It seems pointless
In: 10
Speed and reliability.
When you fire a gun, before you can take a second shot you need to eject your spent cartridge and chamber a new round. This is a simple enough process, but it takes time to do. Most modern guns seem to top out at around the 600 rounds per minute mark, but what about when you want to fire even faster?
The answer is a multi barrel weapon like the minigun. Here, while one barrel is being fired, the next barrel it is already being loaded to fire it’s shot, and the one before it is being unloaded. The barrels rotate as a practical system so that it is always the barrel in the same position that is the one firing, and it simplifies the feeding and ejecting mechanisms to keep them at the same point. This is how a minigun allows a fire rate in the region of 3,000 rounds per minute.
As a secondary issue, when you fire that many rounds, you really have to start worrying about heat build up. The exploding gunpowder of every round fired heats up the barrel a little bit, and if it gets too hot you will start to have issues as this causes the barrel soften and eventually fails. By using multiple barrels you share this heat amongst a larger mass of metal, and then by spinning them the air moving over them also helps to cool them down.
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