The Various Uses of the Machine Gun - Literature review Example

The weapon that has had the most life-changing effect on mankind was definitely the machine gun. According to Julia Keller (2008), of Mr. Gatlings Terrible Marvel, “civilization was irrevocably altered” by the invention of this gun, and that “nothing-neither warfare, nor diplomacy, nor science, nor business, nor technology, nor literature, nor art, nor theology – would ever be the same” (Keller, 2008, pp. 1-2). The reason for this is because the machine gun was used for a variety of purposes – defending management against labor riots, by bootleggers in the Prohibition, in major wars, etc. All of these could be considered to be causes, in a sense. Since the other weapons were handy in more one-on-one combat situations, with the exception of the crossbow, the other weapons could not really have a life-changing effect on humanity. The crossbow, the only other weapon that was used in major combat situations, was not selected as a life-changing weapon simply because it is currently obsolete, although, in its day, it was game-changing in ancient wars, much like the machine gun is today. Since the machine gun is not obsolete, and continues to be used in major combat situations, it is considered to be the most life-changing of the weapons. The history of the machine gun has already been covered in previous papers, so there is no need to reiterate this here. Rather, the various uses of the machine gun will be more elaborated. One of the ways that machine guns were used was as a weapon in the struggle between management and organized labor in the late 1800s, early 1900s. For instance, H.J. Raymond, who owned the New York Times, purchased three Gatling guns in 1863 as protection from his offices, because he feared that mobs would attack his office because his newspaper had come out in favor of the unpopular Conscription Act that year. In 1877, it was used to arm the Philadelphia National Guard during the Great Strike. In 1891, when miners went on strike to protest cheap convict labor, it was used to arm the Tennessee National Guard. The Pennsylvania National Guard was armed with it in the siege at Carnegies Homestead steel mills in 1892 (Ellis, 1975, p. 42). In none of these situations was the gun actually fired, probably because it was so fearsome that just the knowledge that the gun was available was enough to quell riots or potential riots. This was in evidence by what the leader of an unofficial union of longshoremen who struck in San Francisco around the turn of the century, another conflict in which the National Guard was armed with machine guns, said - “We cannot stand up against police, machine guns and National Guard bayonets” (Ellis, 1975, p. 43). That said, there were other incidents where labor was kept in line by the actual use of these machine guns, not just the show of the guns. One of these was in Ludlow, Colorado, one of a series of miner related conflicts that occurred in the early 20th Century. In this incident, the National Guard shot up the tent colony, where the men were staying, with machine guns. This caused the tents to catch fire, and ended up killing 36 men and wounding 100 more (Ellis, 1975, pp. 44). Later, in the, 1920s, machine guns were used extensively in Prohibition. During Prohibition, the respectable, family-owned wineries and breweries went out of business, and the business of liquor-selling was thus turned over to the likes of Al Capone and his brethren (Yenne, 2009, pp. 65-66). In other words, the advent of Prohibition brought “a wave of organized crime, the likes of which has never been seen again in America, except for the war on drugs” (Yenne, 2009, p. 66). The machine guns were used in the turf wars between rival crime syndicates, particularly in Chicago, where the north side was controlled by the Irish Charles OBanion, and the south side was controlled by the Italian Johnny Torrio (Yenne, 2009, p. 67). OBanion set Torrios operation up for a police raid, a move that OBanion paid for with his life. In return, OBanions second in command, Early Weiss, took over, with Clarence Moran as his lieutenant. Moran hit Torrio, severely wounding him, after which Torrio turned his operation over to Al Capone. Capone and Moran turned to all-out warfare, with the Thompson Machine Gun (“Tommy Gun”) the weapon of choice (Yenne, 2009, p. 67). The Bootleg Wars, as they were called, crescendoed on St. Valentines Day 1929. This was the day of the St. Valentines Day massacre, of course, and it was also, arguably, the day that the Tommy Gun entered iconic status (Yenne, 2009, p. 74). The events leading up to this day were that there was a minor war going on in the streets of Chicago between the Italians in the South and the Irish in the North. It was punctuated by each hijacking the others alcohol supplies, each shooting up various establishments where prominent members of the others were dining, and the murder of Earl Weiss, as well as various henchmen (Yenne, 2009, p. 70). On St. Valentines Day 1929, however, Capone decided that he was going to end the war once and for all. On this day, Moran was invited to inspect a consignment of whiskey on the North Side. Although Moran himself was not there, five associates and enforcers, as well as Reinhart Schwimmer, who as a hanger-on, and John May, a mechanic who worked on the Moran gangs cars, were. They were ambushed at the site by Capone associates dressed as policemen, lined up, and shot by Tommy Guns. This incident, dubbed the “St. Valentines Day Massacre” by the press, became “the signature slaughter of the decade” and has remained in folklore ever since (Yenne, 2009, p. 75). Meanwhile, the federal government crime busters got into the act with their own Tommy Guns. Led by Eliot Ness, a crusader who was determined to assemble a team who could not be bribed, the “G-men,” as they were known, put together the evidence that would sink Capone on tax evasion charges, charges that eventually sent Capone to prison at Alcatraz, where he would spend the next eight years and emerge a broken man, crippled with syphilis and dementia (Yenne, 2009, pp. 88-89). Organized crime gave way to bank robberies in the 1930s, who used the Tommy Guns for their own crime sprees and captured the publics imagination much as the bootleggers had in the decade before. Brought about by the desperation of the times, and the thought that the bankers and their foreclosures were the cause of the peoples Depression-era woes, criminals used their Tommy Guns to rob these “evil” banks, in an apparent bid to become Robin Hoods gone wrong (Yenne, 2009, pp. 89-90). Al Capone and Bugs Moran made way for John Dillinger, “Pretty Boy” Floyd and “Baby Face” Nelson, all famous names to this day. And, of course, among the famous 1930s bank robbers were Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow – Bonnie and Clyde (Yenne, 2009, pp. 89-90). While the machine gun played a part in both the organized crime wars, the bank robberies of the 1930s, as well as the labor conflicts in the early parts of the 20th Century and the latter part of the 19th Century, perhaps its most lasting legacy is its status as the weapon of choice in wars. From the early colonial wars before the turn of the century, to World War I in 1914-1918 (Popenker & Williams, 2008, p. 7), to the present conflicts, the machine gun has earned its place in the military arsenal and has aided all sides to all conflicts, and upped the ante to any armed conflict. One of the first armed conflicts in which the Tommy Gun was used was in a Nicaragua conflict in the 1920s. Since Nicaragua was an important country for the United States investments in everything from mining to banana production, the United States thought it necessary to involve itself in Nicaraguas conflicts. A coup in that country in 1926 brought potential unrest, and President Calvin Coolidge sent the United States Marines to that country to quell a potential rebellion. The Marines used to the Tommy guns, as were the Latin American gangs. The way that the Marines used these guns in this conflict potentially saved many American lives, as they fleshed out Nicaraguan rebels out of ambush sites by shooting short bursts from their Tommy Guns, which pre-empted the rebels ambushing the Americans (Yenne, 2009, p. 81). Because of this, it helped restore stability in the region, and enabled the Americans to pull out. In the process, the Tommy Gun became, in the words of a Marine Corps manual, “one of the necessary infantry weapons” (Yenne, 2009, p. 82). After this incident, the United States decided to adopt the Tommy Gun as the official weapon of the marines and the navy in 1928 (Yenne, 2009, p. 82). These incidents revolving around organized crime, bank robbery, union busts and rebellion explain briefly how the Tommy Gun and the Gatling helped change the lay of the land in the United States, but no paper about machine guns can be complete without also delving into the effect of the Automatic Kalishnikov 47 – the AK47. Invented by Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, the gun came to prominence when Kalashnikov entered the Peoples Commissariat, which was a contest that the Soviet Union was holding in 1946 for weapons designers, in a bid to find the right weapon for the Soviet army. Kalashinikovs gun won, and history was made (Hodges, 2007, p. 51). The AK47 was used defend communist Russia and defeat capitalist America. Internationally, it was first used to smash a peoples revolution in 1956 Hungary. The AK47 was used by Communist China to aid the North Vietnamese in the Vietnamese conflict in the 1960s through the 1970s. The Americans, using M16s that were ineffective, saw the AK47 as the more effective gun, and threw down their weapons and started picking up the AK47 out of the hands of North Vietnamese soldiers. The images of the AK47 being broadcast to the United States caused radical intellectuals and students to proclaim the gun the “anti-imperialist gun,” an image that replaced the hammer and sickle in the public eye (Hodges, 2007, p. 55). Today, the AK47 is still well-known throughout the world – in the hands of Iraqi rebels, Colombian militiamen, Palestinian gunmen, African child soldiers, Lebanese militamen, just to name a few. Even in the hands of Osama bin Laden himself (Hodges, 2007, p. 7). Conclusion There is no doubt that the machine gun has changed the world. Whereas before, in army conflicts, soldiers relied upon weapons that were cumbersome and slow, the machine gun brought these conflicts to a different level with its ability to mow down lots of soldiers in a short period of time. Thus, it fundamentally changed how wars were fought. They were also used to quell potential union rebellions around the turn of the century, thus fundamentally altering the landscape for labor during this period of time. And, their use in organized crime and bank robberies during the 1920s and 1930s in the United States made them a part of folklore, and these guns became symbols for these times. There is no doubt that this fearsome weapon has fundamentally changed the landscape of many different facets of human life, thus earning it the title of the weapon that most changed humankind. Sources Used Ellis, J. (1975). The social history of the machine gun. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Hodges, M. (2007). AK47: The story of a gun. San Francisco, CA: MacAdam/Cage. Keller, J. (2008). Mr. Gatlings terrible marvel: The gun that changed everything and the misunderstood genius who invented it. New York, NY: Penguin Group. Popenker, M. & Williams, A. (2008). Machine gun: The development of the machine gun from the nineteenth century to the present day. Ramsbury, Malborough Wilshire: The Crowood Press Ltd. Yenne, B. (2009). Tommy gun: How General Thompsons submachine gun wrote history. New York, NY: St. Martins Press. Read More