Comment Re:This is pretty much what I've been telling peop (Score 1) 973
>In Europe we continued trying to wipe each other out and it caused a lot of technological improvements.
IIRC, During a World's Fair in 19th century London an attendee said to Hiram Maxim, "Want to make a fortune? Invent something to let these Europeans
cut each other's throats with greater efficiency." and then started on a path to develop the first true machine gun.
Gatlings were well known, but not a true automatic weapon, since each shot was actually tripped off by the manual operation of a crank.
In fact, the ATF treats Gatling guns as semi-automatic.