without the accompanying infrastructure to mass-produce proper ammunition this is useless
still enough to to raid a armory or two.
they have a time machine. that means they have infinite ammo and firearms if they use it correctly.
It would be much easier and infinitely better to just bring a modern(or mid century) machine shop and a couple chemistry books. Why the fuck do so many ‘communists’ fetishize finished products over means of production?
Imagine the opening to Lord of War, but the assembly line passes through a portal into 1859… I could watch that movie.
Long term, yes. But a crate of AK’s and a few thousand rounds of ammo and John Brown’s raid would have been a monumental success. Allowing the militia to form in the mountains arming slaves and causing a ruckus for slave owners.
I’d love a military/firearm historian to chime in on this, but I think you could make it work with technology at the time.
So the cartridge is four parts: case, bullet, propellant, and primer.
Cases can be reused and the machining for new ones isn’t terribly difficult.
Bullets are dead simple to cast out of lead, just gotta clean your barrel more often.
Smokeless powder won’t be commercially available but if you could send a couple telegrams to a few scientists, you’d have it ready in no time. You could probably just use black powder but you might have malfunctions.
I think the primers would be the toughest part, the tech existed but they weren’t widely used. Percussion caps would be really available, so you might be able to make them fit in an AK cartridge. They definitely wouldn’t be reliable, but neither is surplus AK ammo today.
Idk, I’m stoned and I like time travel hypotheticals lol
When John Brown was freeing slaves in the first place did he have accompanying infrastructure to mass produce ammo for the guns he was taking?
I guess what he was doing was useless then 🙄
It existed in the world. He could steal powder and balls and stuff from his enemies. Those bullets would need to be made somewhere.
You can even cast both musket and minié balls over a campfire, and sharps rifles worked great with paper cartridges. Add to it that gunpowder was widely available in wholesale quantities at the time, and it would have been almost trivially easy for him to keep his troops supplied with ammo.
And with the bigger guns it would be extremely easy for him and his newly freed friends to go and get the stuff.
It wouldn’t take much ammo to level armies given the guns at the time.
Depends if they come with bayonets or not.
Without giving technologies to produce at least ammo(not talking about spare parts or even the whole gun itself) these will be just artifacts with limited usage. Giving pump action shotguns will be more useful, since they can use black powder, ammo brass casings and can shoot anything that fits inside the barrel. And are much easier to fix and even produce. The only remaining issue will be teaching how to make reliable and safe primers for ammo.
Well you could give enough ammo for the raid to be successful then use the raided weapons to arm the slaves I think?
I forget the post Harper ferry plan and not sure how far they would get
In a situation of limited ammo, automatic weapons are a bad choice. Semi auto or pump/lever action would still be enough. Like, hell, even having bolt actions rifles would provide a lot of domination for that time.
Me:“you’re gonna need a better hostage”
Nuke Woodrow Wilson.
Destroy Milton Friedman
