A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm designed to fire rifle cartridges in rapid succession from an ammunition belt or magazine. Not all fully automatic firearms are machine guns. Submachine guns, rifles, assault rifles, battle rifles, shotguns, pistols or cannons may be capable of fully automatic fire, but are not designed for sustained fire. As a class of military rapid-fire guns, machine guns are fully automatic weapons designed to be used as support weapons and generally used when attached to a mount or fired from the ground on a bipod or tripod. Many machine guns also use belt feeding and open bolt operation, features not normally found on rifles.
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 used to refer to a complete cartridge, it is correctly used only to refer to the projectile.
A semi-automatic pistol is a type of pistol that uses the energy of the fired cartridge to cycle the action of the firearm and advance the next available cartridge into position for firing. One cartridge is fired each time the trigger of a semi-automatic pistol is pulled; the pistol's fire-control system ensures this behavior by disconnecting the trigger mechanism from the firing pin/striker until the trigger has been reset.
The .40 S&W is a rimless pistol cartridge developed jointly by major American firearms manufacturers Smith & Wesson and Winchester. The .40 S&W was developed from the ground up 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 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 using the .38 Long Colt. This experience and the Thompson–LaGarde Tests of 1904, led the Army and the Cavalry to decide a minimum of .45 caliber was required in a new handgun.
The .380 ACP (9×17mm) is a rimless, straight-walled pistol cartridge developed by firearms designer John Moses Browning. The cartridge headspaces on the mouth of the case. It was introduced in 1908 by Colt, for use in its new Colt Model 1908 pocket hammerless semi-automatic, and has been a popular self-defense cartridge ever since, seeing wide use in numerous handguns. Other names for .380 ACP include .380 Auto, 9mm Browning, 9mm Corto, 9mm Kurz, 9mm Short, 9×17mm and 9 mm Browning Court. It should not be confused with .38 ACP.
The 9×19mm Parabellum is a firearms cartridge that was designed by Georg Luger and introduced in 1902 by the German weapons manufacturer Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) for its Luger semi-automatic pistol. For this reason, it is designated as the 9mm Luger by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (SAAMI), and the 9 mm Luger by the Commission Internationale Permanente pour l'Epreuve des Armes à Feu Portatives (CIP). The name Parabellum is derived from the Latin: Si vis pacem, para bellum, which was the motto of DWM.
.32 ACP is a centerfire pistol cartridge. It is a semi-rimmed, straight-walled cartridge developed by firearms designer John Browning, initially for use in the FN M1900 semi-automatic pistol. It was introduced in 1899 by Fabrique Nationale, and is also known as the 7.65×17mmSR Browning or 7.65 mm Browning Short.
The .25 ACP (6.35×16mmSR) is a semi-rimmed, straight-walled centerfire pistol cartridge introduced by John Browning in 1905 alongside the Fabrique Nationale M1905 pistol.
The 7.62×25mm Tokarev cartridge is a Russian rimless bottlenecked pistol cartridge widely used in former Soviet states, and in China and Pakistan among other countries. The cartridge has since been replaced in most capacities by the 9×18mm Makarov in Russian service.
Blowback is a system of operation for self-loading firearms that obtains energy from the motion of the cartridge case as it is pushed to the rear by expanding gas created by the ignition of the propellant charge.
The Remington Model 51 is a small pocket pistol designed by John Pedersen and manufactured by Remington Arms in the early 20th century for the American civilian market. Remington manufactured approximately 65,000 Model 51 pistols in .32 ACP and .380 ACP calibers from 1918 to 1927, though small numbers were assembled into the mid-1930s.
In American English, a pocket pistol is any small, pocket-sized semi-automatic pistol, suitable for concealed carry in either a coat, jacket or trouser pocket.
The Steyr GB, is a double-action 9×19mm Parabellum caliber, large-framed semi-automatic pistol employing a gas-delayed blowback action. As such the GB abbreviation stand for Gasbremse. It was designed in 1968, intended as a replacement for older handguns in Austrian military service.
Star Bonifacio Echeverria, S.A. was a manufacturer of small arms in the Basque region of Spain from about 1905 until 1997.
The Colt Model 1900 was a short-recoil operated "self-loading", or semi-automatic .38 caliber handgun introduced by Colt's Manufacturing Company at the turn of the 20th century. It also marked the introduction of .38 ACP, the round for which it is chambered, and was the first handgun to utilize short-recoil operation.
A squeeze bore also known as a taper-bore, sometimes cone barrel or conical barrel is a weapon where the internal barrel diameter progressively decreases towards the muzzle resulting in a reduced diameter round with an increased velocity.
The 9mm Browning Long [9 x 20mm SR] is a military centerfire pistol cartridge developed in 1903 for the FN Model 1903 adopted by Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
The .35 Smith & Wesson (S&W) is an obsolete centerfire pistol cartridge developed in 1912 for the newly designed Model 1913 self-loading pocket pistol.
The 9×18mm Makarov is a Russian 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 military use.
