All About Weapons and Their Words

So, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted last week. This won’t be an opinion piece on the trial and verdict. I merely bring it up because it inspired me to write about weapons and appropriate terminology.

First things first. A firearm is a small weapon which shoots a projectile fired by gunpowder. Gun is an acceptable term for any firearm. There are various types of guns, including rifles and handguns such as pistols and revolvers.

Rittenhouse was accused of murder because he shot two people with an AR-15 style rifle. A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder and has a rifled bore, that is, it has shallow spiral grooves cut inside the barrel that stabilizes the projectile in flight. 

Rifles, pistols and revolvers are measured in calibers. A caliber is the diameter of the inside of a gun, measured in millimeters or decimal fractions of an inch. So, when one writes 9 mm pistol, the caliber is understood. But when writes a .22-caliber rifle, the word is used.

The typical projectile is the bullet. Together with metal casing, primer and propellant, it forms a cartridge. A particular high-powered cartridge with a larger case and larger powder charge than other cartridges is called a Magnum. The word is capitalized because it’s a name of the company that makes the guns, Magnum Research, Inc., based in Fridley, Minn.

A magazine is the ammunition storage and feeding device within or attached to the gun. It is sometimes confused with a clip, which is a device to store multiple rounds of ammunition as a unit. Clips are generally used to load obsolete military rifles.

The difference between a pistol and a revolver comes from whether the chamber and barrel are one or two parts. It’s one in a pistol, two in a revolver.

Many guns are automatic, meaning they reload automatically after every shot. But it never refers to the rate of fire. People usually further clarify what kind of automatic gun by specifying fully automatic (it fires as long as the trigger is depressed) or semi-automatic (it fires once each time the trigger is pulled and then it reloads by itself). A machine gun is a type of fully automatic gun.

Incidentally, a shot is the small lead or steel pellet fired by shotguns. A shotgun shoots one projectile at a time. Its size is measured according to gauge. Gauge is expressed in terms of the number per pound of round lead balls with a diameter equal to the barrel size. The bigger the numbers, the smaller the shotgun.

Finally, there’s the Colt. It’s capitalized because it refers to Samuel Colt (1814-1862) who mass produced revolvers. The Texas Rangers ordered 1,000 revolvers during the Mexican-American war. Colt died a wealthy man.

Until next time! Use the right words!

leebarnathan.com