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 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. In contrast, 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.
John Moses Browning was an American firearms designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms – many of which are still in use around the world. He made his first firearm at age 13 in his father's gun shop and was awarded the first of his 128 firearm patents on October 7, 1879, at the age of 24. He is regarded as one of the most successful firearms designers of the 19th and 20th centuries and pioneered the development of modern repeating, semi-automatic, and automatic firearms.
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 Winchester Model 1897, also known as the Model 97, M97, Riot Gun, or Trench Gun, is a pump-action shotgun with an external hammer and tube magazine manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The Model 1897 was an evolution of the Winchester Model 1893 designed by John Browning. From 1897 until 1957, over one million of these shotguns were produced. The Model 1897 was offered in numerous barrel lengths and grades, chambered in 12 and 16 gauge, and as a solid frame or takedown. The 16-gauge guns had a standard barrel length of 28 inches, while 12-gauge guns were furnished with 30-inch length barrels. Special length barrels could be ordered in lengths as short as 20 inches or as long as 36 inches. Since the time the Model 1897 was first manufactured, it has been used to great effect by American military personnel, law enforcement officers, and hunters.
A repeating rifle is a single-barreled rifle capable of repeated discharges between each ammunition reload. This is typically achieved by having multiple cartridges stored in a magazine and then fed individually into the chamber by a reciprocating bolt, via either a manual or automatic action mechanism, while the act of chambering the round typically also recocks the hammer/striker for the following shot. In common usage, the term "repeating rifle" most often refers specifically to manual repeating rifles, as opposed to self-loading rifles, which use the recoil and/or blowback of the previous shot to cycle the action and load the next round, even though all self-loading firearms are technically a subcategory of repeating firearms.
In firearms, the chamber is the cavity at the back end of a breechloader's barrel or cylinder, where the cartridge is inserted before being fired. The rear opening of the chamber is the breech, and is sealed by the breechblock or the bolt.
A combat shotgun is a shotgun issued by militaries for warfare. The earliest shotguns specifically designed for combat were the trench guns or trench shotguns issued in World War I. While limited in range, the multiple projectiles typically used in a shotgun shell provide increased hit probability unmatched by other small arms.
Pump action or slide action is a repeating firearm action that is operated manually by moving a sliding handguard on the gun's forestock. When shooting, the sliding forend is pulled rearward to eject any expended cartridge and typically to cock the hammer/striker, and then pushed forward to load (chamber) a new cartridge into the chamber. Most pump-action firearms use an integral tubular magazine, although some do use detachable box magazines. Pump-action firearms are typically associated with shotguns, although it has been used in rifles, grenade launchers, as well as other types of firearms.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American manufacturer of repeating firearms and ammunition. The firm was established in 1866 by Oliver Winchester and was located in New Haven, Connecticut. The firm went into receivership in 1931 and was bought by the Western Cartridge Company, a forerunner of the Olin Corporation. The Winchester brand name is still owned by the Olin Corporation, which makes ammunition under that name. The Winchester name is also used under license for firearms produced by two subsidiaries of the Herstal Group – FN Herstal of Belgium and the Browning Arms Company of Ogden, Utah.
H&R 1871, LLC, or more commonly known as Harrington & Richardson, is an American brand of firearms and a subsidiary of JJE Capital Holdings. H&R ceased independent production February 27, 2015.
The Remington 1100 is a gas-operated semi-automatic shotgun introduced by Remington Arms in 1963.
The Heckler & Koch HK CAWS is a prototype automatic shotgun—designed as a combat shotgun—co-produced by Heckler & Koch and Winchester/Olin during the 1980s. It was Heckler & Koch's entry into the U.S military's Close Assault Weapon System program.
The Browning Automatic 5, most often Auto-5 or simply A-5, is a recoil-operated semi-automatic shotgun designed by John Browning and manufactured by Fabrique Nationale de Herstal. It was the first successful semi-automatic shotgun design, and remained in production until 1998. The name of the shotgun designates that it is an autoloader with a capacity of five rounds, four in the magazine and one in the chamber. Remington Arms and Savage Arms sold variants called the Remington Model 11 and Savage Model 720 that were nearly identical but lacked the magazine cutoff found on the Browning.
The Grizzly Win Mag pistols were conceived, invented, designed, engineered and developed in the 1980s by the sole inventor, Perry Arnett, who licensed his patent for an interchangeable caliber semi-automatic pistol to L.A.R. Manufacturing Inc. Perry Arnett's designs were initially flawed and were improved upon by Heinz Augat. The L.A.R. Grizzly was the most powerful semi-automatic pistol ever commercially produced after the Desert Eagle.
A handgun is a firearm designed to be usable with only one hand. It is distinguished from a long gun which needs to be held by both hands and braced against the shoulder. Hand guns have a shorter range compared to the long guns. The two most common types of handguns are revolvers and semi-automatic pistols, although other types such as derringers and machine pistols also see infrequent usage.
The Winchester Model 1907 is a blowback-operated, semi-automatic rifle produced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company beginning in 1907 with production ending in 1957. It fired a cartridge of intermediate power, cycled through a semi-automatic operating mechanism, fed from a 5, 10, or 15 round detachable box magazine located immediately forward of the trigger guard. In size and handling, it is much like an M1 carbine, though the 1907 is heavier and fires a much harder hitting round.
The Remington Model 8 is a semi-automatic rifle designed by John Browning and produced by Remington Arms, introduced as the Remington Autoloading Rifle in 1905, though the name was changed to the Remington Model 8 in 1911.
Recoil operation is an operating mechanism used to implement locked breech, autoloading firearms. Recoil operated firearms use the energy of recoil to cycle the action, as opposed to gas operation or blowback operation using the pressure of the propellant gas.
