Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 06/16/2026 1:39:54 PM PDT by marktwain
I have been searching for quotes on how ineffective full auto fire is in the hands of untrained people.
Grok4.1 gives these, but the links do not work or do not show the actual quotes. They may be correct but only in books or videos.
If anyone can find an actual link which shows any of the following quotes, I would appreciate it.
1. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (U.S. Army Ranger, author of On Combat and On Killing)
“Full automatic fire is almost useless in the hands of anyone who is not well trained. The tendency is to spray and pray, and most of the rounds go high or wide.”
Source: Discussions in On Combat and his training lectures.
2. Massad Ayoob (Firearms instructor and author)
“In the hands of the average shooter, a submachine gun is little more than an expensive noisemaker. The tendency is to spray and pray, and most of the rounds go high.”
Source: Ayoob’s articles in American Handgunner magazine and his books on defensive shooting.
3. Clint Smith (Founder of Thunder Ranch)
“Full auto is for people who can’t shoot. If you know what you’re doing, semi-auto is far more effective.” Source: Clint Smith’s training philosophy and interviews, widely cited on firearms training sites.
4. Pat Rogers (Retired NYPD officer and Marine veteran)
“Full auto fire from an individual weapon is largely a waste of ammunition unless the shooter is highly trained. Most people just end up making a lot of noise and missing.”
Source: Pat Rogers’ tactical training materials and articles.
I believe the sentiments in the above quotes are correct. I desire to document them with links which can be followed.
If links are not available, a footnote source giving the publication and page is next best.
My search has not been fruitful so far.
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Full auto is only good for suppression fire! I don’t care how good a marksman or how strong you are, by the third round you are no longer anywhere near being still on target. So three round burst is the most I would recommend in a serious firefight.
My friend has a full auto Uzi. Totally uncontrollable for anything useful. And talk about expensive. A ‘clip’ (H.T. Ignorant media whores) is emptied in seconds along with any cash in the wallet.
Just watch the feral teens shooting their Glocks with illegal giggle switches. The safest place to stand is right in front of them.
it takes a bit of getting used to. I have FRTs in my MP5 and AR15 that run at full auto cyclic rates. The MP5 took me about 500 rounds to learn how to control on full auto and to dump a whole mag into a torso size target at 25 yards. The AR15, I just keep it to 3 round bursts when shooting off hand. If I had a bipod on it, it would be controllable for longer bursts
I’ve got to think there are some good ones on this topic in Jeff Cooper’s voluminous writings.
Interesting...
A Military angle would be
The M-14. It is notorious for Rise on Full Auto.
.
By the way Closures around Groom Creek and nearby Camp grounds near Prescott because of a lot of Bear Sightings!
I rented a Sten gun at a range in Vegas once and did pretty good with it immediately. 300 rounds, which the counter guy thought was a lot, I didn’t think it was all that much. Was only shooting at maybe 7 or 10 yards, room clearing distances. But I was keeping them in the silhouette. There was a guy a couple lanes down with an expensive H&K pistol who was having trouble keeping them on the paper, which I found amusing.
You forgot, “Fully automatic fire is merely an increase in the number of misses per minute”.
A topic almost as controversial as beans in chili! 😳
No simple answer. I’ve been shooting subguns for a long time and have instructed many newbies with limited firearms experience.
Some are extraordinarily difficult to control such as the M11/9 and almost all full auto pistols.
Others like the Thompson, Swedish K, Sterling, HK MP-5 and many others quite controllable and can be surprisingly accurate.
Historically the roll of the sub machine gun was to provide suppressive cover as your troops maneuvered. An uncontrollable and inaccurate weapon would be a liability.
In my opinion, and I’m not seeking a purse fight, people who think sub machine guns are uncontrollable or useless haven’t had much actual first hand experience with them.
If you want to try something that is useless, try an M-14 on full auto. It will empty the magazine before you can blink, and all but the first round will be in low earth orbit.
A lot depends on the weapon being fired. I would agree with you about rifle cartridges, but in the right hands, sub-guns can be deadly accurate.
As you point out, the key is to use two- and three-round bursts.
My friend has a full auto Uzi. Totally uncontrollable for anything useful. And talk about expensive. A ‘clip’ (H.T. Ignorant media whores) is emptied in seconds along with any cash in the wallet.
The smaller Uzis, such as the mini-Uzi and Uzi pistols tend to be uncontrollable, but the full-size Uzi sub-machine gun is very controllable. Again, the key is to use two- and three-round bursts.
And I bet this former FReeper could have given Jeff a run for his money with his Mac 10.
Matt Bracken / Travis McGee
I still regret not buying one of those things when they were readily available. my excuse is that I was poor and in college, but they were almost literally in my back yard.
Oh, Lord! That was something! One round on target, the rest in orbit. All in the blink of an eye.
In what kind of weapon? A rifle? Or an aircraft?
If you are talking small arms, I tend to agree, excepting a belt fed weapon in a squad, providing either suppressive fire or area fire against a massed enemy (e.g., a WWI style charge across a field).
Or when attempting to generalized damage to an unseen enemy in some sort of cover the machine gun can penetrate (e.g., a structure and you’re shooting an M2 or a squad weapon). But there I would prefer a grenade launcher or something else that goes “boom”.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a retired Army Ranger and prominent author of On Killing, addresses fully automatic fire in the context of combat stress.
His work, widely taught in military and law enforcement seminars, focuses on the psychological hurdles of lethal force and how soldiers and police officers react under extreme pressure.
Key Perspectives from his work:Reluctance to Kill: A central premise in Grossman’s research—drawing from World War II combat historian S.L.A. Marshall—is that most individuals have a deep, subconscious resistance to taking another human life. During WWII, an estimated 15% to 20% of soldiers fired their weapons directly at the enemy.
Conditioning the Mind: To overcome this natural hesitation, the military shifted its training to Pavlovian and Skinnerian operant conditioning (e.g., using pop-up realistic human silhouettes rather than traditional bullseye targets). Grossman credits this conditioning with raising the firing rate to 90%-95% during the Vietnam War.
The Psychology of Automatic Fire: When troops transition to full auto or burst fire, it is fundamentally used for suppressive fire to pin down the enemy or break contact. Because combat stress severely impairs fine motor skills and rational thought, Grossman emphasizes the need for intense, repetitive training. This ensures that under “full automatic” chaos, a warrior’s muscle memory, target identification, and stress management will instinctively take over.
Because Grossman’s work heavily advocates for a “warrior mindset” in law enforcement and military personnel, it has generated debate. For instance, opinions on his seminars are highly mixed: some critics—as highlighted in Slate—argue that his training promotes an aggressive stance that can create a divide between officers and the communities they serve, while supporters argue his strategies provide vital coping mechanisms for survival and resilience in high-pressure situations.
You can explore his comprehensive books and resources directly on Amazon or find out more about his lectures on his Killology Research Group Website.
During the Rhodesian war, the military removed the auto sear from the R1s. The R1 was the locally produced version of the FN FAL under license.
Full auto is often ineffective when firing standing, the only exception is when you’re in the kill zone of an ambush and your only hope is to overwhelm to ambushers and get out of the kill zone.
Automatic fire is most effective when fired from support (bipods, tripods, sandbags, etc.) firing controlled bursts to support an assault or in defense.
As pointed out earlier, recoil causes the weapon to rise if it is unsupported and ammunition will always be limited. I have had a friend who was chasing a VC when the enemy turned and fired an AK full auto at less than ten feet away. The first round barely missed and the rest of the rounds went high, which gave my buddy the chance to kill him.
The other issue with submachine guns is the difficulty in loading magazines. They have strong magazine springs, so reloading a magazine is time-consuming. If you run out of loaded magazines in a firefight, you’re in a really bad place.
i READ ONCE THAT IT TAKES 250,000 rounds of full auto fire to create one enemy casualty.
Don’t know if it is true or not.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.