Automatic weapon

An automatic weapon is a ranged weapon (be it a fictional directed-energy weapon or real-life firearm) that fires more than one shot when the user pulls the trigger. A fully automatic weapon can fire indefinitely on a single trigger pull, stopping only when its mechanism jams or it runs out of ammunition.

History

The first automatic weapon was developd in 1884 by Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884. The advent of automatic weapons had a major effect on tactics, rendering massed charges obsolete, as was demonstrated at the Battle of Omdurman in 1889, in which ten British maxims decimated over 15,000 cavalrymen, and later during the Great War.