Basic Gun Terminology
Basic Gun Terminology
Basic Gun Terminology
ACTION: The working mechanism of a firearm. Various types of actions exist, including
single-shots, multi-barrels, revolvers, slide or pump actions, lever-actions, rolling blocks,
bolt-actions, semi-automatics, and fully automatics. The action is the moving parts of a
firearm that allow loading, firing, unloading and the ejection of the spent case.
AIRGUN: The airgun is not a firearm but a gun that uses compressed air or carbon dioxide
(CO2) to propel a bb or pellet. Examples: BB gun, pellet gun, CO2 gun. They typically come
in .177 and .22 calibers.
ANTIQUE: By federal definition, a firearm manufactured prior to 1899 or a firearm for which
ammunition is not generally available or a firearm incapable of firing fixed ammunition.
ASSAULT RIFLE: By U.S. Army definition, a selective-fire rifle chambered for a cartridge of
intermediate power. If applied to any semi-automatic firearm regardless of its cosmetic
similarity to a true assault rifle, the term is incorrect. Let me clarify that a true assault rifle
can fire automatically, like a machine gun. The media has successfully reworked the
meaning of "assault weapon" to mean semi-automatic rifles with removable magazines. If
you repeat a lie often enough, people who don't know the truth will just accept it. I think
Adolph Hitler said something like that.
ASSAULT WEAPON: Any weapon used in an assault (see WEAPON). Get it, assault is a verb,
not an adjective.
AUTOMATIC: A firearm designed to feed cartridges, fire them, eject their empty cases and
repeat this cycle as long as the trigger is depressed and cartridges remain in the feeding
system. Examples: machine guns, submachine guns, selective-fire rifles, including true
assault rifles.
AUTOMATIC PISTOL: A term used often to describe what is actually a semi-automatic pistol.
It is, technically, a misnomer but a near century of use has legitimized it, and its use
confuses only the novice. A machine pistol is a different thing altogether. When shooters
refer to an automatic handgun, they are more than likely referring to a semi-automatic
handgun and not a true machine pistol.
BALL: Originally a spherical projectile, now generally a fully jacketed bullet of cylindrical
profile with a round or pointed nose. Most commonly used in military terminology.
BLACKPOWDER: The earliest type of firearms propellant that has generally been replaced by
smokeless powder except for use in muzzleloaders and older breechloading guns that
demand its lower pressure levels. The basic recipe for black powder was put together by
the Chinese just after the year 900 A.D.
BLANK CARTRIDGE: A round loaded with black powder or a special smokeless powder but
lacking a projectile or bullet. Used mainly in starting races, theatrical productions, troop
exercises and in training dogs.
BORE: The interior of a firearm's barrel excluding the chamber. Bore is measured from land
to land. (not from within the grooves)
CALIBER: The nominal diameter of a projectile of a rifled firearm or the diameter between
lands in a rifled barrel. In this country, usually expressed in hundreds of an inch; in Great
Britain in thousandths; in Europe and elsewhere in millimeters.
CARBINE: A rifle with a relatively short barrel. Any rifle or carbine with a barrel less than 16"
long must be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Shotguns with
barrels less than 18" long fall into the same category. Most carbines are semi-automatic
center-fire rifles with short barrels. Semi-automatic carbines of 5.56mm and 7.62mm, are
sometimes erroneously called 'assault rifles'.
CARTRIDGE: A single, complete round of ammunition consisting of the case, powder, bullet,
and primer. It can also mean a complete shotgun shell.
CASE, CASING: The metal container of a cartridge. For rifles and handguns, it is usually of
brass or other metal; for shotguns, it is usually of paper or plastic with a metal head and is
more often called a "shell."
CENTER-FIRE: A cartridge with its primer located in the center of the base of the case.
CHAMBER: The rear part of the barrel that is formed to accept the cartridge to be fired. A
revolver employs a multi-chambered rotating cylinder separated from the stationary barrel.
This rotating chamber rotates the live cartridge under the firing pin.
CHOKE: A constriction at or near the muzzle of a shotgun barrel that affects shot dispersion.
CLIP: A device for holding a group of cartridges. Semantic wars have been fought over the
word, with some insisting it is not a synonym for "detachable magazine." For 80 years,
however, it has been so used by manufacturers and the military. There is no argument that it
can also mean a separate device for holding and transferring a group of cartridges to a fixed
or detachable magazine or as a device inserted with cartridges into the mechanism of a
firearm becoming, in effect, part of that mechanism. In my opinion, a clip is not the same as
a magazine, however, it seems that I have been overruled by the abuse of this term.
COP-KILLER BULLET: An inflammatory phrase having neither historical basis nor legal or
technical meanings. This is merely a media contrived term to gain a sensationalistic slant.
CYLINDER: The drum of a revolver that contains the chambers for the ammunition.
DERRINGER: A small single-shot or multi-barreled (rarely more than two) pocket pistol.
Although I have seen them with four barrels.
DETONATE: To explode with great violence. It is generally associated with high explosives
e.g. TNT, dynamite, etc., and not with the relatively slow-burning smokeless gun powders
that are classed as propellants.
DOUBLE-ACTION: A handgun mechanism where pulling the trigger retracts and releases the
hammer or firing pin to initiate discharge. The trigger performs two functions, namely
cocking the hammer and releasing the hammer. Because the action in a double-action
firearm performs two separate actions, it is called 'double-action'.
DUM-DUM BULLET: A British military bullet developed in India's Dum-Dum Arsenal and
used on India's North West Frontier and in Sudan in 1897 and 1898. It was a jacketed .303
cal. British bullet with the jacket nose left open to expose the lead core in the hope of
increasing effectiveness. Improvement was not pursued, for the Hague Convention of 1899
(not the Geneva Convention of 1925, which dealt largely with gas warfare) outlawed such
bullets for warfare. Often "dum-dum" is misused as a term for any soft-nosed or hollow-
pointed hunting bullet.
EXPLOSIVE: Any substance (TNT, etc.) that, through a chemical reaction, detonates or
violently changes to gas with accompanying heat and pressure. Smokeless powder, by
comparison, burns relatively slowly and depends on its confinement in a cartridge case and
chamber for its potential as a propellant to be realized.
FIREARM: A rifle, shotgun or handgun using gunpowder as a propellant. By federal
definition, under the 1968 Gun Control Act, antiques are excepted. Under the National
Firearms Act, the word designates machine guns, etc. Air guns, pellet guns and/or bb guns
are not firearms.
FIXED AMMUNITION: A complete cartridge of several types and of today's rimfire and
center-fire versions.
GAUGE: The bore size of a shotgun determined by the number of round lead balls of bore
diameter that equals a pound. For example, take one pound of lead, divide it equally into
12 spheres. Each sphere would be 12 gauge in diameter. Therefore, if you follow that
definition it is easier to see why a 20 gauge shotgun is smaller in diameter than a 12 gauge
shotgun.
GUN: The British restrict the term in portable arms to shotguns. Here it is properly used for
rifles, shotguns, handguns, and air guns, as well as some cannons.
HANDGUN: Another name for a pistol or revolver. The term handgun (actually handgonne)
was first used in the year 1388. Here is a picture of a handgun that has been dated very
close to that era. Firearms have been around since about the year 1245-1250 according to
most historians who know their stuff.
HOLLOW-POINT BULLET: A bullet with a cavity in its nose to increase expansion upon
penetration of a target. There is much misinformation being bandied about by people with
an alarming lack of knowledge about this subject. Hollowpoint bullets are bullets that are
merely designed with an empty cavity in its nose so that the diameter of the bullet increases
slightly after it enters a target.
JACKET: The envelope enclosing the core of a bullet. Usually made of copper and exists to
help retain bullet weight throughout the penetration of a target.
LEVER-ACTION: A gun mechanism activated by manual operation of a lever. The .30-30 rifle
used on the Rifleman television show was a lever-action.
MAGAZINE: A spring-loaded container for cartridges that may be an integral part of the
gun's mechanism or may be detachable. Detachable magazines for the same gun may be
offered by the gun's manufacturer or other manufacturers with various capacities. A gun
with a five-shot detachable magazine, for instance, may be fitted with a magazine holding
10, 20, or 50 or more rounds. Box magazines are most commonly located under the receiver
with the cartridges stacked vertically. Tube or tubular magazines run through the stock or
under the barrel with the cartridges lying horizontally. Drum magazines hold their cartridges
in a circular mode.
MAGNUM: A term indicating a relatively heavily loaded metallic cartridge or shotshell and,
by extension, a gun safely constructed to fire it. Usually, a magnum cartridge is longer to
hold more powder.
MULTI-BARRELED: A gun with more than one barrel, the most common being the double-
barreled shotgun.
MUZZLE: The open end of the barrel from which the projectile exits.
MUZZLE BRAKE: An attachment to or an integral part of the barrel intended to trap and
divert expanding gasses and reduce recoil.
MUZZLE LOADER: The earliest type of gun, now also popular as modern-made replicas, in
which black powder and projectile(s) are separately loaded in through the muzzle. The term
is often applied to cap-and-ball revolvers where the loading is done not actually through
the muzzle but through the open ends of the cylinder's chambers.
PELLETS: Small spherical projectiles loaded in shotshells and more often called "shot." Also,
the skirted projectiles used in air guns or pellet guns.
PELLET GUN: A rifle or pistol using compressed air or CO2 to propel a skirted pellet as
opposed to a spherical BB. Not a firearm.
PISTOL: Synonymous with "handgun." A gun that is generally held in one hand. It may be of
the single-shot, multi-barrel, repeating or semi-automatic variety and includes revolvers.
PLINKING: Informal shooting at any of a variety of inanimate targets. The most often
practiced shooting sport in this country.
RECEIVER: The housing for a firearm's breech (a portion of the barrel with the chamber into
which a cartridge or projectile is loaded) and firing mechanism.
RIFLING: Spiral grooves in a gun's bore that spin the projectile in flight and impart accuracy.
Rifling is present in all true rifles, in most handguns and in some shotgun barrels designed
for increasing the accuracy potential of slugs( a slug is a single projectile rather than the
more common "shot".)
RIMFIRE: A rimmed or flanged cartridge with the priming mixture located inside the rim of
the case. The most famous example is the .22 rimfire. It has been estimated that between 3-
4 billion .22 cartridges are fired in the U.S. each year.
ROUND: Another name for a single cartridge. New shooters and people unfamiliar with
firearms have sometimes been confused by the term 'round'. They need not be confused
any longer. A 'round' is a single cartridge. Instead of saying that 'I just fired a single shot at
the target.' You could say, 'I just shot one round'.
SEMI-AUTOMATIC: A firearm that is designed to fire a single cartridge, eject the empty case
and reload the chamber from an ammunition magazine of some type each time the trigger
is pulled.
SHOTGUN: A shoulder-fired gun with smooth-bored barrel(s) primarily intended for firing
multiple small, round projectiles, (shot, birdshot, pellets), larger shot (buckshot), single
round balls and cylindrical slugs. Some shotgun barrels have rifling to give better accuracy
with slugs or greater pattern spread to birdshot.
SHOTSHELL: The cartridge for a shotgun. It is also called a "shell," and its body may be of
metal or plastic or of plastic or paper with a metal head. Small shotshells are also made for
rifles and handguns and are often used for vermin control.
SILENCER: A virtually prohibited device for attachment to a gun's muzzle for reducing (not
silencing) the report. Better terms would be "sound suppressor" or "sound moderator."
Silencers are effective in reducing the sound created by a gunshot, but it is usually only
effective if the ammunition is 'downloaded' so that the bullet does not break the sound
barrier.
SNUB-NOSED: Descriptive of (usually) a revolver with an unusually short barrel of say two
inches or less.
SUB-MACHINE GUN: A fully automatic firearm commonly firing pistol ammunition intended
for close-range combat.
TEFLON - Trade name for a synthetic sometimes used to coat hard bullets to protect the
rifling. Other synthetics, nylon, for instance, have also been used as bullet coatings. None of
these soft coatings has any effect on lethality.