Firearm

A Japanese arquebus: The arquebus was the first firearm to become a main weapon of warfare.

Firearms are projectile weapons that use directed chemical explosions to propel projectiles at high speeds and are the most commonly used weapons in the world today. Firearms first emerged in China around 1100 and in Europe around 1300, after which they evolved into a form which made them a primary weapon of war by 1500. Over the next five centuries, developments in firearm technology would move warfare more and more towards ranged combat, with melee being a minor consideration in war.

Types of Firearms

• Muzzel Loader: The earliest firearms were loaded by cramming powder, wadding, and projectile(s) down the barrel of the weapon from the front. Various subtypes appeared as trigger mechanisms improved over time.
  • Handgonne/Firelance: The first firearms developed consisted basically of a small metal tube that was sealed off at one end with a hole drilled on its backside on a wooden handle. These first appeared during the Song Dynasty in China. They were fired by putting a burning stick or wick into the drilled hole. Handgonnes were inaccurate and mainly used for their intimidating effect, though they did have good armor penetration and were successfully used against Knights by the Hussites.
  • Arquebus: A more refined version of the Handgonne, an arquebus has a mechanism which brought a flaming wick to the powder to fire (often no more complex than an S shaped bar bolted to the side of the weapon) to make it easier to fire, load and allow a greater degree of control. Maximum range was about 100 meters and these weapons were most effective when fired in volleys by soldiers in tight formation. Arquebuses would remain the most common type of firearm from the mid 15th to the mid 17th century.
  • Wheel-lock: Wheel-locks use a spring-driven wheel grinding against a flint to generate a shower of sparks to ignite the powder.
  • Flintlock: Flintlocks use a piece of flint to strike a spark into a pan of powder to ignite the charge and fire. The flint is part of a spring loaded mechanism attached to a trigger. Flintlocks were the most common catagory of firearm between the mid 17th to mid 19th centuries.
  • Caplock: A caplock uses an explosive cap that can be detonated by a strike from the hammer to ignite the powder.
• Pistol: Any compact, short-barreled firearm which can be fired easily with one hand.
• Rifle: Any firearm with a barrel that has several spiral groves cut into it to improve ballistics. Rifled firearms have a longer effective range than smoothbore guns. Rifles first emerged in the 16th century, but they came to replace smoothbore guns by 1850. The term eventually applied to any long-barreled firearm.
• Breech-loading Rifle: A single-shot rifle with a "door" or "hatch" that allows it to be loaded from the back end, as opposed to stuffing the shot down the length of a barrel. Breech-loading rifles became the primary type of rifle around the 1860s to the 1890s.
• Repeater: Any firearm which can store multiple shots inside itself to minimize the time between firings. One of the earliest widely used types of repeater was the Colt Revolver. The term has fallen out of use because modern firearms are typically repeaters.
• Bolt-action Rifle: First developed in Germany in 1836, a bolt-action rifle has a mechanism that the wielder unlocks and draws back to open the barrel and eject a spent casing. The wielder then returns the "bolt" to its original position to insert a fresh cartridge. The first bolt-action rifles were breech loaders, but they were later replaced by repeaters. Bolt action rifles would be the primary service rifles in use from the 1880s to the 1940s
• Semi-automatic Firearm: Semi-automatic weapons use reaction force from the weapon discharge to eject the empty casing from the firing chamber and load a new round from the magazine.
• Automatic Firearm: A firearm that can discharge repeatedly with a single pull of the trigger. Such a weapon can continue firing on one triggering until it runs out of ammunition or suffers a mechanical failure of some kind.
• Assault Rifles A fully automatic personal weapon firing specialized rifle-calibre ammunition. The first assault rifle (the Federov Automat) was developed in 1916. Assault rifles were first issued en mass by the German army during World War II and became the primary infantry weapon in the 1950s.
• Anti-materiel Rifles: These rifles shoot large bullets at high velocities, making them powerful enough to significantly damage vehicles and equipment.

Related Items

• Cartridged Ammunition: Not a catagory of firearm, but worth mentioning. Cartriged ammunition is a projectile in an external casing with propellent. The first cartridges were made of paper, but latter metal casings became the norm.

Firearms in Science Fiction

In various science fiction series (especially those set in or close to modern times), firearms are often the primary form of small arms.

• The United States Colonial Marines in the Alien series make use of various firearms
• The TR-116 is a firearm made by the Federation in Star Trek.
• In Stargate, the forces of Earth make use of various projectile weapons
• Firearms are used in the Star Wars universe, generally by civilians among the more backwards sections of the Galaxy.

Firearms in Fantasy

Many fantasy writers steer clear of gunpowder weaponry, preferring to have their fiction in worlds in which gunpowder is absent or at least unrefined for military purposes, for several reasons.

• The most common reason for this is that most fantasy is based on mythology conceived of well before the development of firearms.
• Many fantasy writers are interested in pre-gunpowder means of warfare and romanticized conceptions about pre-gunpowder warfare, particularly the need for martial skill. One of the key reasons why firearms displaced earlier weapons of war was the ease with which it is possible to train conscripts in their use (especially with the introduction of movable type printing allowing for the mass production of training manuals), thus making it possible to cheaply train armies of peasant Arquebusiers in months who could defeat heavily armed and armored knights who had been trained from childhood in various ways of war. Firearms also represent a certain level of unwanted modernity on a thematic level.
• In some settings, supernatural abilities are fairly commonly available which best at least early firearms and could conceivably divert societies from going along lines of development which would lead to the development of firearms (such as Bending in Avatar: The Last Airbender).

Their are exceptions to this rule, however, such as the Warhammer Fantasy and Iron Kingdoms tabletop fantasy games, which involve heavy use of firearms.

Firearms in Politics

Their is a divide in ideology in regards to civilian firearm ownership. This is between those who believe that believe in tight regulation and restriction of firearm ownership for the purposes of preventing and limiting violent crime and those who believe that such laws are counter productive and infringes on individual liberties (the latter viewpoint being common in the United States). There is some division of opinion of this matter among SD.net's population, and debates on the subject can get heated.