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92-428: In the early 19th century, both rifles and muskets were in use. Muskets were smoothbore muzzle-loading weapons, firing round lead balls or buck and ball ammunition, that were also designed to accept a bayonet . Rifles were similar in that they used the same kind of flintlock or caplock firing mechanism, but the main difference was that their barrels were rifled – that is, their barrels had grooves cut into

184-401: A closed bolt for accuracy. Machine guns are often crewed by more than one soldier; the rifle is an individual weapon. The term "rifle" is sometimes used to describe larger rifled crew-served weapons firing explosive shells, for example, recoilless rifles and naval rifles . In many works of fiction "rifle" refers to any weapon that has a stock and is shouldered before firing, even if

276-561: A German immigrant. By 1750 there were a number of such manufacturers in the area. The longer barrel was a departure by local gunsmiths from their German roots, allowing bullets to achieve a higher speed (as the burning gunpowder was contained longer) before emerging from the barrel. During the 1700s (18th century), colonial settlers, particularly those immigrating from Germany and Switzerland, adapted and improved upon their European rifles. The improved long rifles were used for precise shooting, aiming, and firing at individual targets, instead of

368-460: A combustible propellant compound (originally black powder and now nitrocellulose and other smokeless powders ), although other propulsive means are used, such as compressed air in air rifles , which are popular for vermin control , small game hunting, competitive target shooting and casual sport shooting ( plinking ). The distinct feature that separates a rifle from the earlier smoothbore long guns (e.g., arquebuses , muskets )

460-425: A firearm. The problem of proper seal creation had been solved with the use of brass cartridge cases, which expanded in an elastic fashion at the point of firing and effectively sealed the breech while the pressure remained high, then relaxed back enough to allow for easy removal. By the end of the 19th century, the leading bolt-action design was that of Paul Mauser , whose action—wedded to a reliable design possessing

552-451: A five-shot magazine —became a world standard through two world wars and beyond. The Mauser rifle was paralleled by Britain's ten-shot Lee–Enfield and America's 1903 Springfield Rifle models. The American M1903 closely copied Mauser's original design. Barrel rifling dramatically increased the range and accuracy of the musket. Indeed, throughout its development, the rifle's history has been marked by increases in range and accuracy. From

644-510: A greatly shortened length of pull, which is necessary to accommodate children. Youth stocks are available for many popular rifles, such as the Ruger 10/22 , a semi-automatic .22 LR rifle, allowing a youth rifle to be made from a standard rifle by simply changing the stock. The typical ages of shooters for such rifles vary from about age 5+. The usual form of rifling was helical grooves in a round bore. Some early rifled firearms had barrels with

736-422: A helical or spiralling pattern of grooves ( rifling ) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with both hands and braced firmly against the shooter's shoulder via a buttstock for stability during shooting. Rifles have been used in warfare , law enforcement , hunting and target shooting sports . The term was originally rifled gun , with

828-424: A long conical shape with an expanding skirt at the rear of the projectile. The skirt allowed the minié ball to be smaller than the barrel's bore, so it would slip in as easily as the ball of a smoothbore. When the weapon was fired, the skirt expanded to fit tightly against the inside of the rifle barrel, with less energy wasted in blow-by around the projectile and ensuring that the rifling lands and grooves would impart

920-401: A musket also allowed them to be fired by ranks, minimizing the risk that the men in the rear ranks would accidentally shoot the men in the front ranks in the back of the head, or, more likely, scorch their faces and burst their eardrums with the muzzle blast. Muskets 6 feet (180 cm) in length could be fired in three ranks without fear of accidents. The relative inaccuracy and short range of

1012-573: A platoon firing repeatedly could produce a 'beaten ground' effect similar to light artillery or machine guns. Currently, rifles are the most common firearm in general use for hunting (with the exception of bird hunting, where shotguns are favored). Rifles derived from military designs have long been popular with civilian shooters. During the Napoleonic Wars the British army created several experimental units known as "Rifles", armed with

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1104-467: A premeasured amount of black powder and a greased Minié ball. The paper was torn open (typically with the shooter's teeth), the powder was poured down the barrel, the Minié ball was placed into the barrel and rammed down on top of the powder with the ramrod . The paper was then discarded. Also differing from a modern cartridge, a separate percussion cap had to be placed onto the percussion lock's cone before

1196-660: A removable seven-round tube magazine, enabling the rounds to be fired one after another. When the magazine was empty, it could be exchanged for another. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, military observers from Europe and the United States witnessed a major conflict fought with high velocity bolt-action rifles firing smokeless powder . The Battle of Mukden fought in 1905 consisted of nearly 343,000 Russian troops against over 281,000 Japanese troops. The Russian Mosin–Nagant Model 1891 in 7.62 mm

1288-595: A rifled musket. However, once this change was made, the weapon was no longer referred to as a rifled-musket and was instead referred to as simply a "rifle". In general, rifle muskets were the same length as the smoothbore muskets they replaced. This meant that they typically had a barrel length of about 40 inches (100 cm) and an overall length of about 55 to 60 inches (140 to 150 cm). Period U.S. Armory nomenclature described rifles and rifle-muskets as newly made firearms specifically designed and manufactured with rifling. Rifled muskets were smoothbore firearms returned to

1380-441: A shorter barrel did not impair accuracy as much. As a result, cavalry saw limited, but noteworthy, usage in 20th-century conflicts. The advent of the massed, rapid firepower of the machine gun , submachine gun and rifled artillery was so quick as to outstrip the development of any way to attack a trench defended by riflemen and machine gunners. The carnage of World War I was perhaps the greatest vindication and vilification of

1472-655: A single projectile with each squeeze of the trigger. Modern rifles are commonly classified as single-shot, bolt-action, semi-automatic, or automatic. Single-shot, bolt-action, and semi-automatic rifles are limited by their designs to fire a single shot for each trigger pull. Only automatic rifles are capable of firing more than one round per trigger squeeze; however, some automatic rifles are limited to fixed bursts of two, three, or more rounds per squeeze. Modern automatic rifles overlap to some extent in design and function with machine guns . In fact, many light machine guns are adaptations of existing automatic rifle designs, such as

1564-417: A smoothbore musket to about 300 yards for a rifle using the Minié system. The expanding skirt of the Minié ball also solved the problem that earlier tight-fitting bullets were difficult to load as black powder residue fouled the inside of the barrel. The Minié system allowed conical bullets to be loaded into rifles just as quickly as round balls in smooth bores, which allowed rifle muskets to replace muskets on

1656-639: A smoothbore, and may have performed worse due to its lower muzzle velocity and greater drop with range. Nevertheless, the musket was still a formidable force on the battlefield. At the beginning of the American Civil War, some infantry regiments chose to keep smooth-bore muskets, preferring them because they could shoot "buck and ball". In the 1860s and 1870s, newer weapons were produced with rifled barrels, but were still being referred to as "rifled muskets" or "rifle-muskets" even though they had not originally been produced with smoothbore barrels. The term

1748-794: A soldier and his knapsack and still kill anyone standing behind him, even killing every person in a line of 15. The Minié rifle saw limited distribution in the Crimean War and similar rifles using Minié bullets (such as the Pattern 1853 Enfield , the Springfield Model 1861 and the Lorenz rifle ) were the dominant infantry weapons in the American Civil War . The large-caliber, easily deformed conical lead bullets, ranging in diameter from .54 to .58 inches (14-18mm), combined with

1840-405: A stabilizing spin to the minié ball. In the 1840s and 1850s, many smoothbore muskets had their barrels replaced with similar barrels that were rifled so that they could fire a new type of bullet that greatly enhanced both its accuracy and range. These "rifled muskets" or "rifle muskets" were long enough to serve the function of muskets in close formations of line and square, were as quick to load as

1932-471: A stem at the bottom of the barrel that would deform and expand the base of the bullet when rammed, therefore enabling accurate contact with the rifling. However, the area around the stem clogged and got dirty easily. One of the most famous was the Minié system, invented by French Army Captain Claude-Étienne Minié , which relied on a conical bullet (known as a Minié ball) with a hollow skirt at

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2024-530: A stock, either fixed or folding, to be braced against the shoulder when firing. The adoption of cartridges and breech-loading in the 19th century was concurrent with the general adoption of rifles. In the early part of the 20th century, soldiers were trained to shoot accurately over long ranges with high-powered cartridges. World War I Lee–Enfield rifles (among others) were equipped with long-range 'volley sights' for massed firing at ranges of up to 1.6 km (1 mi). Individual shots were unlikely to hit, but

2116-419: A tighter bore with no space between bullet and barrel, and still used balls instead of conical bullets. The balls the long rifle used were smaller, allowing the production of more rounds for a given amount of lead. These rifles also had longer barrels, allowing more accuracy, which were rifled with a helical groove. These first started appearing sometime before 1740, one early example being made by Jacob Dickert,

2208-456: A twisted polygonal bore. The Whitworth rifle was the first such type designed to spin the round for accuracy. Bullets for these guns were made to match the shape of the bore so the bullet would grip the rifle bore and take a spin that way. These were generally large caliber weapons, and the ammunition still did not fit tightly in the barrel. Many different shapes and degrees of spiraling were used in experimental designs. One widely produced example

2300-431: Is a 3D printed .22-caliber rifle created around August 2013. It was created using a Stratasys Dimension 1200es printer. It was created by a Canadian only known by the pseudonym "Matthew" who told The Verge that he was in his late 20s, and his main job was making tools for the construction industry. The original Grizzly fired a single shot before breaking. Grizzly 2.0 fired fourteen bullets before getting damaged due to

2392-441: Is not tight, gases will blow through the rifling grooves and around the bullet, compromising muzzle velocity, accuracy and the bullet's terminal energy at the target. Their greater accuracy and range made rifles ideal for hunting, but the slower rate of fire was a significant impediment for widespread military use, along with the fouling caused by normal firing which made them steadily more difficult to load. The smoothbore musket

2484-474: Is rare on rifles designed for extreme accuracy, as the plating process is difficult and liable to reduce the effect of the rifling.) Modern ammunition has a hardened lead core with a softer outer cladding or jacket, typically of an alloy of copper and nickel – cupro-nickel . Some ammunition is coated with molybdenum disulfide to further reduce internal friction – the so-called 'moly-coated' bullet. Rifles were initially single-shot, muzzle-loading weapons. During

2576-435: Is the rifling within its barrel . The raised areas of a barrel's rifling are called lands ; they make contact with and exert torque on the projectile as it moves down the bore, imparting a spin. When the projectile leaves the barrel, this spin persists and lends gyroscopic stability to the projectile due to conservation of angular momentum , increasing accuracy and hence effective range. Historically, rifles only fired

2668-631: The 7.92×33mm Kurz (short) round, the MKb-42 , and ultimately, the assault rifle . Today, an infantryman's rifle is optimized for ranges of 300 m or less, and soldiers are trained to deliver individual rounds or bursts of fire within these distances. Typically, the application of accurate, long-range fire is the domain of the marksman and the sniper in warfare, and of enthusiastic target shooters in peacetime. The modern marksman rifle and sniper rifle are usually capable of accuracy better than 0.3 mrad at 100 yards (1 arcminute ). The Grizzly

2760-599: The Baker rifle . These Rifle Regiments were deployed as skirmishers during the Peninsular war in Spain and Portugal, and were more effective than skirmishers armed with muskets due to their accuracy and long range. Gradually, rifles appeared with cylindrical barrels cut with helical grooves, the surfaces between the grooves being "lands". The innovation was shortly followed by the mass adoption of breech-loading weapons , as it

2852-464: The Battle of Saratoga , and in the southern states where General Morgan commanded as well. Taking advantage of the rifle's improved accuracy, Morgan's sharpshooters picked off cannoneers and officers, reducing the impact of enemy artillery. This kind of advantage was considered pivotal in many battles, such as the battles of Cowpens , Saratoga, and King's Mountain . Later during the Napoleonic Wars ,

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2944-666: The Chasseurs d' Orléans and Henri-Gustave Delvigne . The bullet was designed to allow rapid muzzle loading of rifles and was an innovation that brought about the widespread use of the rifle as the main battlefield weapon for individual soldiers. The French adopted it following difficulties encountered by the French army in North Africa , where their muskets were overtaken in range by long-barreled weapons which were handcrafted by their Algerian opponents. The Minié rifle belonged to

3036-458: The Italian War of 1859 , Austrian troops armed with rifled muskets, but insufficiently trained and practiced in their effective use, were defeated by French forces using aggressive skirmishing tactics and rapid bayonet assaults at close range. Rifle A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting and higher stopping power , with a barrel that has

3128-642: The Minié rifle and beyond, the rifle has become ever more potent at long-range strikes. In recent decades, large-caliber anti-materiel rifles, typically firing between 12.7 mm and 20 mm caliber cartridges, have been developed. The US Barrett M82A1 is probably the best-known such rifle. A second example is the AX50 by Accuracy International . These weapons are typically used to strike critical, vulnerable targets such as computerized command and control vehicles, radio trucks, radar antennae, vehicle engine blocks and

3220-495: The RPK and M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle . A military's light machine guns are typically chambered for the same caliber ammunition as its service rifles. Generally, the difference between an automatic rifle and a machine gun comes down to weight, cooling system, and ammunition feed system. Rifles, with their relatively lighter components (which overheat quickly) and smaller capacity magazines , are incapable of sustained automatic fire in

3312-471: The smoothbore musket commonly using the buck and ball was the only practical field weapon. Rifled muskets had been in use since the Renaissance , but they required hammering projectiles with a ramrod and mallet into the bore of the barrel, and also created considerable cleaning problems. The short-lived " carabine à tige " system used a pin at the bottom of the barrel which deformed the bullet against

3404-426: The verb rifle referring to the early modern machining process of creating grooves with cutting tools. By the 20th century, the weapon had become so common that the modern noun rifle is now often used for any log-shaped handheld ranged weapon designed for well-aimed discharge activated by a trigger . Like all typical firearms, a rifle's projectile ( bullet ) is propelled by the contained deflagration of

3496-426: The 18th century, breech-loading weapons were designed, which allowed the rifleman to reload while under cover, but defects in manufacturing and the difficulty in forming a reliable gas-tight seal prevented widespread adoption. During the 19th century, multi-shot repeating rifles using lever , pump or linear bolt actions became standard, further increasing the rate of fire and minimizing the fuss involved in loading

3588-468: The British 95th Regiment (Green Jackets) and 60th Regiment, (Royal American) , as well as sharpshooters and riflemen during the War of 1812 , used the rifle to great effect during skirmishing. Because of a slower loading time than a musket, they were not adopted by the whole army. Since rifles were used by sharpshooters who did not routinely fire over other men's shoulders, long length was not required to avoid

3680-538: The British Pattern 1853 Enfield . The Lorenz rifle was the third most used rifle during the Civil War The Enfield was also used in the Crimean War where its greater range provided a significant advantage over the much shorter-ranged Russian smoothbore muskets in certain combat circumstances. However, soldiers armed with rifled muskets were not always successful on the battlefield. In

3772-469: The Enfield projectile. The projectile was inserted upside down in the cartridge and the outside of the cartridge paper was greased at the projectile end and intended to be inserted and used as a paper patch. A ramrod was used to fully seat the round. Rifled muskets were heavily used in the American Civil War . The American-made Springfield Model 1861 was the most widely used weapon in the war, followed by

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3864-571: The French Chassepot in 1866. Breech-loading was to have a major impact on warfare, as breech-loading rifles can be fired at a rate many times faster than muzzle-loaded rifles and significantly can be loaded from a prone rather than standing position. Firing prone (i.e., lying down) is more accurate than firing from a standing position, and a prone rifleman presents a much smaller target than a standing soldier. The higher accuracy and range, combined with reduced vulnerability generally benefited

3956-562: The Springfield Model 1855, which also was equipped with the Maynard tape primer system. Since rifle muskets were meant as a direct replacement for smoothbore muskets, they were fitted with bayonets. In military use, rifle musket loading was simplified somewhat through the use of paper cartridges , which were significantly different from modern metallic cartridges . They typically consisted of rolled-up tubes of paper containing

4048-535: The U.S. Army in the mid-1850s showed that the smaller caliber was more accurate at longer ranges. The cylindro-conical shape of the Minié ball also meant that the smaller-diameter but longer .58 caliber Minié ball had roughly the same amount of lead and weight as the larger .69 round ball. While the caliber was reduced, the overall length of the barrel was not. Shorter rifles could have easily been made (and were made for specific branches or arms such as mounted infantry and riflemen ) that would have been more accurate than

4140-457: The US and British service standardized infantry firearms were produced in a longer "rifle musket" version and a shorter "rifle" version, such as the Springfield Model 1855. The rifle musket version had a 40-inch barrel and an overall length of 56 inches (140 cm). The rifle version had a 33-inch (84 cm) barrel and an overall length of 49 inches (120 cm). In the British forces the distinction

4232-399: The action and bore of the musket frequently, either through the action of repeated bore scrubbing, or a deliberate attempt to create "soot grooves" that would allow for more shots to be fired from the firearm. While many people contributed to the development of the concept of rifling and rifles, Friedrich Engels claimed it as a German invention in his extensive writings about the history of

4324-404: The armory or contractors for rifling. Considerable numbers of armory-stored smoothbores were converted in this way in the 1850s upon adoption of the Minié ball as the standard projectile. Rifle muskets tended to be of smaller caliber than their smoothbore predecessors, for example, the .58 caliber U.S. Springfield Model 1855 or the .577 caliber British Pattern 1853 Enfield . Tests conducted by

4416-495: The barrel and because they took longer to reload and fire than muskets. Rifles were created as an improvement in the accuracy of smoothbore muskets. In the early 18th century, Benjamin Robins , an English mathematician, realized that an elongated bullet would retain the momentum and kinetic energy of a musket ball, but would slice through the air with greater ease. The black powder used in early muzzle-loading rifles quickly fouled

4508-698: The barrel, it inserts itself into the rifling, a process that gradually wears down the barrel, and also causes the barrel to heat up more rapidly. Therefore, some machine guns are equipped with quick-change barrels that can be swapped every few thousand rounds, or in earlier designs, were water-cooled. Unlike older carbon steel barrels, which were limited to around 1,000 shots before the extreme heat caused accuracy to fade, modern stainless steel barrels for target rifles are much more resistant to wear, allowing many thousands of rounds to be fired before accuracy drops. (Many shotguns and small arms have chrome -lined barrels to reduce wear and enhance corrosion resistance. This

4600-573: The barrel, making loading slower and more difficult. The greater range of the rifle was considered to be of little practical use since the smoke from black powder quickly obscured the battlefield and made it almost impossible to aim the weapon from a distance. Since musketeers could not afford to take the time to stop and clean their barrels in the middle of a battle, rifles were limited to use by sharpshooters and non-military uses like hunting. Muskets were smoothbore, large caliber weapons using spherical ammunition fired at relatively low velocity. Due to

4692-413: The base of the bullet. When fired, the skirt would expand from the pressure of the exploding charge and grip the rifling as the round was fired. The better seal gave more power, as less gas escaped past the bullet. Also, for the same bore ( caliber ) diameter a long bullet was heavier than a round ball. The extra grip also spun the bullet more consistently, which increased the range from about 50 yards for

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4784-486: The battlefield. Minié system rifles, notably the U.S. Springfield and the British Enfield of the early 1860s featured prominently in the U.S. Civil War , due to their enhanced power and accuracy. At the time of the Crimean War (1853-1856) the Minié rifle was considered the "best in military use". Over the 19th century, bullet design also evolved, the bullets becoming gradually smaller and lighter. By 1910

4876-412: The bullet to fit snugly into the barrel. For a smoothbore weapon this can be a somewhat loose fit, but in the case of a rifle, the helical rifling lands in the barrel have to cut into the bullet to make it spin. The fit needs to be sufficiently tight for the bullet to engage the lands in order to impart spin; otherwise the bullet will wobble, destroying its accuracy. Furthermore, if the barrel-to-bullet seal

4968-492: The category of rifled muskets . The rifle used a conical-cylindrical shaped soft lead bullet, slightly smaller than the barrel bore, with three exterior grease-filled peripheral grooves and a conical hollow in its base . When fired, the expanding gas forcibly pushed on the skirted base of the bullet, spreading it to engage the rifling. This provided spin for accuracy, a better seal for consistent velocity and longer range, and cleaning of barrel detritus. Before this innovation ,

5060-481: The defense while making the traditional battle between lines of standing and volleying infantrymen obsolete. Revolving rifles were an attempt to increase the rate of fire of rifles by combining them with the revolving firing mechanism that had been developed earlier for revolving pistols. Colt began experimenting with revolving rifles in the early 19th century, and other manufacturers like Remington later experimented with them as well. The Colt Revolving Rifle Model 1855

5152-401: The forward line. A shorter length made a handier weapon in which tight-fitting balls did not have to be rammed so far down the barrel. The invention of the Minié ball in the 1840s solved the slow loading problem, and in the 1850s and 1860s rifles quickly replaced muskets on the battlefield. Many rifles, often referred to as rifled muskets , were very similar to the muskets they replaced, but

5244-479: The high cost and great difficulty of precision manufacturing, and the need to load readily from the muzzle, the musket ball was a loose fit in the barrel. Consequently, on firing the ball bounced off the sides of the barrel when fired and the final direction on leaving the muzzle was unpredictable. The performance of early muskets defined the style of warfare at the time. Due to the lack of accuracy, soldiers were deployed in long lines (thus line infantry ) to fire at

5336-494: The high-speed spin from the rifling, created terrible wounds. The Pattern 1851 Minié rifle was in use by the British Army from 1851 to 1855. 34,000 of the guns were made under the formal name of Regulation Minié rifle. The rifle was .702 caliber with the intent that in emergency it could fire musket balls. In practice it was found that only about 12 could be fired before it became impossible to reload. The Minié system

5428-452: The interior surface which would cause the bullet to spin as it left the barrel. Rifles have the advantage of long range accuracy, because spinning bullets have far flatter and more stable trajectories than balls fired from smoothbore muskets. Muskets had the advantage of a faster rate of fire; for example, a trained British soldier could fire three rounds a minute with a musket, while a rifleman would average two. A muzzle-loaded weapon required

5520-528: The jet engines of enemy aircraft. Anti-materiel rifles can be used against human targets, but the much higher weight of rifle and ammunition, and the massive recoil and muzzle blast, usually make them less than practical for such use. The Barrett M82 is designed with a maximum effective range of 1,800 m (1.1 mi), although it has a confirmed kill distance of 2,430 m (1.51 mi) in Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda in 2002. The record for

5612-508: The longest confirmed kill shot stands at 3,540 m (11,610 ft), set by an unnamed soldier with Canada's elite special operations unit Joint Task Force 2 using a McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle. Mini%C3%A9 rifle The Minié rifle was an important infantry rifle of the mid-19th century. A version was adopted in 1849 following the invention of the Minié ball in 1847 by the French Army captain Claude-Étienne Minié of

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5704-424: The military also experimented with other designs. Breech-loading weapons proved to have a much faster rate of fire than muzzleloaders, causing military forces to abandon muzzle loaders in favor of breech-loading designs in the late 1860s. In the later part of the 19th century, rifles were generally single-shot, breech-loading guns, designed for aimed, discretionary fire by individual soldiers. Then, as now, rifles had

5796-651: The musket was not considered to be significant on the battlefield, because smoke from the black powder used at the time quickly obscured the battlefield and rendered the longer range of the rifle useless, especially as a battle progressed. Rifles were more expensive to make than muskets, and were typically used by small units of specialized riflemen trained not to fight in closed ranks, but in open order, spread out as either skirmishers or sharpshooters . Since they were not fired over other men’s shoulders or designed for close-combat bayonet fighting, military rifles could be much shorter than muskets, which also made loading from

5888-654: The musket's use for imprecise fire. During the American Revolution, the colonist troops favoured these more accurate rifles while their use was resisted by the British and Hessian troops. By the time of the American Revolutionary War , these rifles were commonly used by frontiersmen, and Congress authorized the establishment of ten companies of riflemen. One of the most critical units was Morgan's Riflemen , led by Daniel Morgan . This sharpshooting unit eventually proved itself integral to

5980-405: The muzzle easier and reduced the difficulties associated with fitting the bullet into the barrel, although the rate of fire was still slower than that of a musket. The problem of slow loading of rifles caused by barrel fouling was solved by the Minié ball , which was invented in 1846 by French inventor Claude-Étienne Minié . Despite its name, the Minié ball was not a round ball at all, as it had

6072-645: The muzzle-loading Minié rifle became obsolete in 1864 as the Danish foundered, equipped with Minié rifles, against the Prussians, who had the innovative early bolt-action Dreyse rifles. Later, in the Austro-Prussian War , the Prussians again defeated their enemy in the form of the Austrians who were also equipped with Minié rifles. In France, the existing Minié rifles were then retooled to accommodate

6164-474: The old muskets and as easy to use with minimal training. Yet the Minié-type rifled muskets were much more accurate than smoothbore muskets. Tests of a rifled musket firing Minié ball, and a smoothbore musket firing round ball, at various ranges against a 10 by 10 inches (25 cm × 25 cm) target, showed much higher accuracy for the rifled musket. From a smooth-bore musket, from 42% to 48% of bullets hit

6256-503: The opposing forces. Precise aim was thus not necessary to hit an opponent. Muskets were used for comparatively rapid, imprecisely aimed volley fire, and the average soldier could be easily trained to use them. In the Province of Pennsylvania USA, one of the most successful early rifles, the long rifle , was developed over the course of the 18th century. Compared to the more common Brown Bess , these Pennsylvania and Kentucky rifles had

6348-418: The problem, usually by resorting to an under-bore bullet that expanded upon firing. The original muzzle-loading rifle, with a closely fitting ball to take the rifling grooves, was loaded with difficulty, particularly when foul, and for this reason was not generally used for military purposes. With the advent of rifling, the bullet itself did not initially change but was wrapped in a greased, cloth patch to grip

6440-495: The rifle as a military weapon. The M1 Garand was a semi-automatic rapid-fire rifle developed for modern warfare use in World War II. During and after World War II it became accepted that most infantry engagements occurred at ranges of less than 300 m; the range and power of the large full-powered rifle cartridges were "overkill", requiring weapons heavier than otherwise necessary. This led to Germany's development of

6532-505: The rifle, and the evolution and use of the technology. Some of the earliest examples of European grooved gun barrels were reportedly manufactured during 1440, and further developed by Gaspard Kollner of Vienna c.  1498 , although other scholars allege they were a joint effort between Kollner and Augustus Kotter of Nuremberg c.  1520 . Military commanders preferred smoothbore weapons for infantry use because rifles were much more prone to problems due to powder fouling

6624-507: The rifling grooves. The first half of the 19th century saw a distinct change in the shape and function of the bullet. In 1826 Delvigne , a French infantry officer, invented a breech with abrupt shoulders on which a spherical bullet was rammed down until it caught the rifling grooves. Delvigne's method, however, deformed the bullet and was inaccurate. Soon after, the Carabine à tige was invented by Louis-Etienne de Thouvenin , which had

6716-431: The smoothbore muskets they replaced, but military commanders still used tactics like firing by ranks, and feared that with a shorter weapon the soldiers in the rear ranks might accidentally shoot the front rank soldiers in the back of the head. Military commanders at the time also believed that bayonet fighting would continue to be important in battles, which also influenced the decision to retain existing barrel lengths. In

6808-762: The spiral grooves without "stripping" them in the same way that a screw or bolt thread would be stripped if subjected to extreme forces. From 1836, breech-loading rifles were introduced with the German Dreyse Needle gun , followed by the French Tabatière in 1857, and the British Calisher and Terry carbine made in Birmingham and later in 1864 and the better known British Snider–Enfield . Primitive chamber-locking mechanisms were soon replaced by bolt-action mechanisms, exemplified by

6900-616: The standard blunt-nosed bullet had been replaced by the pointed, 'spitzer' bullet , an innovation that increased range and penetration. Cartridge design evolved from simple paper tubes containing black powder and shot, to sealed brass cases with integral primers for ignition, and black powder was replaced by cordite , and then other nitro-cellulose-based smokeless powder mixtures, propelling bullets to higher velocities than before. The increased velocity meant that new problems arrived, and so bullets went from being soft lead to harder lead, then to copper-jacketed , in order to better engage

6992-526: The strain. In October 2020, another 3D-printed 9mm rifle known as the "FGC-9mm" was created. It is reported that it can be made in 2 weeks with $ 500 of tools. A second model was later made in April 2021. A youth rifle is a rifle designed or modified for fitting children or other small-framed shooters. A youth rifle is often a single-shot .22 caliber rifle, or a bolt-action rifle, although some youth rifles are semi-automatic. They are usually very light, with

7084-445: The target at a distance of 200 yards. At a distance of 300 yards, 18% of the bullets hit the target. For a rifle, the results were much better. From a rifle, 46% to 58% of bullets hit the target at a distance of 300 yards; 24% to 42% at 500 yards. This potential accuracy, however, required skills only acquired through advanced training and practice; a rifled musket in the hands of a raw recruit would not have performed very much better than

7176-481: The wall of the barrel when the bullet was pushed to the bottom. This system was very problematic for cleaning, especially with the black powders of the period. A test in Vincennes in 1849 demonstrated that at 15 yards the bullet was able to penetrate two boards of poplar wood, each two-thirds of an inch thick and separated by 20 inches. Soldiers of the time spread rumors that at 1,200 yards the bullet could penetrate

7268-434: The way that machine guns are; they trade this capability in favor of increased mobility. Modern military rifles are fed by magazines, while machine guns are generally belt-fed . Many machine guns allow the operator to quickly exchange barrels in order to prevent overheating, whereas rifles generally do not. Most machine guns fire from an open bolt in order to reduce the danger of " cook-off ", while almost all rifles fire from

7360-462: The weapon could be fired. The Maynard tape primer system attempted to speed up this last step by using paper strips similar to those used in modern toy cap guns in place of the percussion cap, but this proved to be unreliable in field service and was abandoned on later weapons. An exception to this method was the Enfield rifle-musket cartridge. There were no lubrication rings moulded or swaged into

7452-435: The weapon is not rifled or does not fire solid projectiles (e.g. "laser rifle"). The origins of rifling are difficult to trace, but some of the earliest European experiments seem to have been carried out during the 15th century. Archers had long realized that a twist added to the tail feathers of their arrows gave them greater accuracy. Early muskets produced large quantities of smoke and soot, which had to be cleaned from

7544-639: Was also used extensively by various manufacturers, such as Springfield (the Springfield Model 1861 ) and Enfield (the Pattern 1853 Enfield ). Minié rifles were also used extensively in the Boshin War (1868–1869) in Japan, where they had an important role in tipping the balance against the Tokugawa forces in encounters such as the Battle of Toba–Fushimi . In the Second Schleswig War ,

7636-409: Was an early repeating rifle and the first one to be used by the U.S. Government and saw some limited action during the American Civil War . Revolvers, both rifles and pistols, tend to spray fragments of metal from the front of the cylinder. The Winchester repeating rifle was invented in 1866. The firer pulled on a lever to reload the rifle with a stored cartridge. An important area of development

7728-488: Was just referred to as a "rifle". By the 1880s and 1890s, rifled muskets were made largely obsolete by single-shot breech-loading rifles and bolt-action repeating rifles , such as the M1867 Werndl–Holub , Springfield Model 1873 , Mauser Model 1893 , and Springfield Model 1892–99 . A significant number of the single-shot breech-loading rifles were produced by simply changing out the percussion lock mechanism of

7820-417: Was not practical to push an overbore bullet down through a rifled barrel. The dirt and grime from prior shots were pushed down ahead of a tight bullet or ball (which may have been a looser fit in the clean barrel before the first shot), and loading was far more difficult, as the lead had to be deformed to go down in the first place, reducing the accuracy due to deformation. Several systems were tried to deal with

7912-582: Was only used for weapons that directly replaced smoothbore muskets. For example, the Springfield Model 1861 with its percussion lock mechanism and long barrel was called a "rifled musket". In contrast, early breech-loading metallic cartridge rifles such as the Henry repeating rifle and the Spencer repeating rifle were produced within the same period, which did not replace the far more common rifled musket, and did not have other musket-like characteristics, and

8004-503: Was pitted against the Japanese Arisaka Type 30 bolt-action rifle in 6.5 mm; both had velocities well over 2,000 feet per second (610 m/s). Until the late 19th century rifles tended to be very long, some long rifles reaching approximately 2 m (7 ft) in length to maximize accuracy, making early rifles impractical for use by cavalry. However, following the advent of more powerful smokeless powder,

8096-453: Was retained between the full-length musket issued to the infantry as a whole, and the shorter and handier version of the Enfield produced for specialist rifle regiments and marines. The long version had the barrel held to the stock by three metal bands, while the shorter version needed just two, so they are referred to as “3-band” and “2-band” Enfields respectively. Rifle muskets typically used percussion lock systems, with some exceptions like

8188-566: Was the Metford rifling in the Pattern 1888 Lee–Metford service rifle. Although uncommon, polygonal rifling is still used in some weapons today, one example being the Glock line of pistols (which fire standard bullets). Many of the early designs were prone to dangerous backfiring, which could lead to the destruction of the weapon and serious injury to the person firing it. As the bullet enters

8280-520: Was the main infantry weapon, while rifles were used only by marksmen and other specialist troops. All muskets were supplied with bayonets, for use in melee combat. At the time, the Russian and French armies actively used light infantry (rangers and voltigeurs ), and sometimes scattered whole infantry battalions as skirmishers to fight long-term on rough terrain. Although rifles had better shooting accuracy than smoothbore muskets, their effective fire range

8372-566: Was the same. For example, in the British Army, light infantrymen armed with ordinary muskets were trained for 200 to 300 yards (180 to 270 m). Since they were also used as pikes , muskets tended to be fairly long and heavy weapons. They tended to be about 4 to 6 feet (120 to 180 cm) in length (6 to 8 feet (180 to 240 cm), with the bayonet attached), with a weight of around 10 to 12 pounds (4.5 to 5.4 kg), as longer and heavier weapons were found to be too unwieldy. The length of

8464-423: Was the way that cartridges were stored and used in the weapon. The Spencer repeating rifle was a breech-loading manually operated lever-action rifle that was adopted by the United States. Over 20,000 were used during the American Civil War. It was the first adoption of a removable magazine -fed infantry rifle. The design was completed by Christopher Spencer in 1860. It used copper rimfire cartridges stored in

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