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 rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical 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 are used extensively in warfare, law enforcement, hunting, shooting sports, and crime.
A semi-automatic rifle is an autoloading rifle that fires a single cartridge with each pull of the trigger, and uses part of the fired cartridge's energy to eject the case and load another cartridge into the chamber. For comparison, a bolt-action rifle requires the user to cycle the bolt manually before they can fire a second time, and a fully automatic rifle fires continuously until the trigger is released.
The Colt AR-15 is a lightweight, magazine-fed, gas-operated semi-automatic rifle. It is a semi-automatic version of the M16 rifle sold for the civilian and law enforcement markets in the United States. Colt's Manufacturing Company currently owns the AR-15 trademark, which is used exclusively for its line of semi-automatic AR-15 rifles.
The Lee–Enfield or Enfield is a bolt-action, magazine-fed repeating rifle that served as the main firearm of the military forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth during the first half of the 20th century, and was the British Army's standard rifle from its official adoption in 1895 until 1957. The WWI versions are often referred to as the "SMLE", which is short for the common "Short, Magazine, Lee–Enfield" variant.
In the United States, assault weapon is a controversial term used to define firearms with specified characteristics. The definition varies among regulating jurisdictions, but usually includes semi-automatic firearms with a detachable magazine, a pistol grip, and sometimes other features, such as a vertical forward grip, flash suppressor, or barrel shroud. Certain firearms are specified by name in some laws that restrict assault weapons. When the now-defunct Federal Assault Weapons Ban was passed in 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice said, "In general, assault weapons are semiautomatic firearms with a large magazine of ammunition that were designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use." The commonly used definitions of assault weapons are under frequent debate, and have changed over time.
The National Firearms Act (NFA), 73rd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236 was enacted on June 26, 1934, and currently codified and amended as I.R.C. ch. 53. The law is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes an excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. The NFA is also referred to as Title II of the federal firearms laws, with the Gun Control Act of 1968 ("GCA") as Title I.
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 organisation by military forces.
A semi-automatic firearm, also called a self-loading or autoloading firearm, is a repeating firearm whose action mechanism automatically loads a following round of cartridge into the chamber (self-loading) and prepares it for subsequent firing, but requires the shooter to manually actuate the trigger in order to discharge each shot. Typically, this involves the weapon's action utilizing the excess energy released during the preceding shot to unlock and move the bolt, extracting and ejecting the spent cartridge case from the chamber, re-cocking the firing mechanism, and loading a new cartridge into the firing chamber, all without input from the user. To fire again, however, the user must actively release the trigger, allow it to "reset", before pulling the trigger again to fire off the next round. As a result, each trigger pull only discharges a single round from a semi-automatic weapon, as opposed to a fully automatic weapon, which will shoot continuously as long as the ammunition is replete and the trigger is kept depressed.
The Rifle No. 5 Mk I, was a derivative of the British Lee–Enfield No. 4 Mk I, Following experience of jungle fighting in the Pacific War, the British came to "the conclusion that a rifle shorter and lighter than the standard issue, bolt action .303 cal No. 4 rifle was required." However its operational use was in post-war colonial campaigns such as the Malayan emergency, where it gained its common nickname of the "Jungle Carbine."
The Springfield Armory M1A is a semi-automatic rifle made by Springfield Armory, Inc., beginning in 1974, based on the M14 rifle, for the civilian and law enforcement markets in the United States. "M1A" is a proprietary name for Springfield Armory's M14-pattern rifle. Early M1A rifles were built with surplus G.I. parts until Springfield Armory, Inc. began manufacturing their own.
A gunsmith is a person who repairs, modifies, designs, or builds guns. The occupation differs from an armorer, who usually replaces only worn parts in standard firearms. Gunsmiths do modifications and changes to a firearm that may require a very high level of craftsmanship, requiring the skills of a top-level machinist, a very skilled woodworker, and even an engineer. Gunsmiths perform factory-level repairs and renovations to restore a well-used or deteriorated firearms to new condition. They may make alterations to adapt sporting guns to better fit the individual shooter that may require extensive modifications to the firearm's stocks and metal parts. Repairs and redesigns may require fabrication and fitting of unavailable parts and assemblies constructed by smiths themselves. Gunsmiths may also renew metal finishes or apply decorative carvings or engravings to guns. Many gun shops offer gunsmithing service on the premises.
A wildcat cartridge, often shortened to wildcat, is a custom cartridge for which ammunition and/or firearms are not mass-produced. These cartridges are often created in order to optimize a certain performance characteristic of an existing commercial cartridge.
Wassenaar Arrangement Semi-automatic Rifles are a line of rifles sold in the United States by Century International Arms. The rifles are manufactured in Romania by the Cugir Arms Factory and are a semi-automatic variant of the Pistol Mitralieră model 1963/1965, a Romanian licensed derivative of the Soviet AKM assault rifle. Century imports them and modifies them in order to comply with national legislation before sale to the general public via licensed traders. The WASR series takes its name from the 1996 Wassenaar Arrangement, a multilateral export control regime to monitor and limit the proliferation of certain conventional weapons and dual-use technologies.
The M1917 Enfield, the "American Enfield", formally named "United States Rifle, cal .30, Model of 1917" is an American modification and production of the .303-inch Pattern 1914 Enfield (P14) rifle, which was developed and manufactured during the period 1917–1918. Numerically, it was the main rifle used by the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe during World War I. The Danish Sirius Dog Sled Patrol on Greenland still use the M1917, which performs reliably in Arctic conditions, as their service weapon.
The .222 Remington Magnum was a short-lived commercially produced cartridge derived from the .222 Remington. Originally developed for a US military prototype Armalite AR-15 rifle in 1958, the cartridge was not adopted by the military, but was introduced commercially in sporting rifles.
The following are terms related to firearms and ammunition topics.
The .303/25, sometimes known as the .25/303 is a wildcat centrefire rifle cartridge, based on the .303 British, necked down to fire a .257 projectile, originating in Australia in the 1940s as a cartridge for sporterised rifles, particularly on the Lee–Enfield action; similar versions also appeared in Canada around the same time.
An AR-15-style rifle is any lightweight semi-automatic rifle based on or similar to the Colt AR-15 design. The original ArmaLite AR-15, its predecessor, was a scaled-down derivative of Eugene Stoner's ArmaLite AR-10 design and featured selective fire. ArmaLite sold the patent and trademarks to Colt's Manufacturing Company in 1959, resulting in the Colt AR-15, which removed the selective fire feature. After most of the patents for the Colt AR-15 expired in 1977, many firearm manufacturers began to produce copies of the Colt AR-15 under various names. While the patents are expired, Colt retained the trademark of the AR-15 name and is the sole manufacturer able to label their firearms as AR-15.
Featureless rifles are rifles with modifications made to remove prohibited features from Modern Sporting Rifles. The term is most commonly used with rifles manufactured or retrofitted to comply with gun laws in California.
