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A machine gun (MG) is a fully automatic and rifled firearm designed for sustained direct fire. Automatic firearms of 20 mm (0.79 in) caliber or more are classified as autocannons rather than machine guns.
As a class of military kinetic projectile weapons, machine guns are designed to be mainly used as infantry support weapons and generally used when attached to a bipod or tripod, a fixed mount or a heavy weapons platform for stability against recoil. Many machine guns also use belt feeding and open bolt operation, features not normally found on other infantry firearms.
Machine guns can be further categorized as light machine guns, medium machine guns, heavy machine guns, general-purpose machine guns, and squad automatic weapons.