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A machine gun (MG) is a fully automatic and rifled 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.
A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting and higher stopping power, with a barrel that has a helical or spiralling pattern of grooves (rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with both hands and braced firmly against the shooter's shoulder via a buttstock for stability during shooting. Rifles have been used in warfare, law enforcement, hunting and target shooting sports.
A shotgun is a long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge known as a shotshell, which discharges numerous small spherical projectiles called shot, or a single solid projectile called a slug. Shotguns are most commonly used as smoothbore firearms, meaning that their gun barrels have no rifling on the inner wall, but rifled barrels for shooting sabot slugs are also available.
In firearm designs, the term single-shot refers to guns that can hold only a single round of ammunition inside and thus must be reloaded manually after every shot. Compared to multi-shot repeating firearms ("repeaters"), single-shot designs have no moving parts other than the trigger, hammer/firing pin or frizzen, and therefore do not need a sizable receiver behind the barrel to accommodate a moving action, making them far less complex and more robust than revolvers or magazine/belt-fed firearms, but also with much slower rates of fire.
A cartridge, also known as 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 convenient transportation and handling during shooting. Although in popular usage the term "bullet" is often used to refer to a complete cartridge, the correct usage only refers to the projectile.
Flintlock is a general term for any firearm that uses a flint-striking ignition mechanism, the first of which appeared in Western Europe in the early 16th century. The term may also apply to a particular form of the mechanism itself, also known as the true flintlock, that was introduced in the early 17th century, and gradually replaced earlier firearm-ignition technologies, such as the matchlock, the wheellock, and the earlier flintlock mechanisms such as the snaplock and snaphaunce.
A recoilless rifle (rifled), recoilless launcher (smoothbore), or simply recoilless gun, sometimes abbreviated to "RR" or "RCL" is a type of lightweight artillery system or man-portable launcher that is designed to eject some form of countermass such as propellant gas from the rear of the weapon at the moment of firing, creating forward thrust that counteracts most of the weapon's recoil. This allows for the elimination of much of the heavy and bulky recoil-counteracting equipment of a conventional cannon as well as a thinner-walled barrel, and thus the launch of a relatively large projectile from a platform that would not be capable of handling the weight or recoil of a conventional gun of the same size. Technically, only devices that use spin-stabilized projectiles fired from a rifled barrel are recoilless rifles, while smoothbore variants are recoilless guns. This distinction is often lost, and both are often called recoilless rifles.
A grenade launcher is a weapon that fires a specially designed, large-caliber projectile, often with an explosive, smoke, or gas warhead. Today, the term generally refers to a class of dedicated firearms firing unitary grenade cartridges. The most common type are man-portable, shoulder-fired weapons issued to individuals, although larger crew-served launchers are issued at higher levels of organization by military forces.
A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition from the breech end of the barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, in which the user loads the ammunition from the (muzzle) end of the barrel.
The .22 Long Rifle, also known as the .22LR or 5.6×15mmR, is a long-established variety of .22 caliber rimfire ammunition originating from the United States. It is used in a wide range of firearms including rifles, pistols, revolvers, and submachine guns.
A punt gun is a type of extremely large shotgun used in the 19th and early 20th centuries for shooting large numbers of waterfowl for commercial harvesting operations. These weapons are characteristically too large for an individual to fire from the shoulder or often carry alone, but unlike artillery pieces, punt guns are able to be aimed and fired by a single person from a mount. In this case, the mount is typically a small watercraft. Many early models appear similar to over-sized versions of shoulder weapons of the time with full-length wooden stocks with a normal-sized shoulder stock. Most later variations do away with the full-length stock – especially more modern models – and have mounting hardware fixed to the gun to allow them to be fitted to a pintle.
The double rifle, also known as a double-barreled rifle, is a rifle with two barrels mounted parallel to each other that can be fired simultaneously or sequentially in quick succession. Synonymous with big game hunting found primarily in Africa and Asia, the double rifle is a sporting weapon with very little military heritage.
The .45-70, also known as the .45-70 Government, .45-70 Springfield, and .45-21⁄10" Sharps, is a .45 caliber rifle cartridge originally holding 70 grains of black powder that was developed at the U.S. Army's Springfield Armory for use in the Springfield Model 1873. It was a replacement for the stop-gap .50-70 Government cartridge, which had been adopted in 1866, one year after the end of the American Civil War, and is known by collectors as the "Trapdoor Springfield".
The M1819 Hall rifle was a single-shot breech-loading rifle designed by John Hancock Hall, patented on May 21, 1811, and adopted by the U.S. Army in 1819. It was preceded by the Harpers Ferry M1803. It used a pivoting chamber breech design and was made with either flintlock or percussion cap ignition systems. The years of production were from the 1820s to the 1840s at the Harpers Ferry Arsenal. This was the first breech-loading rifle to be adopted in large numbers by any nation's army, but not the first breech-loading military rifle – the Ferguson rifle was used briefly by the British Army in the American Revolutionary War. The Hall rifle remained overshadowed by common muskets and muzzleloading rifles which were still prevalent until the Civil War. The early flintlocks were mostly converted to percussion ignition.
Thompson/Center Arms is an American firearms company based in Rochester, New Hampshire. The company was best known for its line of interchangeable-barrel, single-shot pistols and rifles. Thompson/Center also manufactures muzzle-loading rifles and was credited with creating the resurgence of their use in the 1970s.
A muzzle-loading rifle is a muzzle-loaded small arm that has a rifled barrel rather than a smoothbore, and is loaded from the muzzle of the barrel rather than the breech. Historically they were developed when rifled barrels were introduced by the 1740ies, which offered higher accuracy than the earlier smoothbores. The American longrifle evolved from the German "Jäger" rifle; a popularly recognizable form of the "muzzleloader" was the Kentucky Rifle. Although by definition they must be reloaded after each shot in a time-consuming fashion, they are still produced for hunting.
The following are terms related to firearms and ammunition topics.
The M30 Luftwaffe Drilling ("triple") was a survival weapon issued to Luftwaffe pilots during World War II. It was used by airmen operating in Northern Africa. The M30 was intended to be used for hunting and self-defense against a variety of natural predators.
A multiple-barrel firearm is any type of firearm with more than one gun barrel, usually to increase the rate of fire or hit probability and to reduce barrel erosion or overheating.
A repeating firearm or repeater is any firearm that is capable of being fired repeatedly before having to be manually reloaded with new ammunition from the magazine.
References
- ↑ "LAR's official web page for the Big-boar, finishes" Retrieved 1/19/2012.
- ↑ "LAR's official web page for the Big-boar, features" Retrieved 1/19/2012.
- ↑ "LAR's official web page for the Big-boar, specifications" Retrieved 1/19/2012.
- ↑ www.stampede-entertainment.com Burt's Big Gun
- ↑ "LAR's media page" Retrieved 1/19/2012.