Issue with "PDW" as a weapon category

[Yournamehere]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

Yeah, the thing is "fires a pistol round" is part of a very solid and agreed-on definition which was made when submachine guns were first adopted (originally to differentiate them from machine guns, which fired a rifle round). There are a handful of cases of manufacturers not sticking to the "classic" weapon classes (another would be Rocky Mountain Arms with their 5.56mm "pistol" that happened to look exactly like an AR-15 with a really short barrel), while there are thousands of weapons made precisely in line with these classes. For everything that's not quite an SMG, you can rattle off a list of thirty things that fit the classic definition exactly.

The AR pistol you mention is merely classified as a pistol because of build compliance for American law. It's simpler to sell a gun built to "pistol" specifications according to our specific law set than to build an SBR for sale. I'm just saying that's a poor example of stepping out of weapon classification because there are legal matters in the mix there.

Additionally the qualifications for submachineguns as they were dictated during their inception were, more or less, the gun being a handheld portable automatic weapon, the pistol caliber being partially necessary criteria for definition and partially a necessity due to the build of the early open bolt subguns like the Thompson.

However certain concepts have been around for long enough to where there are a few broad definitions which I think the vast majority of people agree on:

Battle rifle: Any rifle firing a full powered cartridge (7.62x51mm for example).

Assault Rifle: Any rifle firing an intermediate cartridge (5.56mm for example).

Submachinegun: Any handheld automatic weapon firing a pistol caliber catridge (9mm for example).

The PDW hasn't been around as long and with the broadness of the accepted definition of submachineguns, it's hard to separate PDW from SMG. I personally thought that PDWs by definition had to fire a proprietary cartridge capable of better penetration (basically just the P90 and MP7) to be considered a PDW, and that anything else is NOT a PDW, just simply an SMG which may be falsely marketed as a PDW, as you all have said.

As for what Matt said with the role of the round not distinguishing its class, I don't believe that either, because that's about what the difference is between a Battle Rifle, Assault Rifle and SMG are, and so I'd say:

1: If you are going to keep the PDW classification, make the criteria fit with weapons like SMGs that fire a proprietary, non-intermediate round that is more fit for armor penetration and better range, basically just the P90 and MP7 which are as far as I know the only guns that fall into that. Everything else in typical calibers are SMGs, even if marketed as PDWs, plain and simple.

1: Get rid of it altogether and just call the P90 and MP7 SMGs, because they still fall under that criteria as well if you consider 5.7 and 4.6 "pistol" rounds, as they technically are chambered in pistols and aren't powerful enough to be intermediate rounds.

[Evil Tim]

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

Additionally the qualifications for submachineguns as they were dictated during their inception were, more or less, the gun being a handheld portable automatic weapon, the pistol caliber being partially necessary criteria for definition and partially a necessity due to the build of the early open bolt subguns like the Thompson.

Well, it was much simpler: it was World War 1, and there was a hard divide between handgun and rifle bullets which wouldn't really go away until 1938 when the 7.93x33mm Kurz was designed. The sub-machine gun (which is how the term was originally formed) was an even-lighter-than-light machine gun firing a handgun bullet rather than a rifle bullet.

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

Battle rifle: Any rifle firing a full powered cartridge (7.62x51mm for example).

In my experience, "battle rifle" is a subset of "rifle" which refers specifically to assault-like rifles that fire full-sized rifle bullets (ie FAL, G3, M14) and have at least a select-fire variant, otherwise it's hard to draw a line between a battle rifle and a DMR. If I remember rightly, the term is actually fairly new, and was coined in the Vietnam era to provide a distinction between the M14 "battle rifle" and the new M16 "assault rifle."

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

As for what Matt said with the role of the round not distinguishing its class, I don't believe that either, because that's about what the difference is between a Battle Rifle, Assault Rifle and SMG are, and so I'd say:

I believe what he means is that what the ammo is for doesn't change the class of the gun. So, for example, loading your M1911 with FMJs instead of hollowpoints doesn't change it from a "light attack pistol" into a "heavy duty pistol" (unless you live inside a videogame, in which case it probably does). Same here, putting AP rounds into what's basically a subgun doesn't really change that it's a subgun, it just addresses why subgun sales started to fall off in favour of compact carbines (the increasing likelihood of encountering bad guys in body armour and the relative crapness of the traditional 9x19mm subgun round against such) so companies could try to lure back their old SMG clients.

[Spartan198]

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

1: Get rid of it altogether and just call the P90 and MP7 SMGs, because they still fall under that criteria as well if you consider 5.7 and 4.6 "pistol" rounds, as they technically are chambered in pistols and aren't powerful enough to be intermediate rounds.

5.7x28mm was designed specifically with the P90 in mind, the Five-seveN pistol came along after. Likewise, the 4.6x30mm was designed specifically with the MP7 in mind, but in this case HK's companion pistol, the UCP, never materialized outside of limited trials with the Bundeswehr.