The M134 Minigun is a 7.62 mm, six-barreled machine gun with a high rate of fire (2,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute), employing Gatling-style rotating barrels with an external power source (thus it also qualifies as a "chaingun", although in the US that term is a registered trademark for another type of externally powered machine gun).
Certain defining characteristic of the M134 includes a handle bar just above the rotary gun barrel, a cylindical belt feeding mechanism on either side of the gun, and a "stick handle" at the rear end with a firing button on top of it.
The term "Minigun" has popularly come to refer to any externally powered Gatling gun of rifle caliber, though the term is sometimes used to refer to guns of similar rates of fire and configuration, regardless of power source and caliber.
This tag is used for any image that depicts the specific M134 model. For other generic hand-held gatling guns, see minigun.
