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Guns
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Ah, yes. Guns. They are both loved and hated. Used for both good and bad. And probably the most controversial little gadgets to ever be developed by the human race. This part of the site is for us cool people that love and respect these things. Before we get into highly detailed little lessons about firearms, let's read some general knowledge about them so that we know what is being talked about and so we understand more clearly.
A "gun" can be anything from your pintsy little BB pistol to a freaking Howitzer on a tank. So, to make things clear and more professional sounding, we'll use the proper terms "firearm" or "small arm". A small arm is any type of hand-held "gun" or firearm. For example, a hunting rifle. There are two general barrel types of small arms: Rifled and smooth bore. Rifled firearms have spirals of endented lines inside the barrel, or "rifling". The rifling puts a spin on the projectile and promotes better accuracy and range. Smooth bore firearms have plain, simple barrels. They have no rifling what-so-ever, so are usually not as accurate as rifled firearms.
There are six main categories of small arms: Pistols, Sub-machine guns, Rifles, Shotguns, and Grenade Launchers. Each of these five categories can be broken down into sub-categories, and each of the sub-categories can be broken down into more sub-categories. To keep things easy, we'll start with pistols, or handguns, which they are commonly called.
Handguns
A pistol, or handgun, is any small arm that is intended to easily fired with one hand. Pistols can be divided into two sub-categories: Automatics and Revolvers. Revolvers are simply-made designs that feature an integral (permanently affixed) cylinder of chambers, with each chamber having to be aligned with the barrel(s) before each shot. Revolvers themselves can be divided into two sub-categories: Single Action (SA) and Double Action (DA). SA revolvers require the user to manually cock the hammer before each shot. DA revolvers only require the pull of the trigger to operate. Pulling on the trigger of DA revolvers automatically cocks the hammer for the user, although they can still be fired like SA revolvers if the user insists.
Automatic pistols can be divided into three sub-categories: Single Action (SA), Double Action (DA), and Double Action Only (DAO). SA automatics do not have a trigger and hammer that are completely linked together. For example, if the hammer does not happen to be cocked, the user must manually cock it before the pistol will fire. However, single action automatics are usually cocked automatically anyway when the slide is pulled back. DA automatics can be fired with the hammer either cocked or decocked. Most DA automatics have safety and/or decocker levers (they decock the hammer when pressed).
SMG's
Next, we move up to sub-machine guns, or SMG's for short. A sub-machine gun is simply an automatic-loading firearm made compactly to be used in close-range or crowded enviornments. Early SMG's were designed with easy and cheap manufacturing in mind, and were mainly used as a cheap upgrade to pistols or many times even replaced rifles for the sake of more firepower. Many early SMG's had very simple designs to save time and money.
Most SMG's make use of pistol ammunition, however, some countries designate compact assault rifles as SMG's (which use rifle ammunition), like Russia's AKSU. The AKSU is an extremely shortened and compact AK-74 rifle. There are three main categories of sub-guns: most commonly the rifle type; personal defense weapons; and machine pistols. Rifle-type SMG's look much like rifles, but are still generally much shorter and compact than regular rifles and most commonly use pistol ammunition. One example is the HK MP5. Personal defense weapons (PDW's) are very compact SMG's, and usually feature even shorter barrels, foldable or removable stocks, and sometimes require smaller magazines. An example is the HK MP5KPDW. The third category of SMG's is the machine pistol, which often closely borders or enters the PDW category. Some machine pistols are simply regular handguns with automatic fire, or are just simply handgun-sized SMG's. Examples include the Beretta M93R, the Glock 18, the Uzi, and the CZ Skorpion.
Rifles
Rifles are the most common and most accurate small arms, and there are many types as well. The first rifles were one-shot-capacity firearms, and ammunition was loaded into the muzzle (the exit of the barrel). Early rifles are not to be confused with muskets, for muskets are smooth bore arms. Before the introduction of the cartridge (the combination of the projectile(s), powders, and casing), the projectile and the gun powder had to be loaded separately. However, when cartridges were introduced, it sped the loading process, although the first cartridges did not speed reloading by much. With the existance of cartridges came better ways to load a rifle. Soon, rifles were made that allows loading at the breech (the entrance to the barrel, the opposite of the muzzle). Loading at the breech eliminated the need to ram a bullet down the barrel, and thus shortened reloading time greatly.
Things didn't stop at the birth of the breech-loading rifle, however. Now, designers were looking for ways to fire more than one round before having to reload. Some of the first multi-firing designs consisted of multiple barrels. Each barrel would contain one ready-to-fire cartridge. Another multi-fire design had one barrel, but had a revolving cylinder that stored the ready-to-fire rounds. The invention of the metalic cartridge made designing firearms many times easier. Metalic cartridges allow for more flexible designs. One early design that is still popular today is the lever-action rifle. The cartridges are stored in a "tube magazine" under the barrel. Some models could hold up to 15 rounds. However, because the cartridges had to be aligned in one row from the tip of the bullet to the base of the casing, the bullet had to be smooth and rounded or flat, not pointed, or the cartridge in front of another could be pierced by the sharp tip of the bullet behind and cause an accidental explosion. Nonetheless, the lever-action offered greater firepower than single-shot firearms.
Since rifles with tube magazines could not hold cartridges with pointed and more accurate bullets, another type of multi-fire rifle was designed that could hold powerful cartridges with pointed bullets. This design was the bolt-action rifle. The first bolt-action rifles had small, integral magazines that usually held up to five rounds. The internal magzine was loaded with a cartridge one-by-one, or later, by the use of stripper clips, which is a strip of metal that holds a number of rounds in position for the faster loading of magazines. To operate a bolt-action after the magazine is loaded, the user simply rotates the bolt assembly with the bolt handle to unlock it, pulls the bolt back to cock the rifle, pushes it forward to strip a fresh cartridge of the top of the magazine and ram it into the firing chamber, and rotates the bolt back to lock it shut. The rifle is then ready to fire.
Gun-lovers and militaries around the world still wanted to improve upon rifles. This time, speed was wanted. Designers wanted to create a rifle that could fire off rounds more than twice as fast as a lever-action or bolt-action rifle. The self-loading, or semi-automatic, rifle was born. One well-known example of an early semi-automatic rifle was the M1 Garand, designed by John Garand. It sports a wooden stock and an integral magazine that can hold up to eight rounds. The magazine is loaded via use of a stripper clip or by loading each cartridge individually. The user then pulls back the bolt's charging handle and lets go to cock the rifle and strip a round from the magazine. Now all the user needs to do is pull the trigger once for every round he wants to fire off. The force of the explosion from the fired cartridge automatically operates the bolt for the user.
Still, designers wanted to make an even faster-firing rifle. The AK-47, designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov of the former USSR, is probably the most well-known rifle to be in this catagory. Unlike semi-automatic rifles, automatic rifles can fire a number of rounds with one pull of the trigger. For the AK-47, a large removable magazine was incorporated to make reloading faster as well. The high rate of fire required a larger capacity magazine to make reloading less often. The AK-47 set the standard for many modern rifles.
Nowadays, designers are looking to make lighter, faster, smaller, and more reliable automatic rifles. Polymer, a very strong plastic-like material, is now commonly used to make rifles and other firearms very lightwieght. In the future we can expect some very interesting rifles to come about.
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Copyright
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