Lists of gun cartridges contain articles about gun cartridges of different types. Cartridges can be classified by type of firearm, by caliber or by type of primer (e.g. centerfire, rimfire). See Category:Cartridge families for more information on different categories of cartridges. The lists include:
A firearm is any type of gun designed to be readily carried and used by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries.
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, the correct usage only refers 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 US "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.
A centerfire cartridge is a firearm metallic cartridge whose primer is located at the center of the base of its casing. Unlike rimfire cartridges, the centerfire primer is typically a separate component seated into a recessed cavity in the case head and is replaceable by reloading.
Rimfire ammunition is a type of firearm metallic cartridge whose primer is located within a hollow circumferential rim protruding from the base of its casing. When fired, the gun's firing pin will strike and crush the rim against the edge of the barrel breech, sparking the primer compound within the rim, and in turn ignite the propellant within the case. Invented in 1845, by Louis-Nicolas Flobert, the first rimfire metallic cartridge was the .22 BB Cap cartridge, which consisted of a percussion cap with a bullet attached to the top. While many other different cartridge priming methods have been tried since the mid-19th century onwards, only rimfire and the later centerfire cartridges survive to the present day with regular usages. The .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridge, introduced in 1887, is by far the most common ammunition in the world today in terms of units sold.
The .22 Long Rifle or simply .22 LR or 22 is a long-established variety of .22 caliber rimfire ammunition originating from the United States. It is used in a wide range of rifles, pistols, revolvers, smoothbore shotguns, and submachine guns.
.22 Short is a variety of .22 caliber (5.6 mm) rimfire ammunition. Developed in 1857 for the first Smith & Wesson revolver, the .22 rimfire was the first American metallic cartridge. The original loading was a 29 or 30 gr bullet and 4 gr of black powder. The original .22 rimfire cartridge was renamed .22 Short with the introduction of the .22 Long in 1871.
22 Long is a variety of 22 caliber (5.6 mm) rimfire ammunition. The 22 Long is the second-oldest of the surviving rimfire cartridges, dating back to 1871, when it was loaded with a 29 grain bullet and 5 grains of black powder, 25% more than the 22 Short on which it was based. It was designed for use in revolvers, but was soon chambered in rifles as well, in which it gained a strong reputation as a small game cartridge, and sold very well.
The .32 S&W cartridge was introduced in 1878 for Smith & Wesson pocket revolvers. It was originally designed as a black powder cartridge. The .32 S&W was offered to the public as a light defense cartridge for "card table" distances.
The .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire, also called .22 WMR, .22 Magnum, .22 WMRF, .22 MRF, or .22 Mag, is a rimfire cartridge. Originally loaded with a bullet weight of 40 grains (2.6 g) delivering velocities in the 2,000 feet per second (610 m/s) range from a rifle barrel, .22 WMR is now loaded with bullet weights ranging from 50 grains (3.2 g) at 1,530 feet per second (470 m/s) to 30 grains (1.9 g) at 2,200 feet per second (670 m/s).
Metallic silhouette shooting is a group of target shooting disciplines that involves shooting at steel targets representing game animals at varying distances, seeking to knock the metal target over. Metallic silhouette is shot with large bore rifles fired freehand without support out to 500 meters, and with large bore handguns from the prone position with only body support out to 200 meters. Competitions are also held with airguns and black-powder firearms. A related genre is shot with bow and arrow, the metal targets being replaced with cardboard or foam. The targets used are rams, turkeys, pigs, and chickens, which are cut to different scales and set at certain distances from the shooter depending on the specific discipline.
A rim is an external flange that is machined, cast, molded, stamped, or pressed around the bottom of a firearms cartridge. Thus, rimmed cartridges are sometimes called "flanged" cartridges. Almost all cartridges feature an extractor or headspacing rim, in spite of the fact that some cartridges are known as "rimless cartridges". The rim may serve a number of purposes, including providing a lip for the extractor to engage, and sometimes serving to headspace the cartridge.
.17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire, commonly known as the .17 HMR, is a rimfire rifle cartridge developed by Hornady in 2002. It was developed by necking down a .22 Magnum case to take a .17 caliber (4.5 mm) projectile. Commonly loaded with a 17 grain projectile, it can deliver muzzle velocities in excess of 775 m/s (2,650 ft/s).
Locked breech is the design of a breech-reloading firearm's action. This is important in understanding how a self-reloading firearm works. In the simplest terms, the locked breech is one way to slow down the opening of the breech of a self-reloading firearm when fired. The source of power for the movement is recoil.
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 5 mm Remington Rimfire Magnum or 5 mm RFM is a bottlenecked rimfire cartridge introduced by Remington Arms Company in 1969. Remington chambered it in a pair of bolt-action rifles, the Model 591 and Model 592, but this ammunition never became very popular, and the rifles were discontinued in 1974. About 52,000 rifles and 30,000 barrels for the T/C Contender pistol were sold during its brief production run. Remington discontinued the cartridge itself in 1982, leaving owners with no source of ammunition.
Varmint rifle is an English term for a small-caliber precision firearm or high-powered airgun primarily used for both varmint hunting and pest control. These tasks include killing three types of pests or nuisance animals that spread diseases or destroy crops or livestock:
In firearms and artillery, the primer is the chemical and/or device responsible for initiating the propellant combustion that will push the projectiles out of the gun barrel.
.17 Winchester Super Magnum, is a rimfire rifle cartridge developed by the ammunition company Winchester in 2012. It descended from the .27 caliber nail-gun blank by necking down the blank case to take a .17 caliber (4.5 mm) bullet. Initial loadings were with a 20-grain bullet, delivering muzzle velocities around 3,000 ft/s.
The .41 Swiss is a .415 in (10.54 mm) Swiss military rimfire bottlenecked intermediate rifle cartridge.