1.
Smith & Wesson
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Smith & Wesson is a manufacturer of firearms in the United States. The corporate headquarters are based in Springfield, Massachusetts, founded in 1852, Smith & Wessons pistols and revolvers have become standard issue to police and armed forces throughout the world, in addition to their popularity among sport shooters. Apart from firearms, Smith & Wesson has been known for the types of ammunition it has introduced over the years. Wesson founded the Smith & Wesson Company in Norwich, Connecticut in 1852 to develop the Volcanic rifle, Smith developed a new Volcanic Cartridge, which he patented in 1854. The Smith & Wesson Company was renamed Volcanic Repeating Arms in 1855, Smith left the company and returned to his native Springfield, Massachusetts, Wesson stayed on as plant manager with Volcanic Repeating Arms. As Samuel Colts patent on the revolver was set to expire in 1856 and his research pointed out that a former Colt employee named Rollin White held the patent for a Bored-through cylinder, a component he would need for his invention. Wesson reconnected with Smith and the two partners approached White to manufacture a newly designed revolver-and-cartridge combination, rather than make White a partner in their company, Smith and Wesson paid him a royalty of $0.25 on every revolver that they made. It would become Whites responsibility to defend his patent in any court cases which led to his financial ruin. The orders for the Smith & Wesson Model 1 revolver outpaced the production capabilities. In 1860 demand was so great that Smith & Wesson expanded into a new facility, at the same time, the companys design was being infringed upon by other manufacturers which led to numerous lawsuits filed by Rollin White. In many of these part of the restitution came in the form of the offender being forced to stamp Manufactured for Smith & Wesson on the revolvers in question. Whites vigorous defense of his patent caused a problem for armsmakers in the United States at the time as they could not manufacture cartridge revolvers, at the end of the war the US Government charged White with causing the retardation of arms development in America. Demand for revolvers declined at the close of the Civil War, in 1870 the company introduced a large frame revolver in heavier calibers than the pocket sized revolvers it had been making. The design was known as the Smith & Wesson Model 3, after an organized campaign by the NRA and NSSF, thousands of retailers and tens of thousands of firearms consumers boycotted Smith & Wesson. On 11 May 2001, Saf-T-Hammer Corporation acquired Smith & Wesson Corp. from Tomkins plc for US$15 million, Saf-T-Hammer assumed US$30 million in debt, bringing the total purchase price to US$45 million. The acquisition of Smith & Wesson was chiefly brokered by Saf-T-Hammer President Bob Scott, after the purchase, Scott became the president of Smith & Wesson to guide the 157-year-old company back to its former standing in the market. On 15 February 2002, the name of the newly formed entity was changed to Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation, about 2006 Smith & Wesson refocused its marketing on big box retailers, according to Smith & Wesson CEO Mike Golden in a 2008 conference call with investors. In December 2014, Smith & Wesson Holding announced it was paying $130.5 million for Battenfeld Technologies, the company made the acquisition with the eventual intent to merge all its existing Smith & Wesson, M&P and Thompson Center Arms accessories into a single division
2.
Gun barrel
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A gun barrel is a part of firearms and artillery pieces. The hollow interior of the barrel is called the bore, a gun barrel must be able to hold in the expanding gas produced by the propellants to ensure that optimum muzzle velocity is attained by the projectile as it is being pushed out by the expanding gas. Modern small arms barrels are made of known and tested to withstand the pressures involved. Artillery pieces are made by various techniques providing reliably sufficient strength, early firearms were muzzle-loading, with powder, and then shot loaded from the muzzle, capable of only a low rate of fire. During the 19th century effective mechanical locks were invented that sealed a breech-loading weapon against the escape of propellant gases, the early Chinese, the inventors of gunpowder, used bamboo, a naturally tubular stalk, as the first barrels in gunpowder projectile weapons. Early European guns were made of iron, usually with several strengthening bands of the metal wrapped around circular wrought iron rings. The Chinese were the first to master cast-iron cannon barrels, early cannon barrels were very thick for their caliber. Bore evacuator Bore snake Cannon Muzzle Polygonal rifling Rifling Slug barrel Smoothbore
3.
10mm Auto
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The 10mm Auto is a semi-automatic pistol cartridge first developed by Jeff Cooper and introduced in 1983 with the Bren Ten pistol. Its design was improved, then produced initially by ammunition manufacturer FFV Norma AB of Åmotfors. The 10mm Auto cartridge was originally drafted and championed by eminent firearms expert Lieutenant Colonel John Dean Jeff Cooper and it was designed to be a medium-velocity pistol cartridge with better external ballistics than the.45 ACP and capable of greater stopping power than the 9×19mm Parabellum. When FFV Norma AB designed the cartridge at the behest of Dornaus & Dixon Enterprises, Inc. for their Bren Ten pistol, the company decided to increase the power over Coopers original concept. The case was derived from the.30 Remington rifle round, cut down, an example being the peculiar circumstances surrounding the pistols distribution at its primary release, leading to a number of initial Bren Tens sent to dealers and customers without magazines. In the succeeding five years, prices on the Standard Model rose to in excess of U. S. $1,400, since 1994, both units still field the weapon and caliber to this day. Thereafter, experimentations were carried out and a specification for reduced-recoil ammunition was created, the requirement was later submitted to the Federal Cartridge Corporation for production and followed further review. This became known as the 10mm Lite, or 10mm FBI load and this altered cartridge was named the.40 Smith & Wesson. In 2015 SIG Sauer entered the 10mm marketplace with their P220 model chambered in 10mm, the 10mm outperforms the.40 S&W by 270–300 ft/s for similar bullet weights when using available full power loads, as opposed to the 10mm FBI level loads still found in some ammunition catalogs. The 10mm Auto has 1.56 milliliter cartridge case capacity. Common rifling twist rate for this cartridge is 406.40 mm,6 grooves, Ø lands =9.91 mm, Ø grooves =10.17 mm, a large pistol primer is used. The Commission Internationale Permanente pour lEpreuve des Armes à Feu Portatives rulings indicate a maximum pressure of 230 MPa, regulated countries, every pistol/cartridge combination is required to be proofed at 130% of this maximum C. I. P. pressure to certify for sale to consumers. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute maximum pressure limit for the 10mm Auto is set at 37,500 psi, at full potential, the 10mm Auto produces energy slightly higher than an average.357 Magnum load and below standard.41 Magnum rounds. The cartridge is considered to be high-velocity, giving it a flight path upon firing relative to other handgun cartridges. In its lighter loadings, the 10mm Auto is a duplicate of the.40 S&W cartridge. More powerful loadings can equal or exceed the performance of the.357 Magnum, and retain more kinetic energy at 100 yards than the.45 ACP has at the muzzle. The 10mm Auto is marketed for hunting, defensive, and tactical use and is one of the few semi-automatic, the round makes the Major power factor ranking in the International Practical Shooting Confederation, even in lighter loadings. In military use, the government of Denmark has issued the Glock 20 to the Slædepatruljen Sirius headquartered in Daneborg, the pistols were issued as a defense against polar bears which the unit encounters during patrols
4.
Action (firearms)
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In firearms terminology, an action is the mechanism that handles the ammunition or the method by which that mechanism works. Breech-loading weapons have actions, actions are not present on muzzleloaders. The mechanism that fires a muzzle-loader is called the lock, actions can be categorized in several ways, including single action versus double action, break action versus bolt action, and others. The term action can also short, long, and magnum if it is in reference to the length of the rifle’s receiver. The short action rifle usually can accommodate a cartridge length of 2.8 in or smaller, the long action rifle can accommodate a cartridge of 3.34 in, and the magnum action rifle can accommodate cartridges of 3.6 in, or longer in length. Manual operation is a term describing any type of firearm action that is loaded one shot at a time by the user rather than automatically. For example, break action is a form of operation using a simple hinge mechanism that is manually unlatched by the operator. These are actions wherein the breechblock lowers or drops into the receiver to open the breech, there are two principal types of dropping block, the tilting block and the falling block. In a tilting or pivoting block action, the breechblock is hinged on a pin mounted at the rear, when the lever is operated, the block tilts down and forward, exposing the chamber. The best-known pivoting block designs are the Peabody, the Peabody–Martini, the original Peabody rifles, manufactured by the Providence Tool Company, used a manually cocked side-hammer. The 1871 Martini–Henry which replaced the trapdoor Snider–Enfield was the standard British Army rifle of the later Victorian era, charles H. Ballards self-cocking tilting-block action was produced by the Marlin Firearms Company from 1875, and earned a superlative reputation among long-range Creedmoor target shooters. Surviving Marlin Ballards are today highly prized by collectors, especially those mounted in the elaborate Swiss-style Schützen stocks of the day. A falling-block action is a firearm action in which a solid metal breechblock slides vertically in grooves cut into the breech of the weapon. Examples of firearms using the falling block action are the Sharps rifle, in a rolling block action the breechblock takes the form of a part-cylinder, with a pivot pin through its axis. The operator rotates or rolls the block to open and close the breech, it is a simple, rugged, a break action is a type of firearm where the barrel are hinged and can be broken open to expose the breech. The earliest metallic-cartridge breechloaders designed for military issue began as conversions of muzzle-loading rifle-muskets. The upper rear portion of the barrel was filed or milled away, an internal angled firing pin allowed the re-use of the rifles existing side-hammer. The Allin action made by Springfield Arsenal in the US hinged forward, france countered in 1866 with its superior Chassepot rifle, also a paper-cartridge bolt action
5.
Safety (firearms)
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In firearms, a safety or safety catch is a mechanism used to help prevent the accidental discharge of a firearm, helping to ensure safer handling. Safeties can generally be divided into such as internal safeties. Sometimes these are called passive and active safeties, respectively, some firearms manufactured after the late 1990s include mandatory integral locking mechanisms that must be deactivated by a unique key before the gun can be fired. These integral locking mechanisms are intended as child-safety devices during unattended storage of the firearm—not as safety mechanisms while carrying, other devices in this category are trigger locks, bore locks, and gun safes. The most common form of safety mechanism is a switch, button or lever that, other designs may block the hammer or striker from forward movement or act as a block to prevent them from contacting the firing pin. The M1911 design is an example of a handgun with a grip safety. The Uzi submachine gun is another example of a firearm with a grip safety, a related grip-type safety is the decocking grip found on some H&K pistols like the P7 Series. The firearm is cocked and ready to fire only when the front of the grip is squeezed by the operator. When the grip is released, the firearm is decocked, and the trigger will not cock the firearm, therefore it will not fire unless the grip is squeezed. Alternatively, the trigger can first be pulled and then it will fire when the grip is subsequently squeezed, finally, if both the grip is squeezed and the trigger pulled simultaneously, the pistol will fire. Another, unusual variant was found in the Ortgies semi-automatic pistols, to disengage the safety, a user would squeeze a lever until flush with the rear of the grip. Thus, engaging the safety also relieved some tension in the striker spring, as the Ortgies is a pocket pistol meant for personal defense, this feature eliminates the problem of failing to disengage the safety when one needs to shoot. Gripping the pistol tightly is all it takes to disengage the safety, most traditional semi-automatic double-action/single action pistols are designed to be carried with the hammer down on a chambered round, with or without a manual safety engaged. However, the act of cycling the action on such a firearm will leave the hammer cocked in single-action mode. To return the pistol to its state, it is necessary to uncock the hammer, usually by holding the hammer spur, carefully pulling the trigger. A decock/safety is a manual safety switch and decocking lever. A simpler two-way system was popularized by the Walther PP and is commonly seen on the Beretta 92. The SIG Sauer line of pistols, such as the SIG P226, the earliest use of a single-action decocker was the Vis wz.35 Radom redesign in 1932 to enable horsemen to safely holster their firearm with one hand
6.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States, which simultaneously serves as the nations prime federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the U. S. Department of Justice, Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. A leading U. S. counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, although many of the FBIs functions are unique, its activities in support of national security are comparable to those of the British MI5 and the Russian FSB. At an FBI field office, a senior-level FBI officer concurrently serves as the representative of the Director of National Intelligence. Despite its domestic focus, the FBI also maintains a significant international footprint and these overseas offices exist primarily for the purpose of coordination with foreign security services and do not usually conduct unilateral operations in the host countries. The FBI can and does at times carry out secret activities overseas, just as the CIA has a domestic function. The FBI was established in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation and its name was changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935. The FBI headquarters is the J. Edgar Hoover Building, located in Washington, in the fiscal year 2012, the Bureaus total budget was approximately $8.12 billion. In 1896, the National Bureau of Criminal Identification was founded, the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley created an urgent perception that America was under threat from anarchists. The Departments of Justice and Labor had been keeping records on anarchists for years, the Justice Department had been tasked with the regulation of interstate commerce since 1887, though it lacked the staff to do so. It had made little effort to relieve its staff shortage until the breakage of the Oregon land fraud scandal at approximately the turn of the 20th Century, President Roosevelt instructed Attorney General Charles Bonaparte to organize an autonomous investigative service that would report only to the Attorney General. Bonaparte reached out to other agencies, including the Secret Service, for personnel, on May 27,1908, the Congress forbade this use of Treasury employees by the Justice Department, citing fears that the new agency would serve as a secret police department. Again at Roosevelts urging, Bonaparte moved to organize a formal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Investigation was created on July 26,1908, after the Congress had adjourned for the summer. Attorney General Bonaparte, using Department of Justice expense funds, hired thirty-four people, including veterans of the Secret Service. Its first Chief was Stanley Finch, Bonaparte notified the Congress of these actions in December 1908. The bureaus first official task was visiting and making surveys of the houses of prostitution in preparation for enforcing the White Slave Traffic Act, or Mann Act, in 1932, the bureau was renamed the United States Bureau of Investigation. The following year it was linked to the Bureau of Prohibition, in the same year, its name was officially changed from the Division of Investigation to the present-day Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI. J. Edgar Hoover served as Director from 1924 to 1972, a combined 48 years with the BOI, DOI, Hoover was substantially involved in most major cases and projects that the FBI handled during his tenure
7.
Smith & Wesson Safety Hammerless
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The Smith & Wesson Safety Hammerless or Smith & Wesson New Departure is a double-action revolver that was produced from 1887 to 1940 by Smith & Wesson. The revolver incorporated an internal hammer and a grip safety on its backstrap. It was chambered in.32 S&W and.38 S&W calibers, the grip safety made a brief return to Smith & Wessons revolvers in 1952 with the release of the Models 40 and 42. The Smith & Wesson.38 Safety Hammerless models were produced from 1887 to just before World War II and they were chambered in either.32 S&W or.38 S&W with a five-shot cylinder. They were most often produced with a 2-inch, 3-inch, or 3. 5-inch barrels and these top-break revolvers were designed for fast reloading and concealed carry as the hammer was internal and would not snag on drawing the revolver from a pocket. They were known as The New Departure to reflect the new approach to designing revolvers. Minor design changes were made to these revolvers over the years, resulting in different design models. The first model was manufactured between 1887-1902, the 38 was based on S&Ws medium frame, while the 32 was based on the smaller sized 1½ frame. In 1952 the safety hammerless concept was applied to Smith & Wessons J-frame, the finished product became the Model 40 and 42 chambered in.38 Special and is alternately known as the Centennial as it was produced in the 100th anniversary of the founding of Smith & Wesson. While few competitors replicated the grip safety, the hammer or hammerless design proved popular with other manufacturers such as Iver Johnson and Harrington & Richardson. The concept is still maintained by numerous modern double-action revolver manufacturers
8.
Smith & Wesson Model 10
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In production since 1899, it is a six-shot double-action revolver with fixed sights. Over its long run it has been available with barrel lengths of 2 in,3 in,4 in,5 in. Barrels of 2.5 inches are also known to have made for special contracts. Some 6,000,000 of the type have been produced over the years, making it the most popular centerfire revolver of the 20th century. In 1899, the United States Army and Navy placed orders with Smith & Wesson for two to three thousand Model 1899 Hand Ejector revolvers chambered for the M1892.38 Long Colt U. S, in 1902 the.38 Military & Police was introduced, featuring substantial changes. These included major modification and simplification of the internal lockwork and the addition of a locking underlug on the barrel to engage the previously free-standing ejector rod, barrel lengths were 4,5,6, and 6.5 inches with a rounded butt. Serial numbers for the Military & Police ranged from number 1 in the series to 20,975, most of the early M&P revolvers chambered in.38 Special appear to have been sold to the civilian market. By 1904, S&W was offering the.38 M&P with a rounded or square butt, and 4-, 5-, heat treating of cylinders began in 1919. The S&W Model 10 military revolvers produced from 1942 to 1944 had serial numbers with a V prefix and it is noteworthy that early Victory Models did not always have the V prefix. Most Victory Models sent to Britain were fitted with 4-inch or 5-inchbarrels, the Victory Model was used by United States forces during World War II, being chambered in the well-known and popular.38 Special cartridge. Some of these remained in service well into the 1990s with units of the United States Armed Forces. Until the introduction of the Beretta M9 9mm pistol in 1990, U. S. Army helicopter crew members, criminal Investigation Division agents were issued.38 caliber revolvers with two inch barrels. The Victory Model remained in use with Air National Guard tanker, rechambering of. 38-200 cylinders to.38 Special results in oversized chambers, which may cause problems. Lee Harvey Oswald was carrying a re-chambered Victory Model when he was apprehended on November 22,1963, other distinguishing features of the Victory Model revolver are the lanyard loop at the bottom of the grip frame, and the use of smooth walnut grip panels. However some early models did use a grip, most notably the pre-1942 manufacture. After World War II, Smith & Wesson returned to manufacturing the M&P series, in 1957, Smith & Wesson adopted the convention of using numeric designations to distinguish their various models of handguns, and the M&P was renamed the Model 10. The M&P/Model 10 has been available in blued steel finish and nickel finish for most of its production run. The model has also offered throughout the years with both the round butt and square butt, i. e. grip patterns
9.
Cartridge (firearms)
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Military and commercial producers continue to pursue the goal of caseless ammunition. A cartridge without a bullet is called a blank, One that is completely inert is called a dummy. Some artillery ammunition uses the same concept as found in small arms. In other cases, the shell is separate from the propellant charge. In popular use, the bullet is often misused to refer to a complete cartridge. The cartridge case seals a firing chamber in all directions excepting the bore, a firing pin strikes the primer and ignites it. The primer compound deflagrates, it does not detonate, a jet of burning gas from the primer ignites the propellant. Gases from the burning powder pressurize and expand the case to seal it against the chamber wall and these propellant gases push on the bullet base. In response to pressure, the bullet will move in the path of least resistance which is down the bore of the barrel. After the bullet leaves the barrel, the pressure drops to atmospheric pressure. The case, which had been expanded by chamber pressure. This eases removal of the case from the chamber, brass is a commonly used case material because it is resistant to corrosion. A brass case head can be work-hardened to withstand the pressures of cartridges. The neck and body portion of a case is easily annealed to make the case ductile enough to allow reforming so that it can be reloaded many times. Steel is used in some plinking ammunition, as well as in military ammunition. Steel is less expensive than brass, but it is not feasible to reload, Military forces typically consider small arms cartridge cases to be disposable, one-time-use devices. However, case weight affects how much ammunition a soldier can carry, conversely, steel is more susceptible to contamination and damage so all such cases are varnished or otherwise sealed against the elements. One downside caused by the strength of steel in the neck of these cases is that propellant gas can blow back past the neck
10.
Revolver
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A revolver is a repeating handgun that has a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. Revolvers might be regarded as a subset of pistols, or as a subset of handguns. Though the term revolver usually only refers to handguns, other firearms may also have a revolving chamber and these include some models of grenade launchers, shotguns, and rifles. Most revolvers contain five or six rounds in the cylinder, though the original name was revolving gun, the short-hand revolver is universally used. The revolver allows the user to fire multiple rounds without reloading, each time the user cocks the hammer, the cylinder revolves to align the next chamber and round with the hammer and barrel, which gives this type of firearm its name. In a single-action revolver, the user pulls the back with his free hand or thumb. In a double-action revolver, pulling the trigger moves the back, then releases it. Loading and unloading a double-action revolver requires the operator to swing out the cylinder and insert the proper ammunition, the first guns with multichambered cylinders that revolved to feed one barrel were made in the late 16th century in Europe. They were expensive and rare curiosities, not until the 19th century would revolvers become common weapons of industrial production. One of the first was a flintlock revolver patented by Elisha Collier in 1814, the first percussion revolver was made by Lenormand of Paris in 1820 and the first percussion cap revolver was invented by the Italian Francesco Antonio Broccu in 1833. He received a prize of 300 francs for his invention, although he did not patent it, however, in 1835 a similar handgun was patented by Samuel Colt, who would go on to make the first mass-produced revolver. The first cartridge revolvers were produced around 1854 by Eugene Lefaucheux, revolvers soon became standard for nearly all uses. In the early 20th century, semi-automatic pistols were developed, which can hold more rounds, Automatic pistols also have a flat profile, more suitable for concealed carry. Automatic pistols have almost completely replaced revolvers in military and law enforcement use, revolvers still remain popular as back-up and off-duty handguns among American law enforcement officers and security guards. Also, revolvers are still common in the American private sector as defensive, in the development of firearms, an important limiting factor was the time it took to reload the weapon after it was fired. While the user was reloading, the weapon was useless, several approaches to the problem of increasing the rate of fire were developed, the earliest being multi-barrelled weapons which allowed two or more shots without reloading. Later weapons featured multiple barrels revolving along a single axis, the earliest examples of what today is called a revolver were made in Germany in the late 16th century. These weapons featured a barrel with a revolving cylinder holding the powder
