A medium machine gun (MMG), in modern terms, usually refers to a belt-fed machine gun firing a full-powered rifle cartridge, and is considered "medium" in weight. Medium machine guns are light enough to be infantry-portable, but still cumbersome enough to require a crew for optimal operational efficiency.
U.S. Marines firing an M240G at Camp Hansen, Okinawa
Water cooled M1917 demonstrated in 1918
The air-cooled Browning M1919 during WW2.
Lewis gun training, 1917
A machine gun (MG) is a fully automatic, rifled auto-loading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles are typically designed more for firing short bursts rather than continuous firepower and are not considered true machine guns. Submachine guns fire handgun cartridges rather than rifle cartridges, therefore they are not considered machine guns, while automatic firearms of 20 mm (0.79 in) caliber or more are classified as autocannons rather than machine guns.
Top: IWI Negev Bottom: FN MAG (general purpose machine gun)
Czechoslovak 7.62 mm Universal Machine gun Model 1959
A .50 caliber M2 machine gun: John Browning's design has been one of the longest-serving and most successful machine gun designs
A vehicle with a Sumitomo M2 heavy machine gun mounted at the rear