Abstract

Guns, slug-throwing weapons, have evolved as humans have increased their grasp of the mechanical arts. In the near future, however, it seems likely that soldiers' rifles operating at punishing cyclic rates of fire face the limits of physics and materials science— heat and speed will cost accuracy and distance. This article considers not only the near future of the personal weapon carried by soldiers in battlespace but also the rifle's evolution as an index of alterations in 20th-and 21st-century war fighting. The arc traced by multiple-fire weapons, from the Gatling to the laser rifle, is a narrative of humans, machinery, and their cocreative symbiotic relationship. This article begins by examining some current examples of late-generation rifles and their imagined futures, continues by pursuing the linkages between guns and soldiers, and finally asks what new guns will mean for soldiers being born now.