Introduction to Guns

Types of Guns: Top 3 You Need to Know

There’s tons of types of guns…it really depends how specific you want to get.
For us, we consider the three main ones — pistol, rifle, & shotgun. We’ll walk through the main characteristics of each and start to break down sub-categories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pistol

We will be using “pistol” and “handgun” to mean the same thing.  a Handgun has the following characteristics:

Fired from one hand
No support from the shoulder
Barrel length of under 16 inches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subsets of pistols include revolvers and semi-automatic pistols. Below is a good representation of handguns with the one on the right being a revolver while the rest are semi-autos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rifle

A rifle usually has the following characteristics:

Fired with two hands
Braced against the shoulder
Fires only one projectile with each pull of the trigger
Barrel has rifling which helps spin and stabilize the bullet
Barrel length of over 16 inches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ll be breaking down rifles into two subsets—bolt action and semi-automatic. Popular bolt actions include the Remington 700 series, while the two most popular semi’s are the AR-15 and AK-47.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shotgun

Shotguns have smooth barrels to fire a variety of different ammunition. The most common ammo involves lots of metal pellets which spread out.

Shotguns has to have:

Fired with two hands while braced against the shoulder
Fires once per pull of the trigger
Smooth barrel
Barrel length of over 18 inches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ll consider two main subsets of shotguns with the pump action & semi-automatic.
Pump actions require you to physically move the pump handle to chamber fresh shells and remove spent shells. They have the characteristic chung-chung sound you always hear in movies. Semi-automatics usually utilize gas or recoil to move the shells.
The two most popular pumps are the Mossberg 500 series and the Remington 870 series. In the semi-auto world, there are the Benelli’s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

There you have it…a quick primer on pistols, rifles, and shotguns.
Here’s an infographic you can save or pin!