Originally posted by DonPalentino:
I was actually thinking of buying a Tommy Gun from my dad its got the drum clip and everything. I think its worth 400 dollars. The only thing that I dont like about them is there weight. Its a real heavy gun they, about 6,7lbs.
Actually, a Tommygun weighs a bit more, but it's a flyweight compared with its predecessor, the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), which weighed 17 lbs. Brigadier Gen. John S. Thompson conceived of his submachine gun as a "trench broom," which any WWI doughboy could sling over his back without it impeding his hazardous crossing of "no man's land." Once he got to the enemy's trench, he could stand off the edge and sweep the enemy with machine gun fire (hence "trench broom"). The difference: the Tommygun was a submachine gun because it fired "sub-military rounds" (.45 cal. handgun rounds), while the BAR fired full-sized rifle rounds (.30-06, same as in the '03 Springfield, the standard US infantry weapon of WWI). But the bigger BAR's magazine could only hold 20 rounds, while the lighter Thompson's drum mag held up to 100.