All You Would Ever Need To Know About Guns

We all know that the Chinese invented gunpowder, but how did a gun come to be? Gunpowder was mainly used for fireworks and very crude cannons, until the Europeans adopted it. They bored a hole in a cylinder of metal, drilled a hole into the closest end, poured in some gunpowder and a tight-fitting lead ball, applied a source of life at the end resulting in a "boom" which represented the invention of the gun.
In the early 1600's, all of the guns made were big, bulky, and slow to load. By mid 1600's gunsmiths began to experiment with lighter and more accurate firearms for foot soldiers. The shooter fired the weapon by applying a slowly burning piece of rope, or match, to the touchole at the end of the firearm. During the English Civil War the guns were still bulky and heavy but they were much easier to load, and arrangements were being made to compensate for their weight.

Throughout the 1600's many different lock types were developed, but lost because most were expensive, leaving flintlock with the longest use of firing in history. By this time advances on loading were being made, including the invention of the cartridge. It was powder, bullet, and ignition all combined into one compact package. All an invention needs is time to progress, to expand. This is true for all inventions, most especially guns.

The most famous gun in history was the "Brown Bess" developed in Britain in the 1720's used all the way up to the American Revolution. Trying to keep what was theirs, the British did what they could to keep this developement out of the American militia, but their attemps were futile. Brown Besses still ended up in the hands of American militiamen in the Mexican war as well as in the Civil War!

The flintlock era gave birth to a new advancement in firearms, rifling. The difference from the common musket being that it has groves within the bore that spin the projectile creating better accuracy. You can see why this would be beneficial when you are fighting for your life and your country. When the rifle was first made one of its main drawbacks was that it needed to be cleaned after five or six shots because gunpowder resedue would build up inside the groves that made the projectile spin. Another drawback to the rifle was that the tight fit made it much more difficult to load, where with the muskets the ball slid right in. On the other hand, a rifle has much better accuracy from a greater distance than the musket.

Despite the drawbacks to a rifle America riflemen still found ways to boast; like being able to drop a man at three hundred yards away with little difficulty. The range that a riflemean could kill a man was a measured skill during the Revolutionary era. Because of the drawbacks, it wasn't until 1855 that the U.S. replaced their .69-caliber smoothbore muskets with the .58-caliber rifle musket. Its interesting to see how each invention discovered, or made, leads to something smaller, easier to use, and that this is true even for guns. There were many men who shaped the face of rifles over the years, the first being a Patrick Ferguson.

Patrick Ferguson, born in 1744, served his country at 15 for two years in Germany where he contracted an illness that left him with a lame leg. The illness kept him out of military services from 1762 to 1768 , which he spent most of his time at home or in Paris. At the end of 1768 he served in the 70th foot regiment until he was plagued with fever and returned again to England. In 1775, and the next year, he worked to develope a breech-loading rifle which is a rifle that can be loaded from the rear end of the barrel instead of from the muzzle. He went on to serve under General Charles Cornwallis in Gilbert Town, North Carolina. He was ordered to move into the mountains in order to protect his army's left flanks. He died in 1780 from a multitude of rifle balls after he had enraged the Over Mountain men and were surrounded in Pennsylvania. The next man who shaped the worlds gunmaking was John Moses Browning.

John Moses learned the secrets of gunmaking from his father, Jonathan Browning who was a remarkable gunsmith as well. In 1879 they first started using steam powered tools, and they also sold his first Breech-Loading Single Shot RIfle. From 1883 until 1902, John Moses Browning designed several firearms for Winchester. Some of his rifles designs were the first Single Shot Rifle, Winchester Model 1886 Lever Action Repeating Rifle, Model 1894 Lever Action Repeating Rifle, Model 1895 Lever Action Repeating Rifle, etc. He developed other guns as well that were ofter used by the U.S. Government as well as the Armed Forces, which included the Browning Automatic Rifle.

Some of the main manufacturers are Benelli: the manufacturer of the amazing M-4 semi-automatic shotgun, Browning: the manufacturer of the Browning Hi-Power centerfire hand-gun,Colt: the manufacturer of the Colt Match Target (i.e. the AR-15) and the original line of 1911-style hand-guns, Glock: an Austrian gun manufacturer of an excellent series of hand-guns, Heckler & Koch: a German gun manufacturer of the excellent USP and Mark-23 lines of centerfire hand-guns, the FABARM shotguns, and the HKM4 and XM8 centerfire carbines, Kimber: manufactures a high-quality line of 1911 style hand-guns, Magnum Research: manufactures the Desert Eagle and Baby Eagle pistols, Mossberg: the manufacturer of the excellent 590 and Mariner pump shotguns, Remington: the manufacturer of the 870 and 1100 shotguns and the 700 series rifle, Ruger: manufactures the Mini-14, the 10-22, and execellent centerfire and rimfire hand-guns,Smith & Wesson: the manufacturer of a wide variety of service pistols which are the favorites of many police departments, Winchester: the manufacturer of the Model 1300 and Super X2 shotguns.