to be low. I don't know about the ammuntion itself, however, how it was packaged and so on. There was one used the the James Bond movie "You only live twice," apparently with live ammunition.

Anyone remember the Dardick? If so, I hope I spelled it right. It was certainly a novel idea but it was one of those things that tended to do things for the sake of doing things differently. It managed to combine features of the revolver and the automatic pistol, having bot a cylinder (sort of) and a removable magazine. It had very odd cartridges. The handgun could be inserted into a rifle frame to make a long gun combination but that idea was also used for an ordinary .22 automatic pistol at about the same time. Neither one caught on. Probably the biggest shortcoming of the Dardick was the unique ammunition.

I have to say, however, that people used to be a lot more receptive to new ideas than they seem to be now. After how many hundreds of years of blue steel and hardwood, stainless steel and plastic showed up sometime in the 1960s and we finally had something that was progress, something up there with repeating rifles and metallic cartridges, which also pretty much showed up together. It would be interesting to see what the next real advancement might be but we'll probably have to wait another 40 years.

 

[aarondhgraham]

The Gyro-Jet was an actual rocket launcher,,,

It's ammo wasn't a bullet per se,,,
It was a miniature rocket,

It got it's stabilizing spin from it's own angled exhaust,,,
But it (like any rocket) started slow and accelerated to max speed.

One report I read recently, stated that at very close distances,,,
One could deflect the projectile by hand,,,
And not sustain an injury.

Click here for a Wikipedia article on it.

I know as a teen in the mid 60's I read about this rocket pistol,,,
And was completely fascinated with it.

Of course, the rumor at the time was that we were going to outfit our astronauts with these weapons,,,
In case the evil Soviet Cosmonauts tried to board one of our space exploration vessels.

It was hoped that it would work on invading aliens as well.

 

[Lavid2002]

This was the idea I came up with the other night...Not rocket fuel per se. But to encapsulate the propellant in the projectile.

Heres a video of the gun you were talking about
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpOcdyxvUvc

I guess I have to keep thinking.

 

[Horseman]

One needs to remember the way most of the innovation we have now came to be. Primarily military necessity to create a more effective killing machine. And the shoulder fired weapons that have been filtered down to our sporting rifles today were designed in a different time. A time when the power of a nation was proportional to the weapon in the troops hand. Today the power of a nation has more to do with unmanned drones, jets, nukes, economy,and sheer volume of ones army. The point being the innovation of war is no longer focused on small arms but other tools that have a far bigger effect on the outcome of war. IMO this is why the innovation has been relatively small for 100years.

Ask Remington how the Etronix rifle/primer system worked. Innovation will come if profit is to be gained. We gun nuts are not always the most progressive free thinkers looking for change. The wheels turn slooooow. Also a lot of prospective gun buyers are looking for "cheap" first, not innovative. Many still consider the Win. Model 70 the finest rifle available. It was designed in the early 1930's and first available in 1936.

I agree with the premise of the OP. There are very few things I can think of that have changed as little as guns and ammo in the last 100years. Cars, planes, cellphones, computers, internet, homes, etc. have changed dramatically or did not exist.

 

[Art Eatman]

I've given a cursory look at this thread. Seems like what's missing is some definition or consensus about just what is "better".

Group size/accuracy?
Muzzle velocity for a given bullet weight?
"All-aroundedness"?
Firearm weight vs. recoil?
Ammo loadout weight?

And whatever else comes to mind.

 

[Horseman]

I've given a cursory look at this thread. Seems like what's missing is some definition or consensus about just what is "better".

Good point Art. A propellant with more velocity won't necessarily help since we're kind of already on the edge of what bullets can handle while maintaining penetration.

How about bullets with euthanizing chemical tips so a hit anywhere is lethal? May not wanna eat that though.:barf:

 

[johnwilliamson062]

I think the reason there is no innovation is b/c it is illegal to innovate. At least for most people. If I have an idea I can't just run down to my local machinists shop and work out a prototype. How can you expect new things when innovation is stifled so?
Browning and other professional inventors are responsible for a lot, but there were a lot of small steps and a few leaps taken by garage tinkerers and dreamers.

 

[ClayInTx]

Improvements actually out in the market are a chicken and egg kind of problem. An improvement in one field makes a new product which then enables an improvement in another field.

Sometimes a phenomenon is observed but the potential isn’t realized for may years. An example is the vacuum tube. Electron emission from a heated wire with a voltage on it was observed by Edison but it was just a problem to him; thirty some odd years later DeForest invented the radio using it.

Ford’s Model T used the basis of the automatic transmission. Then it was ignored. In the late thirties a controller and fluid coupling was added and it was complete.

However, it is a bit odd that firearms haven’t changed in a century. Every principle used in a firearm today was developed in the eighteen hundreds or before; perhaps not successfully but known then. Subsequent improvements have been merely tinkering with a known principle or enabled by improvements in chemistry or metallurgy.

Art Eatman made a listing in Post #85. Which of these are we looking for, or is it all of the above?

How can these be obtained? Any Ideas? I’m thinking and that’s dangerous for me to do.

Glock owners please note that NO, the Glock isn’t there yet.

 

[ClayInTx]

JohnWilliamson has a valid point. Legality. Because of the many laws concerning guns and modifying these it has made the garage inventor leery of trying anything and the garage inventor is usually the guy who makes some discovery that is leaps and bounds ahead of current technology because he’s not a scientist and therefore he doesn't know it can’t be done.

 

[B.L.E.]

I agree with the premise of the OP. There are very few things I can think of that have changed as little as guns and ammo in the last 100years. Cars, planes, cellphones, computers, internet, homes, etc. have changed dramatically or did not exist.

Cars still by and large use four-stroke cycle piston engines to power them. For the most part, ignition is still by electric spark. Valves are still opened and closed by camshafts. Gas turbines were tried and proved unsuitable for cars because of their large efficiency drop off at part throttle and large idle fuel consumption. Wankel engines proved to be a great step sideways. Really, it's mostly the sum of a lot of refinements and not any big technological breakthrough that separates my car from the one my grandfather drove.

Refrigerators still largely use a closed Rankine cycle to cool the inside of the box. Changes have mostly been features and style.

Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms would probably be familiar with nearly every instrument used in a modern symphony orchestra.

Books still have paper pages printed with ink.

A lot of technological change lies in the production of a product rather than the product itself. A shooter from the early 20th century would be quite familiar with most of the guns sold today but a gunsmith from that era would hardly recognize the machinery that makes today's guns.

 

[JohnKSa]

Air has some potential but it also has some pretty serious limitations. The first is that for practical applications the gun has to store the energy, not the ammunition. That makes the gun heavier and bulkier than most people would tolerate.

The second is that storing energy in the form of compressed gas/air is a lot more dangerous than storing energy in the form of chemical energy in a stable compound like gunpowder. I would hate to be holding a powerful airgun in a gunfight--a bullet in the wrong place could compromise the gas/air containment turning the airgun in my hand into a formidable grenade.

There are some limitations to how much velocity you can get from air, but I'm not well-versed enough to explain them or even tell you what they are.

 

[TXGunNut]

Baby Steps

I think we're still making progress towards the ultimate firearm but at this point we're only seeing refinements. Most shooters (including me!) are satisfied with the state of the art and quite frankly aren't able to fully exploit it. The military is not looking for major innovations in shoulder fired weapons (as far as we know) and the shooting public likes cheap and available. New technology is time-consuming and expensive so it won't make it to the bench next to yours at the local shooting range any time soon.
Some air rifles similar to the ones that Lewis & Clark used to gather animal specimens are @ the museum in Cody. Very interesting! They were probably just as safe and effective as the firearms available at the time and considering the circumstances were probably just as dependable and portable.
Don't like messy cleanup? Check out my siggie. I can have my BPCR clean and in the safe before you get a good start on your .30-06. Won't stink up the house with poisonous solvents either.

 

[Balog]

It always amuses me when people think time=magic. "It's been sooooo long, why are we still bound by all these blasted thermodynamic laws?!?!?!"

 

[TXGunNut]

Baby Steps

Will verify proper sear engagement but user error most likely cause.

 

[IYAAYAS]

Why make changes to a tool that does exactly what you want?

 

[Horseman]

Really, it's mostly the sum of a lot of refinements and not any big technological breakthrough that separates my car from the one my grandfather drove.

We're not talking about grandfathers car. It'd be turn of the last century technology being compared...ie horse and buggy.

Books still have paper pages printed with ink.

Bookstores in my area are going out of business with the advent of the new E-readers like Amazon's Kindle and Apple's Ipad. Instantly downloadable books. You can carry 1500 books on a device smaller than a magazine.

Why make changes to a tool that does exactly what you want?

That's the type of thinking that has stifled the innovation of firearms design. Why aren't we still driving model T's??? Some things are under constant improvent and refinement. Guns aren't one of them. I'd also guess a contributing factor is the general lack of interest from each younger generation. Fewer folks are being raised with guns with the urbanization of America. As I said before there will be innovation wherever there is money to be made from it.

 

[Crosshair]

That's the type of thinking that has stifled the innovation of firearms design.

No it has not. People are satisfied with what is available until something better comes out. If everyone suddenly wanted plasma rifles, that doesn't mean that they would suddenly be invented.

For example, most people were satisfied with a horse and buggy until the car was introduced and available at an attractive price.

Most people were satisfied with black powder cartridge guns. Along came smokeless powder.

Once something shows up that is superior to the existing, it will then replace the other.

You also have to remember that hindsight is 20/20. We look at what we used 10 years ago and wonder how we could have managed with such crappy technology, ignoring that the technology we had at the time was top of the line. People take the technology that is available to them and make the most of it to work around its flaws flaws.

Waiting around for something better is what leads to stagnation. Imagine if the inventors of ENIAC said, "Yea, we could use these vacuum tubes. But they have reliability issues, take a ton of power, and aren't very compact. Lets not build it and instead do something else." The development of the general purpose computer would have been delayed by over a decade at least until the transistor could be mass produced. Imagine the technological consequences.

Just because it only took an extra decade to get the transistor is not an excuse to wait. It could have easily taken another decade to get the transistor mass produced.

 

[Horseman]

No it has not. People are satisfied with what is available until something better comes out.

No people are not always satisfied with what is available. Why do you think most Americans buy a new car every few years? People are predisposed to look for something better. It's human nature to want more than you have.

My point is there is more satisfaction with the status quo in the gun industry than many others.

 

[mapsjanhere]

The G11 was ready for deployment 20 years ago (I had some fraternity brothers in the troop tests, they loved that thing, not so difficult when you're still dragging a G3 through the woods). It was canned for political reasons, a certain large power didn't want to toss their 5.56 mm guns and NATO was supposed to unify their supply structure after all. But the caseless design goes back to the 1840s, the Dreyse Zuendnadelgewehr (Needle-ignition guns) were a caseless design. As btw were the first Henry rifles using a filled bullet.

 

[Art Eatman]

A caseless design is far easier for a government to control the availability.

The United States is the largest civilian market, bar none. Okay, what is the market demanding in the way of performance?

We know that most shooting is either short-range paper plinking type of target shooting, or hunting.

For most hunters, portability ends at around nine pounds, generally. Anything that gets beyond that has little market.

Sure, we can go on down to the six-pound "fully dressed" weight for a centerfire, but then the issue of recoil comes into play. Again, a limited market.

Uber-high-velocity means erosion of the leade; metallurgy to deal with that is possible, but it's expensive--so, again, a limited market.

IOW, overall, for the civilian market, there is very little innovation which would make life all better.

As near as I can tell, having messed with centerfire for some sixty years, the biggest improvements have come with composite stocks, stainless and titanium metals, and in optics. Overall, the improvements in optics seem to have been the biggest item on the shopping list.