A carbine is a long gun that has a barrel shortened from its original length. Most modern carbines are rifles that are compact versions of a longer rifle or are rifles chambered for less powerful cartridges.
A cartridge or a round is a type of pre-assembled firearm ammunition packaging a projectile, a propellant substance and an ignition device (primer) within a metallic, paper, or plastic case that is precisely made to fit within the barrel chamber of a breechloading gun, for the practical purpose of convenient transportation and handling during shooting. Although in popular usage the term "bullet" is often informally used to refer to a complete cartridge, it is correctly used only to refer to the projectile.
In guns, particularly firearms, caliber is the specified nominal internal diameter of the gun barrel bore – regardless of how or where the bore is measured and whether the finished bore matches that specification. It is measured in inches or in millimeters. In the United States it is expressed in hundredths of an inch; in the United Kingdom in thousandths; and elsewhere in millimeters. For example, a "45 caliber" firearm has a barrel diameter of roughly 0.45 inches (11 mm). Barrel diameters can also be expressed using metric dimensions. For example, a "9 mm pistol" has a barrel diameter of about 9 millimeters. Since metric and US customary units do not convert evenly at this scale, metric conversions of caliber measured in decimal inches are typically approximations of the precise specifications in non-metric units, and vice versa.
Fabrique Nationale Herstal, trading as FN Herstal and often referred to as Fabrique Nationale or simply FN, is a leading firearms manufacturer based in Herstal, Belgium. It is currently the largest exporter of military small arms in Europe.
The .40 S&W is a rimless pistol cartridge developed jointly by American firearms manufacturers Smith & Wesson and Winchester in 1990. The .40 S&W was developed as a law enforcement cartridge designed to duplicate performance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) reduced-velocity 10mm Auto cartridge which could be retrofitted into medium-frame semi-automatic handguns. It uses 0.40-inch (10 mm) diameter bullets ranging in weight from 105 to 200 grains.
The .45 ACP or .45 Auto (11.43×23mm) is a rimless straight-walled handgun cartridge designed by John Moses Browning in 1904, for use in his prototype Colt semi-automatic pistol. After successful military trials, it was adopted as the standard chambering for Colt's M1911 pistol. The round was developed due to a lack of stopping power experienced in the Moro Rebellion in places like Sulu. The issued ammunition, .38 Long Colt, had proved inadequate, motivating the search for a better cartridge. This experience and the Thompson–LaGarde Tests of 1904 led the Army and the Cavalry to decide that a minimum of .45 caliber was required in a new handgun.
The 9×19mm Parabellum is a rimless, tapered firearms cartridge.
Personal defense weapons (PDWs) are a class of firearms intended for self-defense and security rather than warfare and infantry. Most PDWs fire a small-caliber, centerfire bottleneck cartridge resembling a scaled-down intermediate rifle cartridge, essentially making them an "in-between" hybrid between a submachine gun and a carbine.
The Wildey is a gas-operated, double-action or single-action pistol designed by Wildey J. Moore. It was designed to fire several high-pressure proprietary cartridges including the .45 Winchester Magnum and the .475 Wildey Magnum. They are currently being produced by USA Firearms Corp.-Wildey Guns of Winsted, Connecticut.
A caliber conversion sleeve or adapter sleeve is a device which can be used to non-permanently alter a firearm to allow it to fire a different cartridge than the one it was originally designed to fire. The different cartridge must be smaller in some dimensions than the original design cartridge, and since smaller cartridges are usually cheaper, the device allows less expensive fire practice.
The Colt SCAMP was conceived in 1969 as a replacement to the aging Colt M1911A1 pistol.
Snake shot refers to handgun and rifle cartridges loaded with lead shot canisters instead of bullets, much like large caliber canister shot. Snake shot is generally used for shooting snakes, rodents, birds, and other pests at very close range. The most common snake shot cartridge is .22 Long Rifle loaded with No. 12 shot. From a standard rifle these can produce effective patterns only to a distance of about 3 metres (10 ft), but in a smoothbore shotgun that can extend as far as 15 metres (50 ft).
The Grizzly Win Mag pistols were conceived, invented, designed, engineered and developed in the 1980s by the sole inventor, Perry Arnett, who licensed his patent for an interchangeable caliber semi-automatic pistol to L.A.R. Manufacturing Inc. Perry Arnett's designs were initially flawed and were improved upon by Heinz Augat. The L.A.R. Grizzly was the most powerful semi-automatic pistol ever commercially produced after the Desert Eagle.
Improvised firearms are firearms manufactured other than by a firearms manufacturer or a gunsmith, and are typically constructed by adapting existing materials to the purpose. They range in quality from crude weapons that are as much a danger to the user as the target to high-quality arms produced by cottage industries using salvaged and repurposed materials.
The U-94 UDAR is a police weapon designed and developed by the KBP Instrument Design Bureau in the early 1990s and first manufactured in 1994. It is a compact double-action revolver that chambers proprietary ammunition in the form of an unusual 12.3mm shell. It has a shrouded hammer that can be manually cocked or decocked by use of a cut-out slot at the top of the shroud. It has a side-breaking cylinder that opens to the left and uses a star-ejector to eject all the spent shells at once.
Klimovsk Specialized Ammunition Plant is an ammunition enterprise located in Russian town Klimovsk near Podolsk in the Moscow region. 7.62×39mm cartridges and wide variety of other service cartridges for various Russian handguns are produced.
The 7.92×33mm Kurz is a rimless bottlenecked intermediate rifle cartridge developed in Nazi Germany prior to and during World War II, specifically intended for development of the Sturmgewehr 44. The ammunition is also referred to as 7.9mm Kurz, 7.9 Kurz, 7.9mmK, or 8×33 Polte. The round was developed as a compromise between the longer 7.92×57mm full-power rifle cartridge and the 9×19mm Parabellum pistol cartridge, and is the first mass-used intermediate cartridge in the world.
The 7.62×51mm NATO is a rimless, bottlenecked rifle cartridge. It is a standard for small arms among NATO countries.
The 9×18mm Makarov is a Soviet pistol and submachine gun cartridge. During the latter half of the 20th century it was a standard military pistol cartridge of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, analogous to the 9×19mm Parabellum in NATO and Western Bloc military use.
9mm P.A., 9×22mm or 9mm P.A.K. is a firearm cartridge for a non-lethal gas pistol noisemaking gun. Caliber 9mm P.A. includes various blank, gas or rubber ammunitions made for different use.
