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.
Sir Joseph Whitworth, 1st Baronet was an English engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist. In 1841, he devised the British Standard Whitworth system, which created an accepted standard for screw threads. Whitworth also created the Whitworth rifle, often called the "sharpshooter" because of its accuracy, which is considered one of the earliest examples of a sniper rifle, used by some Confederate forces during the American Civil war.
Rifling is the term for helical grooves machined into the internal surface of a firearms's barrel for imparting a spin to a projectile to improve its aerodynamic stability and accuracy. It is also the term for creating such grooves.
A sniper rifle is a high-precision, long-range rifle. Requirements include high accuracy, reliability, and mobility, concealment, and optics, for anti-personnel, anti-materiel and surveillance uses by military snipers. The modern sniper rifle is a portable shoulder-fired rifle with either a bolt action or semi-automatic action, fitted with a telescopic sight for extreme accuracy and chambered for a high-ballistic performance centerfire cartridge.
A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars.
The Martini–Henry is a breech-loading single-shot rifle with a lever action that was used by the British Army. It first entered service in 1871, eventually replacing the Snider–Enfield, a muzzle-loader converted to the cartridge system. Martini–Henry variants were used throughout the British Empire for 47 years. It combined the dropping-block action first developed by Henry O. Peabody and improved by the Swiss designer Friedrich von Martini, combined with the polygonal rifling designed by Scotsman Alexander Henry.
A rifled musket, rifle musket, or rifle-musket is a type of firearm made in the mid-19th century. Originally the term referred only to muskets that had been produced as a smoothbore weapon and later had their barrels replaced with rifled barrels. The term later included rifles that directly replaced, and were of the same design overall as, a particular model of smoothbore musket.
The L42A1 is a bolt-action sniper rifle chambered for the 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge. Used in the past by the British Army, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force RAF Regiment, the L42A1 entered service in 1970. It was replaced by the Accuracy International AW in 1985.
Field artillery in the American Civil War refers to the artillery weapons, equipment, and practices used by the artillery branch to support infantry and cavalry forces in the field. It does not include siege artillery, use of artillery in fixed fortifications, coastal or naval artillery. It also does not include smaller, specialized artillery pieces classified as infantry guns.
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.
Polygonal rifling is a type of gun barrel rifling where the traditional sharp-edged "lands and grooves" are replaced by less pronounced "hills and valleys", so the barrel bore has a polygonal cross-sectional profile.
The origins of the modern British military rifle are within its predecessor the Brown Bess musket. While a musket was largely inaccurate over 100 yards (91 m), due to a lack of rifling and a generous tolerance to allow for muzzle-loading, it was cheap to produce and could be loaded quickly. The use of volley or mass firing by troops meant that the rate of fire took precedence over accuracy.
The Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket was a .577 calibre Minié-type muzzle-loading rifled musket, used by the British Empire from 1853 to 1867; after which many were replaced in service by the cartridge-loaded Snider–Enfield rifle.
The Pattern 1861 Enfield musketoon was a short-barrel version of the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifled musket, having a faster rifling twist rate, along with more rifling grooves, which made it as accurate as the rifle at shorter ranges. The much shorter barrel would otherwise reduce the accuracy at longer ranges. The shorter rifle was therefore easier to carry and reload.
The Minié rifle was an important infantry rifle of the mid-19th century. A version was adopted in 1849 following the invention of the Minié ball in 1847 by the French Army captain Claude-Étienne Minié of the Chasseurs d'Orléans and Henri-Gustave Delvigne. The bullet was designed to allow rapid muzzle loading of rifles and was an innovation that brought about the widespread use of the rifle as the main battlefield weapon for individual soldiers. The French adopted it following difficulties encountered by the French army in North Africa, where their muskets were overtaken in range by long-barreled weapons which were handcrafted by their Algerian opponents. The Minié rifle belonged to the category of rifled muskets.
The 1st United States Sharpshooters were an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. During battle, the mission of the sharpshooter was to kill enemy targets of importance from long range.
During the American Civil War, an assortment of small arms found their way onto the battlefield. Though the muzzleloader percussion cap rifled musket was the most numerous weapon, being standard issue for the Union and Confederate armies, many other firearms, ranging from the single-shot breech-loading Sharps and Burnside rifles to the Spencer and the Henry rifles - two of the world's first repeating rifles - were issued by the hundreds of thousands, mostly by the Union. The Civil War brought many advances in firearms technology, most notably the widespread use of rifled barrels.
The Lorenz rifle was an Austrian rifle used in the mid 19th century. It was used in the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and also featured prominently in the American Civil War.
A sharpshooter is one who is highly proficient at firing firearms or other projectile weapons accurately. Military units composed of sharpshooters were important factors in 19th-century combat. Along with "marksman" and "expert", "sharpshooter" is one of the three marksmanship badges awarded by the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps. The United States Navy and the United States Coast Guard use a ribbon with an attached "S" device to note a sharpshooter qualification.
The 10-pounder Parrott rifle, Model 1861 was a muzzle-loading rifled cannon made of cast iron that was adopted by the United States Army in 1861 and often used in field artillery units during the American Civil War. Like other Parrott rifles, the gun breech was reinforced by a distinctive band made of wrought iron. The 10-pounder Parrott rifle was capable of firing shell, shrapnel shell, canister shot, or solid shot. Midway through the war, the Federal government discontinued the 2.9 in (74 mm) version in favor of a 3.0 in (76 mm) version. Despite the reinforcing band, the guns occasionally burst without warning, which endangered the gun crews. The Confederate States of America manufactured a number of successful copies of the gun.
