Glossary of firearms terms

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The following are terms related to

firearms and ammunition
topics.

A

B

The Steyr AUG, the first successful bullpup rifle
  • Burst mode
    : A firing mode enabling the shooter to fire a predetermined number of rounds, with a single pull of the trigger.
  • Browning:
    John Moses Browning, an American firearms designer. The name is also used to refer to his designs, some of which include the M2 Browning, Browning Auto-5, and Browning Hi-Power
    .
  • Bullet: the small metal projectile that is part of a cartridge and is fired through the barrel. Sometimes, but incorrectly, used to refer to a cartridge.
  • Button rifling:
    hammer forging
    .

C

  • Caliber/calibre: In small arms, the internal diameter of a firearm's barrel or a cartridge's bullet, usually expressed in millimeters or hundredths of an inch; in measuring rifled barrels this may be measured across the lands (.303 British) or grooves (.308 Winchester) or; a specific cartridge for which a firearm is chambered, such as .45 ACP or .357 Magnum. In artillery, the length of the barrel expressed in terms of the internal bore diameter.
  • Caplock
    : An obsolete mechanism for discharging a firearm.
  • Carbine: A shortened version of a service rifle, often chambered in a less potent cartridge or; a shortened version of the infantryman's musket or rifle suited for use by cavalry.
  • Cartridge: The assembly consisting of a bullet, gunpowder, shell casing, and primer. When counting, it is referred to as a "round".
  • Caseless ammunition: A type of small arms ammunition that eliminates the cartridge case that typically holds the primer, propellant, and projectile together as a unit.
  • Casket magazine
    : A quad stack box magazine.
  • cartridge in which the primer is located in the center of the cartridge case head. Unlike rimfire cartridges, the primer is a separate and replaceable component. The centerfire cartridge has replaced the rimfire in all but the smallest cartridge sizes. Except for low-powered .22 and .17 caliber cartridges, and a handful of antiques, all modern pistol, rifle, and shotgun
    ammunition are centerfire.
  • Chain gun: A type of single barrelled machine gun or autocannon that uses an external source of power to cycle the weapon.
  • Chamber: The portion of the barrel or firing cylinder in which the cartridge is inserted prior to being fired. Rifles and pistols generally have a single chamber in their barrels, while revolvers have multiple chambers in their cylinders and no chamber in their barrel.
  • Chambering: Inserting a round into the chamber, either manually or through the action of the weapon.
  • Charger: Commonwealth parlance for a stripper clip, a speedloader that holds several cartridges together in a single unit for easier loading of a firearm's magazine.
  • Charging handle
    : Device on a firearm which, when operated, results in the hammer or striker being cocked or moved to the ready position.
  • Choke: A tapered constriction of a shotgun barrel's bore at the muzzle end. Chokes are almost always used with modern hunting and target shotguns, to improve performance
A clip being inserted into a Karabiner 98k
  • Clip: A device that is used to store multiple rounds of ammunition together as a unit, ready for insertion into the magazine of a repeating firearm
    . This speeds up the process of loading and reloading the firearm as several rounds can be loaded at once, rather than one round being loaded at a time.
  • handloaders for the same cartridge. For the last several decades, the rule of thumb was the closer you seated the bullet to the lands, the better the accuracy. Currently, it is understood that this isn't always true. It is true that some bullets and some rifles perform best when bullets are seated out long enough to touch the lands, but other bullets perform best when they have a certain amount of “jump” to the lands. The only rule is: there is no rule.[4]
  • United States military
    , but it has since expanded into broader use.
  • Collimator sight: A type of optical "blind" sight that allows the user looking into it to see an illuminated aiming point aligned with the device the sight is attached to regardless of eye position (parallax free).[6] The user can not see through the sight so it is used with both eyes open while one looks into the sight, with one eye open and moving the head to alternately see the sight and then at the target, or using one eye to partially see the sight and target at the same time.[7] (variant names/types: "collimating sight",[8]"occluded eye gunsight" (OEG).[9])
  • Combination gun: A shoulder-held firearm that has two or more barrels; and at least one rifle barrel and one shotgun barrel. Most combination guns are of an over-under design (O/U), in which the two barrels are stacked vertically on top of each other, but side-by-side (SxS), in which the two barrels are parrarel to one another are also made.
  • Cooking off: The premature explosion of ammunition, for example when a gun is hot from sustained firing the heat can ignite the propellant and make the weapon fire.
  • low explosive because of its slow burning rates and consequently low brisance. The hot gases produced by burning gunpowder or cordite generate sufficient pressure to propel a bullet or shell to its target, but not enough to destroy the barrel of the firearm, or gun
    .
  • CQB: close-quarters combat (CQC) or close quarters battle (CQB) is a type of fighting in which small units engage the enemy with personal weapons at very short range, potentially to the point of hand-to-hand combat or fighting with hand weapons such as swords or knives.
  • bore. It was invented by Captain John Norton of the British 34th Regiment in 1832, after he examined the blow pipe arrows used by the natives in India and found that their base was formed of elastic lotus pith, which by its expansion against the inner surface of the blow pipe prevented the escape of air past it.[10]

D

A view of the break-action of a side-by-side double-barreled shotgun.

E

  • ear defenders
    .
  • Effective range: The maximum range at which a particular firearm can accurately hit a target.
  • cartridge, instead of a percussion cap
    . In an electronic-fired firearm an electric current is used instead to ignite the propellant, which fires the cartridge as soon as the trigger is pulled.
  • Eye relief: For optics such as binoculars or a rifle scope, eye relief is the distance from the eyepiece to the viewer's eye that matches the eyepiece exit pupil to the eye's entrance pupil. Short eye relief requires the observer to press their eye close to the eyepiece in order to see an un-vignetted image. For a shooter, eye relief is an important safety consideration. An optic with too short an eye relief can cut skin at the contact point between the optic and the shooter's eyebrow due to recoil.
  • Expanding bullet: An expanding bullet is a bullet designed to expand on impact, increasing in diameter to limit penetration and/or produce a larger diameter wound. The two typical designs are the hollow-point bullet and the soft-point bullet.
  • Extractor: A part in a firearm that serves to remove brass cases of fired ammunition after the ammunition has been fired. When the gun's action cycles, the extractor lifts or removes the spent brass casing from the firing chamber.

F

A field stripped Thompson submachine gun
  • Feed ramp: A detail which leads the cartridge from the magazine into the chamber.
  • Field strip: Disassembling a firearm for the purpose of repair or cleaning, without tools. When using tools, this is called a detail strip.
  • Firearm: A weapon that fires bullets, and of such a size that is designed for usage by one individual.
  • metallic cartridge case to fit a new chamber by firing it within that chamber.[12]
  • Firing pin: The part of a firearm that strikes the primer, discharging the round.
  • Forcing cone: The tapered section at the rear of the barrel of a revolver that eases the entry of the bullet into the bore.[13]
  • Flash suppressor or flash hider: A device that is attached to the muzzle of a firearm, that lowers the temperature at which gases disperse upon firing.
  • Flintlock: An obsolete mechanism for discharging a firearm.
  • Fluted barrel: Removal of material from a cylindrical surface, usually creating grooves. This is most often the barrel of a rifle, though it may also refer to the cylinder of a revolver or the bolt of a bolt action rifle. In contrast to rifle barrels and revolver cylinders, rifle bolts are normally helically fluted, though helical fluting is sometimes also applied to rifle barrels.
  • Fluted chamber: A barrel chamber that allows gas to leak around the cartridge during extraction. Fluted chambers are often found in Delayed Blowback firearms.
  • Fouling shot: A fouling shot is a shot fired through a clean bore, intended to leave some residue of firing and prepare the bore for more consistent performance in subsequent shots. The first shot through a clean bore behaves differently from subsequent shots through a bore with traces of powder residue, resulting in a different point of impact. Also, the Fouling Shot Journal, a publication of the Cast Bullet Association[14]
  • AR-15-styled rifles, usually located near the bolt closure, that when hit, pushes the bolt
    carrier forward, ensuring that the bolt is locked.
  • Fouling: The accumulation of unwanted material on solid surfaces. The fouling material can consist of either powder, lubrication residue, or bullet material such as lead or copper.
  • range safety, to limit environmental impact, or to limit the danger behind the intended target. Examples are the Glaser Safety Slug and the breaching round.[15][16]
  • Frizzen: An L-shaped piece of steel hinged at the rear used in flintlock firearms. The flint scraping the steel throws a shower of sparks into the flash pan.

G

The M60, a general purpose machine gun
  • General purpose machine gun
    : A machine gun intended to fill the role of either a light machine gun or medium machine gun, while at the same time being man-portable.
  • unit of measurement of mass that is based upon the mass of a single seed of a typical cereal. Used in firearms to denote the amount of powder in a cartridge or the weight of a bullet. Traditionally it was based on the weight of a grain of wheat or barley, but since 1958, the grain (gr) measure has been redefined using the International System of Units as precisely 64.79891 mg.[18][19] There are 7,000 grains per avoirdupois pound in the Imperial and U.S. customary units
    .
  • Grip safety: A safety mechanism, usually a lever on the rear of a pistol grip, that automatically unlocks the trigger mechanism of a firearm as pressure is applied by the shooter's hand.[13]
  • firearms and as a pyrotechnic composition in fireworks. The term gunpowder also refers broadly to any propellant powder. Modern firearms do not use the traditional gunpowder (black powder) described here, but instead use smokeless powder
    .
  • Gun serial number: A unique identifier given to a specific firearm.

H

Revolver hammer
  • Hammer: The function of the hammer is to strike the firing pin in a firearm, which in turn detonates the impact-sensitive cartridge primer. The hammer of a firearm
    was given its name for both resemblance and functional similarity to the common tool.
  • Handgun: A type of firearm that is compact enough that it can be held and used with only a single hand.
  • Headspace: The distance measured from the part of the chamber that stops forward motion of the cartridge (the datum reference) to the face of the bolt. Used as a verb, headspace refers to the interference created between this part of the chamber and the feature of the cartridge that achieves the correct positioning.[21]
  • Headstamp: A headstamp is the markings on the bottom of a cartridge case designed for a firearm. It usually tells who manufactured the case. If it is a civilian case it often also tells the caliber, if it is military, the year of manufacture is often added.
  • Heavy machine gun: A machine gun firing large diameter rifle cartridges, considerably larger than a medium or light machine gun. Most heavy machine guns fire larger rounds, such as the .50 BMG or 12.7×108mm.
  • High brass: A shotgun shell for more powerful loads with the brass extended up further along the sides of the shell, while light loads use "low brass" shells. The brass does not provide significantly more strength, but the difference in appearance helps shooters quickly differentiate between higher and lower powered ammunition.
  • hologram of the reticle is built into the window and is illuminated by a laser diode
    .

I

Ackley Improved
(left) and .243 Winchester (right)

J

Jacketed bullets
  • Jacket: A metal, usually copper, wrapped around a lead core to form a bullet.
  • Jam: A type of firearm malfunction, in which a cartridge does not load correctly and needs to be resolved by the user to maintain proper functioning.
  • Jeweling: A cosmetic process to enhance the looks of firearm parts, such as the bolt. The look is created with an abrasive brush and compound that roughs the surface of the metal in a circular pattern. Asides aesthetics, it can be used as an anti-glare on the barrel and hold lubricants on components.

K

  • Keyhole or keyholing: Refers to the end-over-end tumbling of the bullet which will often leave an elongated or keyhole shaped hole in a paper target. This occurs when the bullet is insufficiently stabilised by the firearm's rifling, either because the rifling is too slow or long for a given bullet, also meaning that the bullet is too long or tail heavy for said rifling. Or else due to poor fit of an undersize bullet in the gun barrel. In these cases the bullet has a natural tendency to wobble, and may start to tumble end-over-end just encountering the resistance of the air. Keyholing can also occur in wounding (human or animal), when the bullet is sufficiently stabilised for penetrating the air only, but not for penetrating denser media such as bone or flesh. In these cases tumbling starts at some point inside the victim's body, subsequently causing massive wounding. When using a bullet/rifling combination which is just sufficiently stabilised for normal flight though free air, and so to easily produce massive keyhole wounds in the victim, then keyholing may occur quite easily in flight if any obstacle is encountered, be it a twig, leaf, even a blade of grass or a large rain-drop.
  • Khyber Pass copy: A firearm manufactured by cottage gunsmiths in the Khyber Pass region between Pakistan and Afghanistan
    .
  • Kick: The recoil or backward momentum of a firearm when it is discharged.

L

  • Laser sight: an attachment that projects a laser beam onto the target, providing a rough point of impact.
  • Leading: The act of aiming a firearm in front of a moving target, to compensate for the bullet's travel time.
  • Length of pull: The distance between the trigger and the butt end of the shoulder stock of a rifle or shotgun.
Lever-action rifle
  • chamber of the barrel
    when the lever is worked.
  • Light machine gun: a class of machine gun often defined as being designed for carry and use by a single operator and firing the same intermediate-power cartridge as other soldiers in a unit.
  • armed forces
    , though the term can also apply to civilian activity.
  • Lock: the mechanism of a firearm that is used to initiate the ignition and propel the projectile down the barrel.
  • Lug: any piece that projects from a firearm for the purpose of attaching something to it. For example, barrel lugs are used to attach a break-action shotgun barrel to the action itself. If the firearm is a revolver, the term may also refer to a protrusion under the barrel that adds weight, thereby stabilizing the gun during aiming, mitigating recoil, and reducing
    muzzle flip. A full lug extends all the way to the muzzle, while a half lug extends only partially down the barrel. On a swing-out-cylinder revolver, the lug is slotted to accommodate the ejector rod.[13]

M

  • Machine gun: A fully automatic weapon capable of sustained fire over a long period of time.
  • Machine pistol: A pistol capable of automatic fire. Also used interchangeably with submachine gun.
  • Magazine: A magazine is an ammunition storage and feeding device within or attached to a repeating firearm. Magazines may be integral to the firearm (fixed) or removable (detachable). 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.
AK-47 with magazines
  • Match grade: Firearm parts and ammunition that are suitable for a competitive match. This refers to parts that are designed and manufactured such that they have a relatively tight-tolerances and high level of accuracy.
  • Matchlock: An obsolete mechanism for discharging a firearm.
  • Medium machine gun: A class of machine gun often defined as being designed for carry and use by multiple operators, firing a full-power rifle cartridge.
  • Mine shell: A high explosive round used for armour piercing etc.
  • Muzzle: The part of a firearm at the end of the barrel from which the projectile
    exits.
  • Muzzle brakes and recoil compensators: Devices that are fitted to the muzzle of a firearm to redirect propellant gases with the effect of countering both recoil of the gun and unwanted rising of the barrel during rapid fire.
  • muzzle
    of a firearm. It is often used as a rough indication of the destructive potential of a given firearm or load. The heavier the bullet and the faster it moves, the higher its muzzle energy and the more damage it does.
  • muzzle of the gun. Muzzle velocities range from approximately 800 ft/s (240 m/s) for some pistols and older cartridges to more than 4,000 ft/s (1,200 m/s) in modern cartridges such as the .220 Swift and .204 Ruger. In conventional guns, muzzle velocity is determined by the quality (burn speed, expansion) and quantity of the propellant
    , the mass of the projectile, and the length of the barrel.

N

O

  • Out-of-battery: The status of a weapon before the action has returned to the normal firing position. The term originates from artillery, referring to a gun that fires before it has been pulled back into its firing position in a gun battery. In firearms where there is an automatic loading mechanism, a condition in which a live round is at least partially in the firing chamber and capable of being fired, but is not properly secured by the usual mechanism of that particular weapon can occur.
  • Over and Under (O/U): A configuration for double-barreled shotguns, in which the barrels are arranged vertically
  • Over-bore: Small caliber bullets being used in very large cases.[23] It is the relationship between the volume of powder that can fit in a case and the diameter of the inside of the barrel or bore.[24]
  • swage
    .
  • Offset mount: A situation wherein it may not be practical to mount a telescopic sight directly above the receiver and barrel of a firearm. This was noted with many military and service arms where new ammunition was fed from above along a similar path, in reverse, to the spent cartridge cases being ejected clear. Not often seen or used today, although complete or partial sets of offset mounts attract keen interest from restorers and collectors.
  • bolt to the rear of the receiver when ready to fire. This means that when the trigger is pulled the bolt moves forward, feeds a cartridge into the chamber
    and fires that cartridge in one movement.
  • Open sight: A type of
    iron sight
    that has an open notch.
  • Open Tip Match: The open tip design employs a precision deep drawn jacket with lead inserted from the front tip and ogival forming from the open tip mouth, and originated strictly for competitive match.

P

  • Paramilitary ammunition: Firearm ammunition not used by the armed forces but retains combat capabilities and sold commercially to civilians or used by various law enforcement/government organisations.[25][26]
  • Paramilitary firearm: Firearms not used by the armed forces but retains military capabilities (IE: Design layout, ergonomics, field strip ability, modularity etc). The term may refer to semi automatic only variants of military firearms sold to civilians/law enforcement agencies/government paramilitary organisations or privately-owned military firearms (semi- or full-auto) chambered in civilian rounds.[27]
  • Parkerizing
    : A method of protecting a steel surface from corrosion and increasing its resistance to wear through the application of an electrochemical phosphate conversion coating. Also called phosphating and phosphatizing.
  • Parts kit: A kit of firearm parts minus the receiver. Used to build a complete firearm with the purchase or manufacture of a receiver (regulated in the US).
  • fulminate of mercury
    . The percussion cap is placed over a hollow metal "nipple" at the rear end of the gun barrel. Pulling the trigger releases a hammer, which strikes the percussion cap and ignites the explosive primer. The flame travels through the hollow nipple to ignite the main powder charge.
  • Picatinny rail: A bracket used on some firearms to provide a standardized mounting platform.
  • Pinfire
    : An obsolete type of brass cartridge in which the priming compound is ignited by striking a small pin that protrudes radially from just above the base of the cartridge.
  • tin cans, glass bottles, and balloons filled with water.[28]
  • POA: point of aim.
  • Point of Impact: The exact place at which a bullet hits its target.
  • Pistol: A type of firearm that can be held and fired with one hand. The word pistol is usually used to refer specifically to a semi-automatic pistol.
Pistol grip on a SIG SG 550

R

  • Ramrod: A device used with early firearms to push the projectile up against the propellant (mainly gunpowder).
  • Rate of fire: The frequency at which a firearm can fire its projectiles. Usually measured in RPM (rounds per minute).
  • Receiver: the part of a firearm that houses the operating parts.
  • Newton's third law
    . (often called kickback or simply kick).
  • Recoil operation: An operating mechanism used in locked-breech, autoloading firearms. As the name implies, these actions use the force of recoil to provide energy to cycle the action.
  • Red dot magnifier: An optical telescope that can be paired with a non-magnifying optical sight turning the combination into a telescopic sight
    .
  • Red dot sight: A type of reflector (reflex) sight for firearms that gives the uses a red light-emitting diode as a reticle to create an aim point.
  • Reflector (reflex) sight: A generally non-magnifying optical device that has an optically collimated reticle, allowing the user to look through a partially reflecting glass element and see a parallax free cross hair or other projected aiming point superimposed on the field of view.[29] Invented in 1900 but not generally used on firearms until reliably illuminated versions were invented in the late 1970s (usually referred to by the abbreviation "reflex sight").
  • Reversed bullet: A bullet placed in the cartridge backwards as an ad-hoc way of armour piercing.
  • Revolver: A repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing.
  • Ricochet: A rebound, bounce or skip off a surface, particularly in the case of a projectile.
  • Rifle bedding: A process of filling gaps between the action and the stock of a rifle with an epoxy based material.
Carl Gustaf 8.4cm recoilless rifle

S

A Benelli M4 shotgun with a sling
  • Sabot: A device used in a firearm to fire a projectile, such as a bullet, that is smaller than the bore diameter.
  • Safety: A mechanism used to help prevent the accidental discharge of a firearm in case of unsafe handling. Safeties can generally be divided into sub-types such as internal safeties (which typically do not receive input from the user) and external safeties (which typically allow the user to give input, for example, toggling a lever from "on" to "off" or something similar). Sometimes these are called "passive" and "active" safeties (or "automatic" and "manual"), respectively.
  • Sawed-off shotgun/Sawn off shotgun/Short-barreled shotgun (SBS): A type of shotgun with a shorter gun barrel and often a shorter or deleted stock.
  • burst fire
    mechanisms to limit the maximum or total number of shots fired automatically in this mode. The most common limits are two or three rounds per pull of the trigger.
  • Selector: The part of a selective fire weapon that allows the user to choose their desired mode of firing.
  • Semi-automatic: Firing a single round of ammunition each time the trigger is pulled.
  • Semi-automatic pistol: A pistol that has a single chamber, and is capable of semi-automatic fire.
  • Semi-wadcutter (SWC): A type of all-purpose bullet commonly used in revolvers that combines features of the wadcutter target bullet and traditional round nosed revolver bullets, and is used in both revolver and pistol cartridges for hunting, target shooting, and plinking. The basic SWC design consists of a roughly conical nose, truncated with a flat point, sitting on a cylinder. The flat nose punches a clean hole in the target, rather than tearing it like a round nose bullet would, and the sharp shoulder enlarges the hole neatly, allowing easy and accurate scoring of the target. The SWC design offers better external ballistics than the wadcutter, as its conical nose produces less drag than the flat cylinder.
  • Shooting range: Specialized facility designed for firearms practice.
  • Shooting sticks
    : Portable weapon mounts.
  • Short-barreled rifle (SBR): A legal designation in the United States, referring to a shoulder-fired, rifled firearm with a barrel length of less than 16" (40.6 cm) or overall length of less than 26" (66.0 cm).
  • shotshell
    , which releases a large number of small projectiles (shot) or a single large projectile (slug) upon firing.
  • Side by side (SxS): A configuration for double-barreled shotguns, in which the barrels are arranged horizontally
  • Silencer, suppressor, sound suppressor, sound moderator, or "hush puppy": A device attached to or part of the barrel of a firearm to reduce the amount of noise and flash
    generated by firing the weapon.
  • Single-action: Usually referring to a pistol or revolver
    , single-action is when the hammer is pulled back manually by the shooter (cocking it), after which the trigger is operated to fire the shot. See also double-action.
  • Single-shot: A firearm that holds only a single round of ammunition and must be reloaded after each shot.
  • Slamfire: A premature, unintended discharge of a firearm that occurs as a round is being loaded into the chamber.
  • Sleeving: A method of using new tubes to replace a worn-out gun barrel.[30]
  • Slide bite or Snake bite: A phenomenon often grouped with hammer bite, in this case the web of the shooting hand is cut or abraded by the rearward motion of the semi-automatic pistol's slide, not by the gun's hammer. This most often occurs with small pistols like the
    Walther PPK and Walther TPH
    that have an abbreviated grip tang. This problem is exacerbated by the sharp machining found on many firearms.
  • Sling: A type of strap or harness designed to allow an operator carry a firearm (usually a long gun such as a rifle, carbine, shotgun, or submachine gun) on his/her person and/or aid in greater hit probability with that firearm.
  • Snubnosed revolver: A revolver with a very short barrel.
  • Speedloader: A device used for loading a firearm or firearm magazine with loose ammunition very quickly. Generally, speedloaders are used for loading all chambers of a revolver simultaneously, although speedloaders of different designs are also used for the loading of fixed tubular magazines of shotguns and rifles, or the loading of box or drum magazines. Revolver speedloaders are used for revolvers having either swing-out cylinders or top-break cylinders.
  • Spitzer bullet: An aerodynamic bullet design.
  • Sporterising, sporterisation, or sporterization: The practice of modifying military-type firearms either to make them suitable for civilian sporting use or to make them legal under the law.
  • Squib load, also known as squib round, pop and no kick, or just squib: A firearms malfunction in which a fired projectile does not have enough force behind it to exit the barrel, and thus becomes stuck. Squib loads make the firearm unsafe to shoot, unless the projectile can be removed.
  • Stock: The part of a rifle or other firearm, to which the barrel and firing mechanism are attached, that is held against one's shoulder when firing the gun. The stock provides a means for the shooter to firmly support the device and easily aim it.
  • Stopping power: The ability of a firearm or other weapon to cause a penetrating ballistic injury to a target, human or animal, sufficient to incapacitate the target where it stands.
  • Stripper clip: A speedloader that holds several cartridges together in a single unit for easier loading of a firearm's magazine.
  • Submachine gun: A type of automatic, magazine-fed weapon that fires pistol cartridges.
  • Swage: To reduce an item in size by forcing through a die. In internal ballistics, swaging refers to the process where bullets are swaged into the rifling of the barrel by the force of the expanding powder gases.
  • Swaged bullet: A bullet that is formed by forcing the bullet into a die to assume its final form.
  • Swaged choke: A constriction or choke in a shotgun barrel formed by a swaging process that compresses the outside of the barrel.
  • Swaged rifling:
    button rifling
    .

T

  • Tapering: Firearm components that narrow down to a conical fashion hence the name taper, notably with barrels and cartridges.
  • Taylor KO Factor: Mathematical approach for evaluating the stopping power of hunting cartridges, which favors cartridges with a high momentum
    and a large bullet diameter.
  • Telescoping stock or collapsing stock: A stock on a firearm that can telescope or fold in on itself to become more compact. Telescoping stocks are useful for storing a rifle
    or weapon in a space that it would not normally fit in.
  • Terminal ballistics: A sub-field of ballistics, the study of the behavior of a projectile when it hits its target.[31]
  • Throat Erosion (firearms): The wearing of the portion of the barrel where the gas pressure and heat is highest as the projectile leaves the chamber. The greater the chamber pressure, the more rapid throat erosion occurs. This is compounded by rapid firing, which heats and weakens the steel.
  • Trigger: A mechanism that actuates the firing sequence of a firearm. Triggers almost universally consist of levers or buttons actuated by the index finger.
  • Trunnion: a cylindrical protrusion used as a mounting and/or pivoting point. On firearms, the barrel is sometimes mounted in a trunnion, which in turn is mounted to the receiver.
  • Turn bolt
    : A turn bolt refers to a firearm component that where the whole bolt without using a bolt carrier turns to lock/unlock. This is mostly used to describe manually operated bolt action firearms, but also on some automatic firearms.

U

  • Upset forging: A process that increases the diameter of a workpiece by compressing its length.
  • Underlug: The locking lugs on a break-action firearm that extend from the bottom of the barrels under the chamber(s) and connect into the receiver bottom.[32] 2. The metal shroud underneath the barrel of a revolver that surrounds and protects the extractor rod. The two types of underlugs include half-lug, meaning the shroud does not run the entire length of the barrel but instead is only as long as the extractor rod, and full-lug, meaning the shroud runs the full length of the barrel.
  • Underwater firearm: A firearm specially designed for use underwater.

V

A Ruger No. 1 varmint rifle

W

  • airgun
    competitions. A wadcutter has a flat or nearly flat front that cuts a very clean hole through the paper target, making it easier to score and ideally reducing errors in scoring the target to the favor of the shooter.
  • WCF: An acronym for a family of cartridges designed by Winchester Repeating Arms Company, called Winchester Center Fire, as in the .30–30 WCF or .32-20 WCF.[35]
  • Wheellock: An obsolete mechanism for discharging a firearm.
  • firearms
    are not mass-produced. These cartridges are often created to optimize a certain performance characteristic (such as the power, size or efficiency) of an existing commercial cartridge. See improved cartridge.
  • Kentucky windage
    .

X

  • X-ring: A circle in the middle of a shooting target bullseye used to determine winners in event of a tie.

Y

Z

  • Zero-in or zeroing: The act of setting up a telescopic or other sighting system so that the point of impact of a bullet matches the sights at a specified distance.
  • Zero stop: A stopping mechanism found on some
    scope sights
    letting the user easily dial back their sight to the zeroing distance after having adjusted their sight to shoot at other distances.

See also

References

  1. ^ Reloading Belted Magnums by Larry Willis
  2. ^
  3. ^ Chinn, George M.: The Machine Gun, Volume IV: Design Analysis of Automatic Firing Mechanisms and Related Components, p. 3. Bureau of Ordnance, Department of the Navy, 1955.
  4. ^ "Beyond the Basics: Developing Your Own Loads". Nosler – Bullets, Brass, Ammunition & Rifles. Archived from the original on 2018-03-08. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
  5. ^ "USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide—AIR FORCE PAMPHLET 14- 210 Intelligence". 1998-02-01. p. 180. Retrieved 2007-10-06.
  6. ^ Elementary optics and application to fire control instruments By United States. Dept. of the Army, section 8-24
  7. ^ Elementary optics and applications to fire control instruments: May, 1921 By United States. Army. Ordnance Dept, page 84
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Further reading