History UsefulNotes / Firearms

** UsefulNotes/GunsOfFiction
** RareGuns

When guns reached Europe, they were manufactured in many sizes. The smallest early European gun was the HandCannon, the first man-portable projectile weapon using gunpowder. It was basically just a brass or iron tube on the end of a wooden stick; the soldier would brace the stick in his armpit like a lance, hold the barrel with one hand to steady it, and use his remaining hand to insert a slow match into the touch hole of the barrel. Often there would be a metal hook projecting downwards from the barrel, which could be hooked over a stone battlement or wooden carriage to help absorb the recoil. The hand cannon was slower to fire than the longbow and much less accurate than either a longbow or a crossbow, while also having shorter range, though it could penetrate sturdy breastplates and helmet skulls, while longbows were only able to penetrate mail and the thinnest parts of the plate armor.

See also: UsefulNotes/ModernBattlefieldWeapons
This article describes firearms in a more general fashion, however.
For examples of various types of firearm, see CoolGuns and RareGuns.

It is very important to read up on UsefulNotes/GunSafety regardless of whether or not you want anything to do with firearms. Safety is of the utmost importance at all times. Everybody should learn safety.

UsefulNotes/GunAccessories can show you some related stuff.

See also: UsefulNotes/ModernBattlefieldWeapons
This article describes firearms in a more general fashion, however.
For examples of various types of firearm, see CoolGuns and RareGuns.

It is very important to read up on UsefulNotes/GunSafety regardless of whether or not you want anything to do with firearms. Safety is of the utmost importance at all times. Everybody should learn safety.

UsefulNotes/GunAccessories can show you some related stuff.

The breech-loading firearm was followed in short order by the invention of the self-contained cartridge. It is essentially the same thing as a paper cartridge with a percussion cap, but it is made of metal instead of plastic, so is therefore more durable. It is what you see coming out of the firearm in the CartridgesInFlight trope.

* Sidearms are firearms that can be held and fired with one hand. They do not typically have stocks and so are not meant to be fired from the shoulder. Often referred to as pistols or handguns.
** Revolvers are a type of sidearm that in recent decades has become considered to be not a pistol under US usage of the term (although they are still legally considered pistols under the [[UsefulNotes/AmericanGunPolitics National Firearms Act, Gun Control Act, and most state or local laws that regulate them]]). It contains a cylinder that can hold multiple shots before reloading. The cylinder can revolve into place so each chamber containing a round is able to line up with the barrel at some point during the rotation. After it gets fired, another chamber can rotate into place and be fired.

** In the United States, select-fire and fully-automatic weapons are so highly regulated as to be practically impossible to buy (and are almost never used in crimes). In many cases, there's a civilian (semiautomatic-only) version of a military weapon. For example, the AR-15 is an extremely popular rifle that's quite similar to the military M-16; it takes the same attachments (and is familiar to a vet who trained with an M-16), but is semi-automatic only, whereas the M-16 is selective-fire.

During the 16th and 17th centuries there were arquebusiers who used well-fitting patch and ball loads to gain respectable accuracy with smoothbore muskets. During the 18th century however the trend changed to a stronger emphasis on rate of fire. Soldiers were to focus on speed rather than careful aim, and use loose-fitting balls which were less accurate (they tended to rattle around inside the barrel as they traveled down) but easier to ram in. "Fire by rank" tactics threw a wall of lead at the enemy that was guaranteed to inflict casualties, and they used "buck & ball" loads, seating the round-ball bullet over a small load of buckshot. The accuracy versus speed issue was finally solved during the final days of muzzle-loading weapons, when Claude-Étienne Minié designed a lead projectile with a skirt that expanded to engage the rifling when the gun was fired, meaning it didn’t have to be tightly fitted to the barrel and was easier to ram in. The bullets were also cheap enough to be mass produce as part of paper cartridges. As a result, muzzle-loading rifles saw widespread use during the UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar.

* The arquebus appeared during the mid-15th century. The main things distinguishing an arquebus from a hand cannon were a proper wooden stock and a match lock to ignite the powder. The lock was a trigger-activted ignition assembly: a curved lever arm called a "serpentine" with a smoldering slow match clamped on the end provided the ignition. Early serpentines were S-shaped with the lower portion acting as the trigger, while later versions had a separate trigger. Pulling the trigger lowered the end of the burning match into a pan of priming powder, and the resulting fire would travel from the pan through a touch hole into the barrel and ignite the main powder charge. This was a lot more ergonomic than the hand cannon because you could aim by looking down the barrel and steady it with your hands and shoulder. However the burning match was sill a nuisance that glowed and produced smoke, giving away soldiers' positions in the dark, and it could cause an accidental explosion if they weren't careful. The match could be extinguished in bad weather, and unless you kept your match constantly lit your weapon was nothing but (in the other wiki's words) a "very expensive club". It was also uneconomical to keep it ready all the time, since one sentry every night would burn a mile of matchcord per year. At least it was relatively simple and cheap to make.

When guns reached Europe, they were manufactured in many sizes. The smallest early European gun was the HandCannon, the first man-portable projectile weapon using gunpowder. It was slower to fire than the longbow and much less accurate than either a longbow or a crossbow, while also having shorter range, though it could penetrate plate armor, while longbows were only able to penetrate mail.

By the 16th Century, the hand cannon was refined into the arquebus (from Dutch hakebusse, meaning "hook gun"). Although most were smaller than the typical hand cannon and therefore less powerful (the term "bulletproof" comes from armor-makers demonstrating that their plate armor would protect a customer by shooting it with an arquebus and using the dent from where the bullet bounced off as the "proof"), they were both lighter and easier to both aim and fire because of the matchlock action.

The next major development in firearm technology was the musket. This was at first basically a longer, heavier, more durable arquebus with a stock. The stock made this weapon easier to aim, though it was still an inaccurate weapon compared to the longbow (in the second half of the 18th Century, there were still proposals from [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships British Army officers]] to replace the musket and bring back the longbow, which would have been AwesomeButImpractical because of how much training it takes to become proficient: somebody can be trained enough to be an expert with a musket in a couple of weeks, while the adage describing how long it takes to train a similarly-skilled longbowman is "you must start with his grandfather"). Even in those days, they found effective ways to get around the lack of precision in smoothbore muskets: first, "fire by rank" tactics which threw a wall of lead at the enemy that was guaranteed to inflict casualties, then the use of "buck & ball" loads, seating the round-ball bullet over a small load of buckshot, which put even more lethal projectiles into each massed volley. During the time of the musket, the matchlock design became obsolete, replaced by the wheel lock, the flintlock, and the cap lock actions.

Another development in the age of muskets was rifling. A rifled barrel is one that is forged with spiraling grooves going down its length. This makes guns and firearms more accurate (and therefore, longer-ranged) by causing the projectile to spin, making it more stable. However, because a spherical projectile could not be loaded into a rifled barrel anywhere near as fast as a smoothbore barrel (it must be put inside a spherical patch coated in some sort of lubricant in order to slide down the barrel), it was not the primary weapon of most armies until [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar the final days of muzzle-loading weapons]], after Claude-Étienne Minié designed a projectile that was just as easy to load in rifles as it was in smoothbore weapons, but was not [[AwesomeButImpractical prohibitively expensive]], though specialized soldiers would often carry them, typically as the era's equivalent of a sniper rifle.

The next major development in firearm technology was the musket. This was at first basically a longer, heavier, more durable arquebus with a stock. The stock made this weapon easier to aim, though it was still an inaccurate weapon compared to the longbow (in the second half of the 18th Century, there were still proposals from [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships British Army officers]] to replace the musket and bring back the longbow, which would have been AwesomeButImpractical because of how much training it takes to become proficient: somebody can be trained enough to be an expert with a musket in a couple of weeks, while the adage describing how long it takes to train a similarly-skilled longbowman is "you must start with his grandfather"). Even in those days, they found effective ways to get around the lack of precision in smoothbore muskets: first, "fire by rank" tactics which threw a wall of lead at the enemy that was guaranteed to inflict casualties, then the use of "buck & ball loads, seating the round-ball bullet over a small load of buckshot, which put even more lethal projectiles into each massed volley. During the time of the musket, the matchlock design became obsolete, replaced by the wheel lock, the flintlock, and the cap lock actions.

The next major development in firearm technology was the musket. This was at first basically a longer, heavier, more durable arquebus with a stock. The stock made this weapon easier to aim, though it was still an inaccurate weapon compared to the longbow (in the second half of the 18th Century, there were still proposals from [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships British Army officers]] to replace the musket and bring back the longbow, which would have been AwesomeButImpractical because of how much training it takes to become proficient: somebody can be trained enough to be an expert with a musket in a couple of weeks, while the adage describing how long it takes to train a similarly-skilled longbowman is "you must start with his grandfather"). During the time of the musket, the matchlock design became obsolete, replaced by the wheel lock, the flintlock, and the cap lock actions.

* 2. A "clip" is NOT the same as a "magazine." A clip is a device used for loading a magazine, which gets its name because it is basically a small piece of metal that clips a number of cartridges together. A magazine is something that may or may not be detachable and if it is, it may or may not be disposable. It holds a

* The caplock or percussion lock, introduced ca. 1820, removed the need to pour loose powder into a priming pan. It got rid of flintlock's lock time and telltale smoking pan, as well as the flintlock's tendency to misfire in damp weather. A small brass or copper cap containing a shock-sensitive explosive such as fulminate of mercury was placed over a metal "nipple" at the end of the gun barrel, which contained the tube leading to the main charge inside the barrel. The hammer would strike this percussion cap and the explosion would travel down the tube and ignite the powder charge in the barrel.

** Semi-automatic weapons (and fully automatic weapons as well) can fire from either a "closed bolt" or an "open bolt." An open bolt is the more mechanically simple of the two; rather than a hammer or a spring loaded striker, the firing pin is permanently fixed to the bolt. Upon releasing the trigger, the sear will release the bolt, which will strip a round from the magazine, chamber it, and strike it with the firing pin. In a closed bolt design, the sear simply releases the hammer or striker onto a round pre-chambered by the bolt motion. Open bolt designs are common for submachine guns and machine guns due to the relative simplicity and the fact that the open chamber dissipates heat and prevents a chambered round from "cooking off." A closed bolt design is more accurate and compact, making it more useful for pistols and rifles. Most jurisdictions that allow civilian ownership of semi-automatic firearms require them to be of a closed-bolt design, since an open-bolt semi-auto can be converted to a fully automatic firearm with very little effort.

** Revolvers are a type of sidearm that in recent decades has become considered to be not a pistol under US usage of the term (although they are still legally considered pistols under the [[UsefulNotes/AmericanGunPolitics National Firearms Act, Gun Control Act, and most state or local laws that regulate them]]). It contains a cylinder that can hold multiple shots before reloading. The cylinder can revolve into place so each chamber containing a round is able to line up with the barrel at some point during the rotation. After it gets fired, another chamber can rotate into place and be fired. Because of this, it is the only type of repeating firearm that does not require a cartridge (although without cartridges, revolver longarms are AwesomeButImpractical, which is why they are extremely rare even in the age of cartridges). See also: RevolversAreJustBetter

* The first muzzle-loading action was just sticking a lit match into a hole in the barrel to ignite the propellant. This made it difficult to aim the weapon and was only used in the earliest weapons, the hand cannons.
* The main thing distinguishing an arquebus from a hand cannon early on was the match lock. It added a trigger assembly: a hammer would be pulled back , a fuse would be attached to the hammer, and lit, and the trigger would be pulled, dropping the hammer onto that hole in the barrel with the lit end of the fuse attached.
* After matchlocks, wheel locks and flintlocks were invented, the former likely being a creation of Creator/LeonardoDaVinci. Both of these use loose powder held in a pan by that hole in the barrel. The loose powder would be lit by a sparks created by flint (on the hammer) striking steel. The wheel lock action was too expensive due to its complexity, so did not catch on in most cases, while a simplified version, the flintlock became the dominant firearm until the invention of the percussion cap. The wheel lock was however extremely significant in that it allowed for the first practical pistols.
* The percussion cap replaced the loose powder of a flintlock or wheel lock with a contact-sensitive explosive. The hammer would strike this percussion cap and the explosion would ignite the powder.

* The bolt action was the most common type of breech-loading action in military use up until the 1950's and the second-most common in private hands outside of the United States (the United States, having the most liberal firearm laws in the world in most states, as well as the highest rate of private ownership, in addition to being a huge country with a huge population, is its own system with regard to firearm market share), after break-action shotguns. A bolt with a perpendicular handle is used to push the cartridge into the chamber and is then locked into place. While all breech-loading firearms have bolts except for break-action and falling block-action firearms, it is only in this one where the standard manual of arms includes directly operating the bolt.

The next major development in firearm technology was the musket. This was at first basically a longer, heavier, more durable arquebus with a stock. The stock made this weapon easier to aim, though it was still an inaccurate weapon compared to the longbow (in the second half of the 18th Century, there were still proposals from [[BritsWithBattleships British Army officers]] to replace the musket and bring back the longbow, which would have been AwesomeButImpractical because of how much training it takes to become proficient: somebody can be trained enough to be an expert with a musket in a couple of weeks, while the adage describing how long it takes to train a similarly-skilled longbowman is "you must start with his grandfather"). During the time of the musket, the matchlock design became obsolete, replaced by the wheel lock, the flintlock, and the cap lock actions.

* The select-fire action allows the user to select between semi-automatic and either fully-automatic or a burst setting (usually three rounds), sometimes all three, depending on the weapon. They became popular starting in the 1950's (though the concept had existed decades earlier, it wasn't until the arrival of assault rifles that it was deemed a military necessity) and are now used as the standard service rifle of almost every military, aside from a few that still use semi-automatic battle rifles.

* After matchlocks were invented, wheel locks and flintlocks were invented. Both of these use loose powder held in a pan by that hole in the barrel. The loose powder would be lit by a sparks created by flint (on the hammer) striking steel. The wheel lock action was too expensive due to its complexity, so did not catch on in most cases, while a simplified version, the flintlock became the dominant firearm until the invention of the percussion cap.

* The select-fire action allows the user to select between semi-automatic and either fully-automatic or a burst setting (usually three rounds), sometimes all three, depending on the weapon. They became popular starting in the 1950's and are now used as the standard service rifle of almost every military, aside from a few that still use semi-automatic battle rifles.

* 1. A "gun" and a "firearm" are technically two different things, although outside of the military and even in most units in the military, you can almost definitely get away with using the former word to refer to the latter. Both use chemical reactions to propel a projectile through a tube and then to a target. The difference is size. A "gun" is either a direct-fire (meaning that it is not intended to hit the target at a high angle) [[BFG crew-served weapon]] that is too large for an individual to operate or a weapon mounted on a ship that launches its projectiles in the described manner. The most common guns in modern military use are tank cannons and autocannons. Guns are ordnance, meaning that they cannot be operated by one person alone, while firearms are small arms, meaning that they can be operated by one person alone.

** Revolvers are a type of sidearm that in recent decades has become considered to be not a pistol under US usage of the term (although they are still legally considered pistols under the [[UsefulNotesAmericanGunPolitics National Firearms Act, Gun Control Act, and most state or local laws that regulate them]]). It contains a cylinder that can hold multiple shots before reloading. The cylinder can revolve into place so each chamber containing a round is able to line up with the barrel at some point during the rotation. After it gets fired, another chamber can rotate into place and be fired. Because of this, it is the only type of repeating firearm that does not require a cartridge (although without cartridges, revolver longarms are AwesomeButImpractical, which is why they are extremely rare even in the age of cartridges). See also: RevolversAreJustBetter

* The fully-automatic action is similar to the semi-automatic action, but the trigger does not have to be pulled multiple times in order to fire multiple shots. This is what a "machine gun" is. This type of action was invented by Hiram S. Maxim (his son, Hiram P. Maxim, invented the [[UsefulNotes/Silencers sound suppressor]]). However, some of the most influential ones were designed by John Moses Browning (that guy designed a lot of stuff).

Another development in the age of muskets was rifling. A rifled barrel is one that is forged with spiraling grooves going down its length. This makes guns and firearms more accurate (and therefore, longer-ranged) by causing the projectile to spin, making it more stable. However, because a spherical projectile could not be loaded into a rifled barrel anywhere near as fast as a smoothbore barrel (it must be put inside a spherical patch coated in some sort of lubricant in order to slide down the barrel), it was not the primary weapon of most armies until [[UsefulNotesAmericanCivilWar the final days of muzzle-loading weapons]], after Claude-Étienne Minié designed a projectile that was just as easy to load in rifles as it was in smoothbore weapons, but was not [[AwesomeButImpractical prohibitively expensive]], though specialized soldiers would often carry them, typically as the era's equivalent of a sniper rifle.

* The pump action (or slide action) is very similar to the lever action in most respects, though the action is operated by the supporting hand instead of the trigger hand. The first pump-action weapon was designed by the aforementioned Christopher Miner Spencer after his lever-action rifle company went bankrupt and was bought by Winchester.

* The percussion cap replaced the loose powder of a flintlock or wheel lock with a contact-sensitive explosive. The hammer would strike this percussion cap and the explosion would ignite the powder.

** Revolvers are a type of sidearm that in recent decades has become considered to be not a pistol under US usage of the term (although they are still legally considered pistols under the [[UsefulNotesAmericanGunPolitics National Firearms Act, Gun Control Act, and most state or local laws that regulate them]]).

The percussion caps that muskets used starting in the early 19th century to ignite the propellant, combined with another contemporary invention, the paper cartridge, paved the way for muzzle-loading weapons to become obsolete. Instead of using loose powder to ignite the propellant like in a flintlock or wheel lock action or a fuse like in a matchlock action, a percussion cap is a piece of metal containing a shock-sensitive explosive such as fulminate of mercury, which explodes when the trigger is pulled and the hammer drops on it, causing the propellant to ignite. A paper cartridge is basically a piece of paper containing both the propellant and the projectile. Initially, they were either ripped open and the propellant poured down the barrel with the projectile following faster than it could without paper cartridge or they were rammed down the barrel as a single unit, but the needle gun changed that. The needle gun was the first breech-loaded weapon, in which the propellant and projectile are not loaded through the muzzle, but through an opening at the other end of the barrel.

Another development in the age of muskets was rifling. A rifled barrel is one that is forged with spiraling grooves going down its length. This makes guns and firearms more accurate (and therefore, longer-ranged) by causing the projectile to spin, making it more stable. However, because a spherical projectile could not be loaded into a rifled barrel as fast as a smoothbore barrel, it wa

Another development in technology during the musket's era of dominance was the [[BayonetYa bayonet]]. Boar hunters decided that instead of carrying both a firearm and a spear, they could reduce the weight that they carried by making a plug that fits into the muzzle of a firearm and has a spearpoint at the end. This was quickly noticed by militaries, as hunting was a common passtime of the BlueBlood officers who commanded the troops and chose their equipment. It allowed firearms to be the only weapon carried by a unit, something that had never happened before. Before, they needed formations of "pike and shot," containing soldiers with firearms as well as soldiers with pikes (long spears) [[AntiCavalry to protect them from cavalry]]. As each musket could be converted into a makeshift spear, the pike became obsolete. The plug bayonet was supplanted later on by the ring bayonet, which had, instead of a plug

This article describes firearms in a more general fashion and does not concern itself as much with military use.

By the 16th Century, the hand cannon was refined into the arquebus (from Dutch hakebusse, meaning "hook gun"). Although most were smaller than the typical hand cannon and therefore less powerful (the term "bulletproof" comes from armor-makers demonstrating that their plate armor would protect a customer by shooting it with an arquebus and using the dent from where the bullet bounced off as the "proof"), they were both lighter and easier to both aim and fire because of the matchlock action.

Gunpowder was invented in China. The first weapons to use gunpowder was the fire lance: a bamboo tube that would be lit to shoot out a short jet of flame. It did not have a projectile. The design was refined into two developments: rockets were a refinement in one direction and guns and firearms were a refinement in another.

1. A "gun" and a "firearm" are technically two different things, although outside of the military and even in most units in the military, you can almost definitely get away with using the former word to refer to the latter. Both use chemical reactions to propel a projectile through a tube and then to a target. The difference is size. A "gun" is either a direct-fire (meaning that it is not intended to hit the target at a high angle) [[BFG crew-served weapon]] that is too large for an individual to operate or a weapon mounted on a ship that launches its projectiles in the described manner. The most common guns in modern military use are tank cannons and autocannons. Guns are ordnance, meaning that they cannot be operated by one person alone, while firearms are small arms, meaning that they can be operated by one person alone.
2. A "clip" is NOT the same as a "magazine." A clip is a device used for loading a magazine, which gets its name because it is basically a small piece of metal that clips a number of cartridges together. A magazine is something that may or may not be detachable and if it is, it may or may not be disposable. It holds a
3. A "bullet" is just the projectile. That thing with a brass case containing the projectile, the propellant, and a primer is called a "cartridge."