Post by Beta 112 on Apr 6, 2009 17:08:48 GMT -5
This a reference for guns. I realize this is very long and in some places needlessly obvious and tedious. You do not have to read this, but if you are going to have your character use a gun it is best to read the parts of this that pertain to the gun you want to use. Also it is good to note that my description of advanced in this article is actually the basics of guns, and it can get much, much more complicated, and besides this is a fantasy roleplay, who really cares about being realistic?!
First off the obvious stuff:
Gun - A general slang term for a firearm, a weapon which contains two basic parts, a barrel and a bullet. There are many different firearms, and many different ways to use them.
Bullet - If you don't know what a bullet is, I'll kill you. But anyway a bullet is the projectile a gun fires. They come in many forms, from a steel grain of sand to a explosive chunk of lead.
Barrel - The usually long tube that a bullet passes through, this compresses gas from the detonation of gunpowder and forces the bullet out of the other end.
Trigger - You pull it
Rifle - This refers to a longer-barreled gun using rifling inside the barrel to spin the bullet for greater range and accuracy. Rifles also have, many sub categories.
Pistol - Refers to a single handed gun with a short barrel. Pistols generally have rifled barrels to make up for their shortness. Regardless of the rifling the pistol rarely has significant range or accuracy.
Shotgun - A unrifled long-barreled gun. These some in pretty standard form, using gauges to measure the diameter of their barrels. Shotgun's are known mainly for highly interchangeable ammunition, for example the same shotgun can fire a shell that disperses over one hundred tiny steel bullets from the point of fire, and the next, without any adjustments, fire a single lead bullet.
Muzzeloader - This is the oldest and first type of gun. A musket was a muzzleloader. A muzzleloader can be a pistol or a long barreled rifle resembling gun. The only requirement for a muzzleloader is that it is loaded from the muzzle, shoving the powder and bullet down the front of the barrel.
Barrel - The usually long tube that a bullet passes through, this compresses gas from the detonation of gunpowder and forces the bullet out of the other end.
Trigger - Human to machine interface. You pull it, gun go bang.
Stock - This is pressed into the crook of your shoulder to absorb the kickback of a gun, it also helps steady your aim and provide for something to to hold onto. This is not found on a pistol, but on both rifles and shotguns it is the usually wooden thing closest to the holder, and the body of the gun. Stocks may also be equipped with recoil systems that range from a rubber attachment at the end of the stock to a gas operated shock absorber.
Forearm - You this is where the hand that is not pulling the trigger is placed. This is the hand that steadies the rifle and does the aiming, the forearm is just a little forward of the center mass of the gun, and is where the stock ends.
Muzzle - The end of the barrel, the business end.
The Bullet - Bullets differ in many ways, from size to composition. The general idea of a bullet is(This is not for shotgun shells) a circular brass shell, with a usually lead bullet attached to one end and a flat end on the other. The flat end contains a button of metal, this is the primer, most guns are center fire, but I'll get into that later. The Primer is what the firing pin of the gun strikes, and the primer ignites the powder, firing the bullet.
Scope - Well it is a long black tube that when you look through it it magnifies the space wherever the gun is pointed.
Backstrap - This is the strap that runs from the front of the forearm to the back of the stock, it is there so it can be slung around your back.
Loading Mechanism - There are many different types of theese, but for rifles stick with blot action (You have to manually pull the bolt back and push it forward again to load the next round) and semi-automatic and automatic(Bullets load themselves after the trigger is pulled)
Rifles come in many forms, as I said before. The main thing to realize about a rifle is that it has long range, and that most rifles are able to penetrate body armor.
Sub Machine Gun(SMG) - These are small handheld rifles that fire multiple small caliber rounds, usually with 30 round clips and medium range.
Machine gun - A full out machine gun is generally fed by a sat of bullets on a cloth chain, I'm sure you've seen them before. A machine gun repetitively fires larger caliber rounds are medium range, they usually are not hand held, and if they are they will have an advanced recoil system and be very large. Usually though they are mounted behind some form of cover and are operated by two people.
Sniper rifle - These are known for accuracy and range, clip size is usually below ten and somewhere around five to four rounds. Fifty Caliber sniper rifle have very powerful magnification devices (Scopes) and have ranges measured in miles. Usually if a sniper rifle is fired the person being shot at will never see the shooter.
Assault rife - You will see these most often, they are held with two hands and rested on the shoulder. They are combat specific weapons, and most of them fire more than one round at a time with 30 round clips. Similar to SMGs' only SMGs are far more compact.
Carbine - Usually a single shot medium range rifle, they are basiclly the same caliber as assault rifles only they have shortened barrels for closed quarters effectiveness.
I'm not really a pistol expert, and they won't be used too often in regular combat either.
Revolver - this is an older model pistol where the bullets are located in a chambered cylinder, it gets it's name from the way the cylinder revolves to fire the next round after the pistol is fired. Also as a fun fact these are used in Russian roulette games, a single bullet is loaded into the revolver and the rest are left empty. You pass the gun around and put it to your head and pull the trigger until someone gets the live round.
Semi automatic - These are modern pistols, and are fed by a clip of 15 rounds, usually. The most common one is the 9mm, which sports little kick and a high rate of fire.
A shotgun is ranked by gauge and there are no other types of shotguns outside the gauge ranking, the lower the gauge the bigger the gun. A gauge refers to a lead ball that equals the diameter of the inside of the barrel. The gauge is taken from how many of these balls it takes to make one pound. For example a 8 gauge shotgun would take only eight of these balls to equal one pound. A shotgun is most diverse when it comes to their ammunition.
Buckshot/shotshell/birdshot - this is the most common type of shotgun amo. It contains a large amount of small steel bullets that disperse when fire, they have little penetration power but they have and incredible amount of stopping power, an impact from a large amount of these bullets will knock you down.
Slug - Single lead round, like a common rifled bullet only the rifling is on the lead round itself, and these are not copper coated. Also common shotgun slugs are equal to that of a 50 caliber bullet, only without the range.
Muzzleloaders:
Muzzleloaders use black powder and produce a large amount of smoke, for this reason they are not favored by marksmen or in combat in general. They have very slow load times and have many defects commonly found in the powder.
Muzzleloader rifle - This may not actually be rifled, as the bullet is not a standard shape, it is simply a sphere. In order to load one you must first dump the powder down the rifle barrel and then force a piece of cloth down after it called the wad with the ramrod. The next step is to also send the bullet down, a simple iron ball, down, once again with the ramrod.
Ramrod - Oh look, its called ramrod! How funny. Anyway a ramrod is essentially a pole meant to shove the material down the muzzle of the gun.
M-9 - A small semi automatic pistol(9mm), standard issue to most U.S. Military forces.
M-16 - Standard issue assault rifle for U.S. Military forces. It is mainly known to fire in three round burst, but it can be set for fully automatic or single shot.
P90 - Comes from a large series of pistols. But the P90 is actually a compact SMG firing 9mm rounds, from a special clip. It is also referred to as a bullet hose.
Rifling - This is a pattern cut into the inside of a rifle and most pistols. Essentially is it a swirling pattern that forces the bullet to spin, leveling out it's trajectory and increasing it's ability to split the air making it go faster. Rifling is used as common practice in all modern weapons save for some few weapons where it can't be used for various reason.
Copper jacketed bullets - this also is common practice in modern warfare and hunting weapons. Bullets are mostly lead, a heavy bullet packs more inertia because of it's weight but sadly they are soft. Almost every metal is harder than lead, and when it hits any metal harder than it will 'back down' and mash into something resembling a button. To make up for this and add penetration power and as a bonus prevent lead poisoning they are coated with a thin layer of copper, copper is a fairly hard metal and is easily worked with, allowing for mass production of copper jacket bullets.
Caliber - This is the measurement of the diameter of the inside of a rifles barrel. 1 caliber equals one one hundredth of an inch, and is written with a decimal point. For example the famous .50 caliber is has an inside diameter of half an inch.
Black Powder - first form of gunpowder, obviously this powder was black, and the main defect with it was the massive cloud of smoke it produced.
Smokeless Powder - the modern powder used in forearms. This is not actually a powder, it's more of a granular substance, and produces a negligible amount of smoke when fired.
Pump Action - Usually only seen on low-gauge shotguns, there is a sliding grip rather than a forearm on the gun, it must be pulled back and then forward again to load the next shell. Pump actions will have very low ammunition counts.
Break Action - Usually with high gauge shotguns, the gun actually has a hinge where the bullet guns, and the gun is broken at this point and the shell is inserted directly into the barrel.
Lever Action - Usually with older rifles, behind the trigger is a long slot that you can fit your hand into, all but the thumb. To load the next shell you pull it down and then back up.
I will add more later, if you find spelling errors and such let me know, and again request stuff if it's missing.
First off the obvious stuff:
Gun - A general slang term for a firearm, a weapon which contains two basic parts, a barrel and a bullet. There are many different firearms, and many different ways to use them.
Bullet - If you don't know what a bullet is, I'll kill you. But anyway a bullet is the projectile a gun fires. They come in many forms, from a steel grain of sand to a explosive chunk of lead.
Barrel - The usually long tube that a bullet passes through, this compresses gas from the detonation of gunpowder and forces the bullet out of the other end.
Trigger - You pull it
Rifle - This refers to a longer-barreled gun using rifling inside the barrel to spin the bullet for greater range and accuracy. Rifles also have, many sub categories.
Pistol - Refers to a single handed gun with a short barrel. Pistols generally have rifled barrels to make up for their shortness. Regardless of the rifling the pistol rarely has significant range or accuracy.
Shotgun - A unrifled long-barreled gun. These some in pretty standard form, using gauges to measure the diameter of their barrels. Shotgun's are known mainly for highly interchangeable ammunition, for example the same shotgun can fire a shell that disperses over one hundred tiny steel bullets from the point of fire, and the next, without any adjustments, fire a single lead bullet.
Muzzeloader - This is the oldest and first type of gun. A musket was a muzzleloader. A muzzleloader can be a pistol or a long barreled rifle resembling gun. The only requirement for a muzzleloader is that it is loaded from the muzzle, shoving the powder and bullet down the front of the barrel.
Specifics:
Parts of a gun:
Barrel - The usually long tube that a bullet passes through, this compresses gas from the detonation of gunpowder and forces the bullet out of the other end.
Trigger - Human to machine interface. You pull it, gun go bang.
Stock - This is pressed into the crook of your shoulder to absorb the kickback of a gun, it also helps steady your aim and provide for something to to hold onto. This is not found on a pistol, but on both rifles and shotguns it is the usually wooden thing closest to the holder, and the body of the gun. Stocks may also be equipped with recoil systems that range from a rubber attachment at the end of the stock to a gas operated shock absorber.
Forearm - You this is where the hand that is not pulling the trigger is placed. This is the hand that steadies the rifle and does the aiming, the forearm is just a little forward of the center mass of the gun, and is where the stock ends.
Muzzle - The end of the barrel, the business end.
The Bullet - Bullets differ in many ways, from size to composition. The general idea of a bullet is(This is not for shotgun shells) a circular brass shell, with a usually lead bullet attached to one end and a flat end on the other. The flat end contains a button of metal, this is the primer, most guns are center fire, but I'll get into that later. The Primer is what the firing pin of the gun strikes, and the primer ignites the powder, firing the bullet.
Scope - Well it is a long black tube that when you look through it it magnifies the space wherever the gun is pointed.
Backstrap - This is the strap that runs from the front of the forearm to the back of the stock, it is there so it can be slung around your back.
Loading Mechanism - There are many different types of theese, but for rifles stick with blot action (You have to manually pull the bolt back and push it forward again to load the next round) and semi-automatic and automatic(Bullets load themselves after the trigger is pulled)
Rifles:
Rifles come in many forms, as I said before. The main thing to realize about a rifle is that it has long range, and that most rifles are able to penetrate body armor.
Sub Machine Gun(SMG) - These are small handheld rifles that fire multiple small caliber rounds, usually with 30 round clips and medium range.
Machine gun - A full out machine gun is generally fed by a sat of bullets on a cloth chain, I'm sure you've seen them before. A machine gun repetitively fires larger caliber rounds are medium range, they usually are not hand held, and if they are they will have an advanced recoil system and be very large. Usually though they are mounted behind some form of cover and are operated by two people.
Sniper rifle - These are known for accuracy and range, clip size is usually below ten and somewhere around five to four rounds. Fifty Caliber sniper rifle have very powerful magnification devices (Scopes) and have ranges measured in miles. Usually if a sniper rifle is fired the person being shot at will never see the shooter.
Assault rife - You will see these most often, they are held with two hands and rested on the shoulder. They are combat specific weapons, and most of them fire more than one round at a time with 30 round clips. Similar to SMGs' only SMGs are far more compact.
Carbine - Usually a single shot medium range rifle, they are basiclly the same caliber as assault rifles only they have shortened barrels for closed quarters effectiveness.
Pistols:
I'm not really a pistol expert, and they won't be used too often in regular combat either.
Revolver - this is an older model pistol where the bullets are located in a chambered cylinder, it gets it's name from the way the cylinder revolves to fire the next round after the pistol is fired. Also as a fun fact these are used in Russian roulette games, a single bullet is loaded into the revolver and the rest are left empty. You pass the gun around and put it to your head and pull the trigger until someone gets the live round.
Semi automatic - These are modern pistols, and are fed by a clip of 15 rounds, usually. The most common one is the 9mm, which sports little kick and a high rate of fire.
Shotguns:
A shotgun is ranked by gauge and there are no other types of shotguns outside the gauge ranking, the lower the gauge the bigger the gun. A gauge refers to a lead ball that equals the diameter of the inside of the barrel. The gauge is taken from how many of these balls it takes to make one pound. For example a 8 gauge shotgun would take only eight of these balls to equal one pound. A shotgun is most diverse when it comes to their ammunition.
Buckshot/shotshell/birdshot - this is the most common type of shotgun amo. It contains a large amount of small steel bullets that disperse when fire, they have little penetration power but they have and incredible amount of stopping power, an impact from a large amount of these bullets will knock you down.
Slug - Single lead round, like a common rifled bullet only the rifling is on the lead round itself, and these are not copper coated. Also common shotgun slugs are equal to that of a 50 caliber bullet, only without the range.
Muzzleloaders:
Muzzleloaders use black powder and produce a large amount of smoke, for this reason they are not favored by marksmen or in combat in general. They have very slow load times and have many defects commonly found in the powder.
Muzzleloader rifle - This may not actually be rifled, as the bullet is not a standard shape, it is simply a sphere. In order to load one you must first dump the powder down the rifle barrel and then force a piece of cloth down after it called the wad with the ramrod. The next step is to also send the bullet down, a simple iron ball, down, once again with the ramrod.
Ramrod - Oh look, its called ramrod! How funny. Anyway a ramrod is essentially a pole meant to shove the material down the muzzle of the gun.
Weapons of Interest and Common Weapons
M-9 - A small semi automatic pistol(9mm), standard issue to most U.S. Military forces.
M-16 - Standard issue assault rifle for U.S. Military forces. It is mainly known to fire in three round burst, but it can be set for fully automatic or single shot.
P90 - Comes from a large series of pistols. But the P90 is actually a compact SMG firing 9mm rounds, from a special clip. It is also referred to as a bullet hose.
Really, really complicated stuff you don't need to know
Rifling - This is a pattern cut into the inside of a rifle and most pistols. Essentially is it a swirling pattern that forces the bullet to spin, leveling out it's trajectory and increasing it's ability to split the air making it go faster. Rifling is used as common practice in all modern weapons save for some few weapons where it can't be used for various reason.
Copper jacketed bullets - this also is common practice in modern warfare and hunting weapons. Bullets are mostly lead, a heavy bullet packs more inertia because of it's weight but sadly they are soft. Almost every metal is harder than lead, and when it hits any metal harder than it will 'back down' and mash into something resembling a button. To make up for this and add penetration power and as a bonus prevent lead poisoning they are coated with a thin layer of copper, copper is a fairly hard metal and is easily worked with, allowing for mass production of copper jacket bullets.
Caliber - This is the measurement of the diameter of the inside of a rifles barrel. 1 caliber equals one one hundredth of an inch, and is written with a decimal point. For example the famous .50 caliber is has an inside diameter of half an inch.
Black Powder - first form of gunpowder, obviously this powder was black, and the main defect with it was the massive cloud of smoke it produced.
Smokeless Powder - the modern powder used in forearms. This is not actually a powder, it's more of a granular substance, and produces a negligible amount of smoke when fired.
Pump Action - Usually only seen on low-gauge shotguns, there is a sliding grip rather than a forearm on the gun, it must be pulled back and then forward again to load the next shell. Pump actions will have very low ammunition counts.
Break Action - Usually with high gauge shotguns, the gun actually has a hinge where the bullet guns, and the gun is broken at this point and the shell is inserted directly into the barrel.
Lever Action - Usually with older rifles, behind the trigger is a long slot that you can fit your hand into, all but the thumb. To load the next shell you pull it down and then back up.
I will add more later, if you find spelling errors and such let me know, and again request stuff if it's missing.
