There have been several movies, especially ones starring everyone’s favorite tree trunk, Arnold Schwarzenegger, where one of the characters lugs a multi-barrel machine gun known as a minigun around, spewing thousands of rounds in the general direction of the antagonist or whomever else might be unlucky enough to get in its way. I know there are a few varieties of minigun used in Army and Air force aircraft, but Im wondering if there’s ever actually been one designed or modified to be shot from the hip by beefy bodybuilder GIs. A bit random, but hey, seems like a legitimate question considering its Hollywood glorification. I thought Id ask. Thanks.
Total hollywood. There was a site with lots of background information on the minigun used in Predator but it’s not available now. Bottom line is that it is in no way feasable to use a handheld minigun. The movie gun was made to only fire blanks and at that the ejecting brass nearly took out the guy trying to hold it. Completely impractical as a few seconds of burst would use more ammunition than all the guys in the movie could carry not to mention the stack of truck batteries needed to power a gun. An M-60 can be shot offhand quite effectively but that’s a different kettle of fish.
Speaking of shooting from the hip no one does that in the real world except for dumbasses like Rambo. I occasionally get to shoot submachineguns in competition and the match director sometimes thows in a stage that must be shot from the hip. It’s a severe handicap as it makes it much more difficult to actually hit the target.
Thanks, thats what I figured… It really wasnt so much a question as if the military ever did it, well, because it would be completely useless… well for any application really. Not to mention that 100 7.62mm rounds per second would probably have a secondary effect of propelling the user into the air, or the ground within about a tenth of aforementioned second… As to the hip, I once tried firing a BB gun at a target a foot across about a grand total of ten feet away, and it took me about 50 bbs to decide to just quit it and go inside… But I would have to think that some crazy ass collector would have ended up with one of those things in their hands and thought what a cool idea it would be to set it up to shoot handheld… followed by thousands of dollars in hospital bills and property damage…
FWIW those miniguns were 5.56mm based. Perhaps a hyperbole to say they absolutely couldn’t carry the ammo but a squad travelling on foot wouldn’t get far if they did.
FWIW there are a few registered miniguns in private hands but the value is so high that I doubt anyone would use them for such foolhardy experiments.