Core77

Kudos to you core77 for putting these up. Although the author has her own reason for studying these relationships, gun design, and the advancements in gun design, brought on by following a design process, has long been considered a taboo in design discussion.

I personally would be very interested in reading the thesis.

In my senior year in design one of my colleagues chose to design a bull-pup style assault rifle with smart arming features for law enforcement (most officer shootings involve their own weapon). The Design director killed it right away despite everyone in class giving our classmate full support. He then appealed to the head of the school who over-ruled the Director and allowed it to proceed. Head of the school was an ex London cop. The design was very innovative and well thought out, and refreshing change from the usual Design school thesis fare.

Great article and video! I read "The Gun" about the history of the AK47: http://www.amazon.com/Gun-C-J-Chivers/dp/0743270762
You can argue about the purpose of guns but as industrial & functional products they contain very relevant lessons to product designers.

well...I see this is already the second article about guns, in a week, here on core77...

personally, I consider the effort of designing new weapons a very primitive, wastefull and heartless activity.

One could think that humankind has evoluated, seeing the talks about living green and all those discussions about design for a better world... but when you see is also a constant action in the war machine, all that it's left for you to do is pray...cause we are in a big danger...

please stop making those products...humankind doesn't need new guns

While I'm not a big gun supporter, the fact that of the matter is guns will be around no matter what.

I do believe that gun design and engineering is an important sector, not so much that we need more efficient ways of killing people, but as the spokesperson said this gun factors in over penetration, which is a huge cause of blue on blue casualties and collateral damage during close quarter combat and hostage rescues.

Aside from military weaponry it would be interesting to see more articles on non-leathal weapon design and engineering.

Thanks for the great editing Barbara ;)

@Razvan: Yes, the world would be a better place if humans didn't try to kill each other. But as long as they do I'll be glad to know that the good guys use the right product to protect law-abiding citizens...

The inside scoop on the KRISS sub gun is that Magpul industries designed the chassis around the KRISS system. Magpul identified that the design could be drastically simplified by using a Glock 18 pistol as the bas, cutting cost and still having select fire ability. KRISS said no, they wanted to use their complex design instead. THANK YOU for posting about Fire Arms design. Most every advancement in technology has come from warfare and the military industry.

I personally think that the KRISS is partly or mostly a marketing gig (though the design itself is definitely a labour of love, and some layout decisions are very very interesting and though-provoking).

It obviously exploits the cultural attachment and fondness of gun enthusiast Americans for the .45 ACP, a cozy familiar cartridge "that can stop a bull even if it hits a tip of the horn", like they use to say.

"This gun can clear a room in no time" boast the enthusiastic endorsers in their over-the-top video eulogy. And yes, it looks "tacticool" and obviously IS very controllable, but come on. Yes, this bullet is heavy, allowing for nice joule figures, but it doesn't penetrate body armor by design. And this is becoming a must nowadays - look at the latest PDW programs.

Moreover, the modern Russian special purpose firearms like VAL or VSS also use high-caliber slow-moving bullets (to suppress them better) - but they also are designed around a special limited production armor-piercing bullet. Oh, and they're really compact too.

If they would, say, design an SMG that shoots a new high-powered, large caliber cartridge with a line of AP and HP bullets (choice between armor penetration and stopping power/low penetration (ideal for police and counter-terrorism units) - this would actually be a small revolution.

But then, the sales would suffer in US.