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Revision as of 15:03, 21 January 2009
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In modern parlance, a gun is a projectile weapon using a hollow, tubular barrel as the means for directing the projectile as well as other purposes—an expansion chamber for propellant, stabilizing the projectile's trajectory, aiming, etc.—and assumes a generally flat trajectory for the projectile.
The projectile may be a simple, single-piece item like a bullet, a casing containing a payload like a shotshell or explosive shell, or complex projectile like a sub-caliber projectile and sabot. The propellant may be air, an explosive solid, or an explosive liquid. Some variations like the Gyrojet and certain other types combine the projectile and propellant into a single item.
Most guns are described by the type of barrel used, the means of firing, the purpose of the weapon, the caliber, or the commonly accepted name for a particular variation.
Barrel types include rifled—a series of spiraled grooves or angles within the barrel—when the projectile requires an induced spin to stabilize it and smoothbore when the projectile is stabilized by other means or is undesired or unnecessary. Typically, interior barrel diameter and the associated projectile size is a means to identify gun variations. Barrel diameter is reported in several ways. The more conventional measure is reporting the interior diameter of the barrel in decimal fractions of the inch or in millimeters. Some guns—such as shotguns—report the weapon's gauge. The gauge is the number of pure lead balls the bore's diameter that are contained in one pound.
Terminology
The use of the term "cannon" is interchangeable with "gun" as a words borrowed from the French language during the early 15th century, from Old French canon, itself a borrowing from the Italian cannone, a "large tube" augmentive of Latin canna "reed or cane".
In military use, the term "gun" refers to artillery an ordnance that fires projectiles at high velocity, such as naval guns which in the modern navies are not called cannons, or the tank main gun. In military use, mortars and all hand-held firearms are excluded from the meaning of guns because they do not require the accurate gunnery data calculations and training when engaging targets. Two exceptions to this include: the shotgun, which is a smoothbore hand-held firearm that fires a load of shot or a single projectile known as a slug, and the machine gun, which is a fully-automatic weapon mounted on a tripod or wheeled carriage and is almost always operated by a crew of two.
The word "gun" is also applied to some more or less vaguely gun-like or gun-shaped tools such as staple guns, nail guns, and glue guns.
In a gun-type fission weapon the "gun" is part of a nuclear weapon. The projectile is fissile material that is fired and captured inside the device. In the case of nuclear artillery, it should not be confused with the gun that fires the whole warheads. In a captive bolt gun the projectile is also caught within the mechanism. Such captive piston guns are often used to humanely stun farm animals for slaughter.
A gunner is a member of the team charged with the task of operating and firing a gun.
Types of guns
Military and civilian handguns
Military firearms
Machine guns
Autocannon guns
Artillery guns
Tank guns
Hunting guns
Guns for training and entertainment
See also
Citations and notes
- Online Etymological Dictionary
- cannon, or autocannon is considered to be in the 20mm to 35mm calibre range, pp.34,93, Lee
- Captive Bolt Stunning Equipment and the Law - How it applies to you (pdf)
References
- Lee, R.G., Introduction to battlefield weapons, systems & technology, Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, UK, Brassey's Publishers, Oxford, 1981
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