1.
Shotgun
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Shotguns come in a wide variety of sizes, ranging from 5. A shotgun is generally a smoothbore firearm, which means that the inside of the barrel is not rifled, preceding smoothbore firearms, such as the musket, were widely used by armies in the 18th century. The direct ancestor to the shotgun, the blunderbuss, was used in a similar variety of roles from self-defense to riot control. It was often used by cavalry troops because of its shorter length and ease of use. In the 19th century, however, these weapons were replaced on the battlefield with breechloading rifled firearms. The military value of shotguns was rediscovered in the First World War, since then, it has been used in a variety of roles in civilian, law enforcement, and military applications. The shot pellets from a spread upon leaving the barrel, and the power of the burning charge is divided among the pellets. In a hunting context, this makes shotguns useful primarily for hunting birds, however, in a military or law enforcement context, the large number of projectiles makes the shotgun useful as a close quarters combat weapon or a defensive weapon. Militants or insurgents may use shotguns in asymmetric engagements, as shotguns are commonly owned civilian weapons in many countries, shotguns are also used for target shooting sports such as skeet, trap, and sporting clays. These involve shooting clay disks, known as clay pigeons, thrown in various ways, shotguns come in a wide variety of forms, from very small up to massive punt guns, and in nearly every type of firearm operating mechanism. The common characteristics that make a unique center around the requirements of firing shot. These features are the typical of a shotgun shell, namely a relatively short, wide cartridge, with straight walls. Ammunition for shotguns is referred to in the USA as shotgun shells, shotshells, the term cartridges is standard usage in the United Kingdom. The shot is fired from a smoothbore barrel, another configuration is the rifled slug barrel. The typical use of a shotgun is against small and fast moving targets, the spreading of the shot allows the user to point the shotgun close to the target, rather than having to aim precisely as in the case of a single projectile. The disadvantages of shot are limited range and limited penetration of the shot, which is why shotguns are used at short ranges, and typically against smaller targets. Larger shot sizes, up to the case of the single projectile slug load, result in increased penetration. Aside from the most common use against small, fast moving targets, First, it has enormous stopping power at short range, more than nearly all handguns and many rifles
2.
Stagecoach
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A stagecoach is a type of covered wagon used to carry passengers and goods inside. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by four horses, usually four-in-hand, widely used before the introduction of railway transport, it made regular trips between stages or stations, which were places of rest provided for stagecoach travelers. The business of running stagecoaches or the act of journeying in them was known as staging, the yard of ale drinking glass is associated by legend with stagecoach drivers, though it was mainly used for drinking feats and special toasts. The stagecoach was a vehicle pulled by horses or mules. The primary requirement was that it was used as a conveyance, running on an established route. Vehicles that were used included buckboards and dead axle wagons, surplus Army ambulances, on the outside were two back seats facing one another, which the British called baskets. In addition to the driver who guided the vehicle, a shotgun messenger, armed with a coach gun. The stagecoach traveled at an speed of about five miles per hour. The term stage originally referred to the distance between stations on a route, the coach traveling the route in stages, but through metonymy it came to apply to the coach. A fresh set of horses would be staged at the next station, under this staging system, the resting, watering and feeding of the spent horses would not delay the coach. This system based on making fresh horses regularly available along a route had been in use by a number of different civilisations, the stagecoach was also called a stage or stage carriage. Varieties included, mail coach or post coach, used for carrying mail, mud coach, lighter and smaller, with flat sides and simpler joinery. Road coach, revived in Great Britain and Ireland during the half of the 19th century. The first crude depiction of a coach, not necessarily a stagecoach, was in an English manuscript from the 13th century, crude coaches were built from the 16th century. Without suspension, these coaches achieved very low speeds on the poor quality rutted roads of the time, by the mid 17th century, a basic stagecoach infrastructure had been put in place. The first stagecoach route started in 1610 and ran from Edinburgh to Leith and this was followed by a steady proliferation of other routes around the country. A string of coaching inns operated as stopping points for travellers on the route between London and Liverpool by the mid 17th century, the coach would depart every Monday and Thursday and took roughly ten days to make the journey during the summer months. They also became adopted for travel in and around London by mid-century
3.
Winchester Repeating Arms Company
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The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American maker of repeating firearms, located in New Haven, Connecticut. The ancestor of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company was the Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson partnership of Norwich, Jennings rifle was a commercial failure, and Robbins & Lawrence ceased production in 1852. Smith designed a much-improved rifle based on Jennings, and the partners also hired away Robbins & Lawrence shop foreman Benjamin Tyler Henry. In 1855 the Smith & Wesson partnership, in order to manufacture what they called the Volcanic lever-action rifle and pistol, sought investors and its largest stockholder was clothing manufacturer Oliver Winchester. The Volcanic rifle had only limited success, the company moved to New Haven in 1856, but by the end of that year became insolvent. Oliver Winchester and his partner John M. Davies purchased the firms assets from the remaining stockholders. After Smiths departure Benjamin Henry continued to work with a Smith development project, the self-contained metallic rimfire cartridge, Henry also supervised a new rifle design based loosely on the Volcanic to use the new ammunition, retaining only the general form of the breech mechanism and the tubular magazine. This became the Henry rifle of 1860, which was manufactured by the New Haven Arms Company, the Henry rifle ensured New Haven Arms success, and together with the Spencer rifle established the lever-action repeater in the firearms market. In 1866 Benjamin Henry, angered over what he believed was inadequate compensation, Oliver Winchester, hastening back from Europe, forestalled the move and reorganized New Haven Arms yet again as the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Another extremely popular model was rolled out in 1873, the Model 1873 introduced the first Winchester center fire cartridge, the. 44-40 WCF. These rifle families are known as the Gun That Won the West. The Model 1873 was followed by the Model 1876, a version of the 73. It was chambered for longer, more powerful cartridges such as. 45-60 WCF. 45-75 WCF, Oliver Winchester died in December 1880, his son and successor, William Wirt Winchester, died of tuberculosis four months later. William Wirt Winchesters widow, Sarah Winchester, used her inheritance, several of these are still in production today through companies such as Browning, Rossi, Navy Arms and others which have revived several of the discontinued models or produced reproductions. The early years of the century found the Winchester Repeating Arms Company competing with new John Browning designs. The race to produce the first commercial self-loading rifle brought forth the.22 rimfire Winchester Model 1903 and later centerfire Model 1905, Model 1907, and Model 1910 rifles. Winchester engineers, after ten years of work, designed the Model 1911 to circumvent Brownings self-loading shotgun patents, one of Winchesters premier engineers, T. C. Johnson, was instrumental in the development of these self-loading firearms and went on to superintend the designs of Winchesters classic Model 1912, Model 52 and Model 54
4.
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
5.
Gauge (bore diameter)
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The gauge of a firearm is a unit of measurement used to express the inner diameter of the barrel. Thus there are twelve 12-gauge balls per pound, etc, the term is related to the measurement of cannon, which were also measured by the weight of their iron round shot, an 8 pounder would fire an 8 lb ball. These very large rifles, sometimes called elephant guns, were intended for use in India, gauge is abbreviated ga. ga, or G. The space between the number and the abbreviation is often left out, as in 12ga. Therefore, a shotgun or n-bore rifle has a bore diameter of approximately d n =11.33 Explanation. Divide it by 11.3 to find the volume of the ball, multiply it by 0.75 and divide it by pi, then find its cube root, to find its radius in cm. Multiply it by 2 to find the diameter in cm, Divide it by 2.54 to find the diameter in inches. This simplifies to d n =1.67 / n 3 to find the diameter in inches of the barrel of an n-gauge shotgun. Therefore, if the diameter is in inches, n =4.66 / d n 3 Another source for a gauge size formula can be found in page Shotgun shell#Shotgun gauge diameter formula. Since shotguns were not originally intended to fire projectiles, but rather a compressible mass of shot. The fact that most shotgun bores are not cylindrical also causes deviations from the bore diameter. The chamber of the gun is larger, to accommodate the thickness of the walls. The forcing cone can be as short as a fraction of an inch, or as long as a few inches on some guns. At the muzzle end of the barrel, the choke can constrict the bore even further, so measuring the diameter of a shotgun is not a simple process. Shotgun bores are commonly overbored or backbored, meaning that most of the bore is larger than the value given by the formula. This is claimed to reduce recoil and improve patterning. A 12-gauge shotgun, nominally 18.5 mm, can range from a tight 18.3 mm to an extreme overbore of 20.3 mm. Some also claim an increased velocity with the barrels, up to 15 m/s
6.
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
7.
Lever action
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Lever action is a type of firearm action which uses a lever located around the trigger guard area to load fresh cartridges into the chamber of the barrel when the lever is worked. This contrasts to bolt-action, semi-automatic, or selective-fire weapons, most lever-action firearms are rifles, but some lever-action shotguns and a few pistols have also been made. One of the most famous lever-action firearms is the Winchester Model 1873 rifle, even Colts Mfg. Co. produced 1883 until 18856403 lever-action Colt-Burgess rifles. Mossberg produces the 464 in centerfire. 30-30 and rimfire.22, probably the first lever-action rifles on the market were Colts 1st and 2nd Model Ring Lever rifles, both Cap and ball rifles, produced by the Patent Arms Mfg. Co. Paterson, N. J. -Colts Patent between 1837 and 1841, the ring-lever was located in front of the trigger. This loading-lever, when pulled, would index the cylinder to the next position, the first significant lever-action design was the Spencer repeating rifle, a magazine-fed lever-operated breech-loading rifle designed by Christopher Spencer in 1860. It was fed from a removable seven-round tube magazine, enabling the rounds to be fired one after another, and which, the Henry also placed the magazine under the barrel, rather than in the butt-stock, a trend followed by most tubular magazines since. The Martini–Henry rifle was the rifle of British and Empire forces from the early 1870s to the turn of the 20th century. It was used in areas, either by civilians or by the local military. Variants copying the Martini–Henry mechanism but using more modern cartridges were also produced, john Marlin, founder of Marlin Firearms Company, New Haven, Connecticut, introduced Marlins first lever-action repeating rifle as the Model 1881. This was chambered in rounds such as the 45/70 and 38/55 and its successor was the 1895 solid top design, which we know as the model 336 today. It also gave rise to the Marlin Model 1894, which is still in production today, by the 1890s, lever-actions had evolved into a form that would last for over a century. Both Marlin and Winchester released new model lever-action rifles in 1894, the Marlin rifle is still in production, whereas production of the Winchester 94 ceased in 2006. While externally similar, the Marlin and Winchester rifles are quite different internally, the fledgling Savage Arms Company became well known after the development of its popular hammerless Models 1895 and 1899 lever-action sporting rifles. Unlike most Winchester and the Marlin lever-action rifles, which used a tubular magazine requiring round-nose or flat-nose bullets and this allowed the 99 to use cartridges with spitzer pointed bullets for increased ballistic performance. The 99 was produced in different cartridges and several different model variations. The final models eliminated the very expensive-to-produce rotary magazine, using a box magazine instead. But the 99 was still expensive to produce when compared to the other lever-action rifles
8.
Magazine (firearms)
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A magazine is an ammunition storage and feeding device within or attached to a repeating firearm. Magazines can be removable or integral to the firearm, the magazine functions by moving the cartridges stored in the magazine into a position where they may be loaded into the chamber by the action of the firearm. The detachable magazine is often referred to as a clip, although this is technically inaccurate, magazines come in many shapes and sizes, from those of bolt-action express rifles that hold only a few rounds to drum magazines for self-loading rifles that can hold one hundred rounds or more. Various jurisdictions ban what they define as high-capacity magazines, with the increased use of semi-automatic and automatic firearms, the detachable box magazine became increasingly common. Soon after the adoption of the M1911 pistol, the magazine was settled on by the military and firearms experts. The defining difference between clips and magazines is the presence of a mechanism in a magazine, typically a spring-loaded follower. Use of the clip to refer to detachable magazines is a point of strong disagreement. The first mass-produced repeater was the Volcanic Rifle which used a bullet with the base filled with powder and primer fed into the chamber from a spring-loaded tube called a magazine. It was named after a building or room used to store ammunition, the anemic power of the Rocket Ball ammunition used in the Volcanic doomed it to limited popularity. The Henry repeating rifle is a lever-action, breech-loading, tubular magazine fed rifle, designed by Benjamin Tyler Henry in 1860, it was one of the first firearms to use self-contained metallic cartridges. The Henry was introduced in the early 1860s and produced through 1866 in the United States by the New Haven Arms Company and it was adopted in small quantities by the Union in the Civil War and favored for its greater firepower than the standard issue carbine. Many later found their way West and was famed both for its use at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and being the basis for the iconic Winchester rifle which are made to this day. The Henry and Winchester rifles would go on to see service with a number of militaries including Turkey, switzerland and Italy adopted similar designs. The first magazine-fed firearm to achieve success was the Spencer repeating rifle. The Spencer used a magazine located in the butt of the gun instead of under the barrel. The Spencer was successful, but the rimfire ammunition did occasionally ignite in the magazine tube and it could also injure the user. The new bolt-action rifles began to favor with militaries in the 1880s and were often equipped with tubular magazines. The Mauser Model 1871 was originally a single-shot action that added a magazine in its 1884 update
9.
Iron sights
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Iron sights are typically composed of two component sights, formed by metal blades, a rear sight mounted perpendicular to the line of sight and a front sight that is a post, bead, or ring. Open sights use a notch of some sort as the rear sight, civilian, hunting, and police firearms usually feature open sights, while many military battle rifles employ aperture sights. The earliest and simplest iron sights are fixed and cannot be easily adjusted, many iron sights are designed to be adjustable, so that the sights can be adjusted for elevation or windage. On many firearms it is the sight that is adjustable. For precision applications such as hunting or sniping, the sights are usually replaced by a telescopic sight. Iron sights may still be fitted alongside other sighting devices for back-up usage, iron sights provide horizontal and vertical reference points that allow the shooter to train the weapon. Rear sights are mounted in a dovetail on the barrel or receiver, closer to the eye of the shooter. Front sights are mounted to the barrel by dovetailing, soldering, screwing, or staking close to the muzzle, frequently on a ramp. Some front sight assemblies include a detachable hood intended to reduce glare, with typical blade or post iron sights, the shooter would center the front post in the notch of the rear sight and the tops of both sights should be level. Since the eye is capable of focusing on one plane, and the rear sight, front sight. At 1,000 m, that same misalignment would be magnified 100 times, sights for shotguns used for shooting small, moving targets work quite differently. The rear sight is completely discarded, and the reference point is provided by the correct. A brightly colored round bead is placed at the end of the barrel, often, this bead will be placed along a raised, flat rib, which is usually ventilated to keep it cool and reduce mirage effects from a hot barrel. This method of aiming is not as precise as that of a front sight/rear sight combination, but it is faster. Some shotguns also provide a mid-bead, which is a smaller bead located halfway down the rib, open sights generally are used where the rear sight is at significant distance from the shooters eye. They provide minimum occlusion of the view, but at the expense of precision. Open sights generally use either a square post or a bead on a post for a front sight, to use the sight, the post or bead is positioned both vertically and horizontally in the center of the rear sight notch. For a center hold, the front sight is positioned on the center of the target, for a 6oclock hold, the front sight is positioned just below the target and centered horizontally
10.
Winchester rifle
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Winchester rifle is a comprehensive term describing a series of lever-action repeating rifles manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Developed from the 1860 Henry rifle, Winchester rifles were among the earliest repeaters, the Model 1873 was particularly successful, being colloquially known as The Gun that Won the West. In 1848, Walter Hunt of New York patented his Volition Repeating Rifle incorporating a tubular magazine, the Hunt rifle fired what he called the Rocket Ball, an early form of caseless ammunition in which the powder charge was contained in the bullets hollow base. Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson of Norwich, Connecticut acquired the Jennings patent from Robbins & Lawrence and its largest stockholder was Oliver Winchester. Smiths cartridge, the.22 Short, would be introduced commercially in 1857 with the landmark Smith & Wesson Model 1 revolver and is manufactured today. Wesson had left Volcanic soon after it was formed and Smith followed eight months later, Volcanic moved to New Haven in 1856, but by the end of that year became insolvent. Oliver Winchester purchased the firms assets from the remaining stockholders. Benjamin Henry continued to work with Smiths cartridge concept, and perfected the much larger, Henry also supervised the redesign of the rifle to use the new ammunition, retaining only the general form of the breech mechanism and the tubular magazine. This became the Henry rifle of 1860, which was manufactured by the New Haven Arms Company, confederates called the Henry that damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week. After the war, Oliver Winchester renamed New Haven Arms the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, the company modified and improved the basic design of the Henry rifle, creating the first Winchester rifle, the Model 1866. It retained the.44 Henry cartridge, was built on a bronze-alloy frame, and had an improved magazine. In 1873 Winchester introduced the steel-framed Model 1873 chambering the more potent. 44-40 centerfire cartridge, in 1876, in a bid to compete with the powerful single-shot rifles of the time, Winchester brought out the Model 1876. The first Winchester rifle – the Winchester Model 1866 – was originally chambered for the rimfire.44 Henry. Nelson Kings improved patent remedied flaws in the Henry rifle by incorporating a loading gate on the side of the frame and integrating a round, france purchased 6,000 Model 1866 rifles along with 4.5 million.44 Henry cartridges during the Franco-Prussian War. The Ottoman Empire purchased 45,000 Model 1866 muskets and 5,000 carbines in 1870 and 1871, the Model 1866 compelled Russians to develop a new rifle, the Mosin–Nagant, after the war. The Swiss Army initially selected the Model 1866 to replace their existing single-shot Milbank-Amsler rifles, however, ensuing political pressure to adopt a domestic design resulted in the Vetterli Model 1867, a bolt-action design utilizing a copy of the Winchesters tubular magazine, being adopted instead. Due to public demand, the Model 1866 continued to be manufactured and sold until 1899, the Model 1873 was one of the most successful Winchester rifles of its day, with Winchester marketing it as The Gun that Won the West. Still an icon in the day, it was manufactured between 1873 and 1923
