How to Use machine-gun in a Sentence
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Iron boxes of machine-gun rounds sit ready to be used on the deck.
—Constant Méheut, New York Times, 7 Apr. 2025
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His team flew toward a farmhouse that held a machine-gun nest.
—Michael Wilson, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2023
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But the men on the hill were ready and laid down suppressive machine-gun fire of their own.
—Oleksandr Chubko, New York Times, 22 Oct. 2023
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But a machine-gun volley hit him at the waist, nearly breaking him in two.
—Ann Goldstein, New Yorker, 25 May 2025
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Baddies are plugged with machine-gun rounds so powerful their corpses bounce off cars.
—Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 16 June 2025
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The bullets were clipped together in long strands for rapid, machine-gun fire.
—Nick Penzenstadler, USA TODAY, 8 Sep. 2023
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The darkness soon erupted with machine-gun fire, thudding bazookas and something else.
—David Wharton, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2023
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Noticing that all but one member of a machine-gun crew had been wounded, Orig volunteered to fire the weapon.
—Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY, 3 Jan. 2025
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The film cuts to a desolate South London street, the sound of machine-gun fire in the distance.
—Hari Kunzru, Harpers Magazine, 27 Jan. 2026
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In a startling image, a pregnant Perfidia fires off rounds with a machine-gun butt pressed against her swollen belly.
—Justin Chang, New Yorker, 26 Sep. 2025
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But as the formation neared the landing zone, torrents of machine-gun fire told a different story.
—Barry Barnett, Hartford Courant, 26 May 2024
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Police said three of the guns had been reported stolen, and one handgun was equipped with a machine-gun conversion device.
—Sergio Candido, CBS News, 7 Jan. 2026
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The melody and Coriolanus’ calls to Lucy Gray come alive in the woods, prompting him to machine-gun the trees to stop the noise.
—EW.com, 17 Nov. 2023
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Hundreds of thousands have fled to the south, leaving a silence broken only by the pop of machine-gun fire and the heavy thrum of Israeli tanks.
—Steve Hendrix, Washington Post, 19 Nov. 2023
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Instead, Shibata resumed his chops with machine-gun chops that popped the Tacoma Dome.
—Alfred Konuwa, Forbes, 12 Oct. 2024
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Getting hooked on Hearn’s machine-gun delivery led to the Lakers becoming his favorite team.
—Scott Howard-Cooper., Los Angeles Times, 3 Mar. 2024
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People were trapped in the open, incinerated, asphyxiated and strafed with machine-gun fire.
—Sebastian Smee, Washington Post, 15 Mar. 2024
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The film’s fashion reputation preceded it; fans with temporary machine-gun tattoos mobbed the red carpet.
—Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, The Atlantic, 10 Mar. 2024
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Hood directed artillery fire under enfilading machine-gun fire.
—Christian Datoc, The Washington Examiner, 12 June 2025
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Suddenly, a German fighter plane pounced on the lumbering Liberator and tore it in half with a burst of machine-gun fire.
—Steve Straessle, Arkansas Online, 3 July 2023
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Weber said modern inkjet printers with complicated, glitch-prone software remind him of his father’s complex machine-gun printer.
—Shira Ovide, Washington Post, 14 July 2023
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The agency said the soldiers fired heavy machine-gun bursts from their positions near Maroun al-Ra towards a building in Bint Jbeil.
—NBC News, 30 Nov. 2024
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One morning this spring, as the sun’s orange tints seeped through my windows in the mountains east of Port-au-Prince, machine-gun detonations jolted me awake.
—Monique Clesca, Washington Post, 18 June 2024
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Just as young people want the information now, not in ancient and flat form, but in something that's much harder and more creative with a staccato, machine-gun style of delivery.
—Jim Cramer, CNBC, 23 Nov. 2025
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In Mexico, drug cartels have recently outfitted monster trucks with battering rams and machine-gun turrets to use in shootouts.
—Zach Helfand, The New Yorker, 14 Aug. 2023
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One of the first images that spread widely from that day was of a police vehicle coming under machine-gun fire, an attack that injured a policeman and policewoman.
—Yaakov Lappin, Sun Sentinel, 2 Oct. 2024
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But the star of the show is undoubtedly Griffin, with his machine-gun line delivery, hulking physicality and hooded, sad eyes.
—Leslie Felperin, HollywoodReporter, 18 Sep. 2026
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But the Puerto Rican legend’s abandonment of her machine-gun reputation proved fatal in the final rounds.
—Mark Puleo, New York Times, 12 July 2025
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The planes relentlessy pounded anti-aircraft and machine-gun positions and rocket installations.
—Merrie Monteagudo, San Diego Union-Tribune, 6 June 2023
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All morning, fighting could be heard throughout the area, most of it machine-gun fire and shelling, as Israeli troops advancing deeper into Gaza clashed with Hamas fighters.
—Patrick Kingsley Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, New York Times, 9 Jan. 2024
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The band blasted into a machine-gun pace, waking the entire crowd.
—Literary Hub, 7 Aug. 2026
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Armed guards patrolled federal buildings; machine-gun-toting snipers perched on rooftops.
—Sarita Gupta, Time, 2 June 2026
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Iranian speed boats raking ships with machine-gun fire in the Strait of Hormuz.
—Jon Gambrell, Fortune, 24 Apr. 2026
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In a startling image, a pregnant Perfidia fires off rounds with a machine-gun butt pressed against her swollen belly.
—Justin Chang, New Yorker, 26 Sep. 2025
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Police said three of the guns had been reported stolen, and one handgun was equipped with a machine-gun conversion device.
—Sergio Candido, CBS News, 7 Jan. 2026
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Johnson put the toy/comics/cartoons franchise on his large shoulders playing the machine-gunning Cobra hater.
—Brian Truitt, USA Today, 4 Oct. 2025
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And the Israeli army remains a few miles south, its presence marked by the occasional plume of smoke where its artillery hits, and the rip of machine-gun fire.
—Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2026
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As seen in a recent action in Kupiansk, machine-gun robots can provide suppressive fire so the others can get through.
—David Hambling, Forbes.com, 14 May 2026
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Their recording was a kinetic thrashathon with machine-gun-fast guitar notes and solos and Hetfield’s convincing screams for mercy.
—Althea Legaspi, Rolling Stone, 30 Oct. 2025
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The machine-gun conversion devices look like small, innocuous plastic components.
—Michael Loria, USA Today, 6 Aug. 2025
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The pamphlet offered instructions for how to acoustically recognize an incoming threat and how to determine whether the source is machine-gun fire, artillery fire, rocket launchers, or an air raid.
—Joanna Warsza, Artforum, 1 Oct. 2025
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Amid pratfalls and slapstick high jinks, Curry conducts his costars in a symphony of chaos, and rattles off zinger after zinger while also conveying the plot and ultimately the denouement in his machine-gun line readings.
—Brian Truitt, USA Today, 26 Aug. 2026
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Typically these include cargo carrying, casualty evacuation, mine laying, one-way attacks with explosive warheads, and direct combat using machine-gun turrets.
—David Hambling, Forbes.com, 21 Aug. 2025
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In 2024, Chicago police seized 604 machine-gun conversion devices, up from 81 in 2020, authorities said.
—Michael Loria, USA Today, 6 Aug. 2025
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Senior Lieutenant Ivan Kavun, the commander of a machine-gun platoon in the 30th Mechanized Brigade, spent 486 days in a frontline deployment, according to his unit.
—Daria Tarasova-Markina, CNN Money, 20 Apr. 2026
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Of the 300,000 Chinese slaughtered by the Japanese Imperial Army during a six-week period, most were civilians who were were bayoneted, machine-gunned and burned alive.
—Martha Ross, Mercury News, 16 Sep. 2025
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One Battle After Another will be set in the 1990s rather than the novel’s Reganomic-Orwellian era of 1984, but the machine-gun car-chase trailer promises the novel’s theme of American blockbuster violence will remain true.
—Literary Hub, 5 Aug. 2025
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Warning Shots North Korea issued a scathing statement Saturday criticizing South Korea for firing more than 10 machine-gun warning shots on Tuesday as North Korean troops worked on a barrier near the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), the de facto border.
—Micah McCartney, MSNBC Newsweek, 25 Aug. 2025
- They heard the sound of machine-gun fire.
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The machine guns stood right in front of him.
—Dallas Morning News, 25 Feb. 2026
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At some point, the guards opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers.
—Michael Collins, USA TODAY, 18 June 2018
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The guard was armed with a shotgun and his jeep equipped with what looked like a machine gun.
—Phillip Morris, cleveland.com, 10 Sep. 2017
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Army has a panda riding a ski with a machine gun on their cleats.
—Demetrio Teniente, Houston Chronicle, 9 Dec. 2017
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He was armed with a machine gun and wearing a bullet-proof vest.
—Edmund H. Mahony, courant.com, 24 Aug. 2019
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The rifle uses heavy machine gun rounds and has a range of up to four miles.
—Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 22 Sep. 2022
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Two-Face's whole role is to barge into scenes with a machine gun.
—Darren Franich, EW.com, 27 Jan. 2022
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The attacker pulls out a machine gun, shoots the door open and kills her.
—Valentina Pop, WSJ, 9 Jan. 2019
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Between the rounds of machine gun fire, the screams of the victims can be heard.
—CBS News, 5 Dec. 2019
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The man left his machine gun in Ukraine and owed a large fine for losing it.
—Sarah A. Topol, New York Times, 20 Sep. 2024
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The birds will move around the trunk drilling holes that make the trunk look like it’s been strafed by a machine gun.
—Neil Sperry, star-telegram, 27 Apr. 2018
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The assailants then took out machine guns from their overcoats and opened fire.
—Adam Harrington, CBS News, 27 Oct. 2026
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In fact, a nine-month baby bump doesn't stop her from firing a machine gun.
—Gerrad Hall, Entertainment Weekly, 26 Feb. 2026
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They were armed with small arms, machine guns, and a single-shot grenade launcher.
—NBC News, 8 May 2018
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At a weapons range, the civilians were able to fire rifles and machine guns and rode in tanks.
—Marc Freeman, Sun-Sentinel.com, 8 June 2018
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In the video, Glover shoots a hooded black man and mows down a choir with a machine gun.
—Carly Mallenbaum, USA TODAY, 6 May 2018
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And that was all the time the boy standing behind the machine gun needed.
—Ron Farina, Hartford Courant, 1 Nov. 2026
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Eight hours later, a man with a machine gun carjacked a man in a minivan.
—Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press, 30 June 2018
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The enemies have the machine gun while most of us are still hurling rocks.
—Carlo Tortora Brayda, Forbes, 17 July 2023
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An eight-second burst of machine gun fire comes from one of the helicopters.
—Mattathias Schwartz, New York Times, 23 Oct. 2017
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To prove her point, Dolores hands him one of the militia's machine guns.
—Sandra Upson, WIRED, 7 May 2018
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The founders certainly didn’t foresee the war machines guns are now.
—Thembi Ford, Essence, 8 Aug. 2019
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If the tracks are extra deep, the skiers may be carrying more weight, like a heavy machine gun.
—Stuart Stevens, Outside Online, 12 Dec. 2017
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The muzzle of the machine gun flares in the night as the man sprays automatic fire.
—Marin Scott, NBC news, 14 Jan. 2026
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The logo depicts a big bee in a sailor cap holding a hammer, a wrench, and a machine gun.
—Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 13 July 2023
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Barrow fired a machine gun at the prison to distract from the running fugitives.
—Ella Gonzales, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 25 Oct. 2025
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Die Hard is a loud movie, booming with machine gun fire and explosions.
—Randall Colburn, Entertainment Weekly, 4 Dec. 2025
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The troops behind the machine gun reportedly waved him back, yelling that the war was over.
—Maryn McKenna, Wired, 31 Dec. 2020
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Five tanks armed with machine guns ran over one camp, according to the VA.
—Julia Marnin, Miami Herald, 22 Jan. 2025
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'machine-gun.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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