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Sword

2019-12-12T13:51:23Z

2601:1C0:5C00:C130:798E:CBB3:E7F2:A1E4: /* Magical materials */

[[image:gladius.jpg|thumb|300px|right|A Roman gladius (Pompeii Variant), one type of sword]]
{{topquote|You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!' IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE. 'She's a child!' shouted Crumley. IT'S EDUCATIONAL.
'What if she cuts herself?' THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.|[[Discworld|Hogfather]]}}

Swords are probably the most commonly used weapon in Fantasy, especially by main characters. While certain fantasy races have certain specific weapons associated with them (Dwarves and Axes, Elves and Bows), all of them will make use of swords at least on the sidelines.

Real life shit: A '''sword''' is a melee weapon comprised of a long, sharp blade and a hilt to hold it with. In the real world, the blades of swords normally range between 50 to 150cm long and typically weigh between 1 to 4 kilograms, depending on the size and composition. Numerous variants of swords exist and have been employed since some ancient Mesopotamian metalworker decided to make the blade of a dagger much longer than usual.

== Love and Hate ==
There are various types of sword related retards.

*'''Sword Wankers''': Overly romantic morons who believe that the sword is the be all end all weapon until people got good with guns and tragically ended that. Buying into all that chivalry/Bushido nonsense.

*'''Anti-Sword Wankers''': People who respond to the sword wankers by going too far the other way. Seeing swords as worthless weapons that were only carried by overly romantic morons. Sword blades would always shatter on impact with plate armor and ten swordsmen would easily die to one guy with a spear.

*'''Nipponese Wankers''': People who claims that [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|Japanese swords are THE BEST]], magically sharp and indestructible because the metal has been folded a thousands times, able to cut through a Tank's armour and pierce steel plate. Western swords are, by comparison, unsharpened metal slabs used by hairy barbarians.

*'''Western Wankers''': On the opposite spectrum, these guys think that katanas are at best crude baseball bats that stands no chance against GLORIOUS EUROPEAN PLATE, and that by comparison European swords are the best thing around in therms of technology, sharpness and usability

[[Skub|All of them are stupid]]. Swords were not the be-all end-all of medieval warfare. Other weapons did have their advantages. [[Mace]]s did concussive damage even if someone was wearing heavy armor and could break bones. [[Spear]]s had a longer reach and were better against cavalry. Halberds could deliver a devastating chop at range. This did not mean that swords were worthless. They were versatile -- short swords were excellent as a fallback weapon: when the foe was trying to get your spear out of his shield, you gutted him with your sword. Double-handed Zweihanders could be devastating. Nevertheless, morons who think in bare basic binary believe that they are either the weapon of the gods or worthless rubbish. There is a reason why any civilization that developed metalworking (and a couple that didn't) eventually came up with swords in one form or another, and there is likewise a reason why the sword was not the only weapon ever created.

In the same way, people comparing western and eastern swords should take in account that while Europe was and is a big place with lots of trade and plenty of steel, Japan was not. So European swords faced lots of tough metal armour, and there was a sort of "arms race" where swords became increasingly good against armour, that in turn became better at stopping swords and so on. This got to a point where people stopped carrying [[shield|shields]] around because armour was just that good, and swords became increasingly narrow and quick because slashing or piercing plate armour was totally ineffective and your best bet was stabbing weak points.

Japan on the contrary had a lot less metal around, so there was less armour and good quality metal was rarer and costly. There was just no point in developing pointy (AH!) uber-piercing swords, and they had to use the metal they had in a smarter way, such as the practice of 'folded steel', a smithing technique to make crappy steel more passable in quality (hence that '1,000-folded metal' bullshit that weeaboos go on about). This does NOT mean they were worse: they were perfectly good for use in the role they had in the place they were, and developing European-like swords would be pointless. This is discussed below in greater details.

== So why are swords so popular? ==
Swords generally have five major advantages over other weapons:
* '''Ease of carrying''' - Almost all types of swords fit in a sheath or scabbard and are generally compact and light enough to not cause any discomfort when carried on person. If you have a sword, you can keep it as a backup weapon for when your main one is at major disadvantage, is damaged or lost. You can also comfortably carry it out of the battlefield as a self-defense weapon.
* '''Versatility''' - While most battlefield weapons are specialized in chopping, piercing or crushing people, swords can generally do anything, if a bit worse than any weapon specialized in it. Even if the sword is specialized, like the thrusting rapier or the slashing sabre it still gives you more options than say an axe or a spear.
* '''Reach''' - Swords are good at a wide array of ranges, most importantly at extremely close range, where most other battlefield weapons suffer badly. If you're stuck in a close melee, fighting indoors or in the narrow streets, sword is your friend.
* '''Defense''' - Swords are made of metal, are generally quite long and most have crossguards or some other hand protection, which means that aside from the shield no other weapon is as good at parrying enemy blows.
* '''Lethality''' - Swords are great at disabling and killing unarmored humans with as little strength spent as possible. They generally don't cut through any kind of armour, but on the plus side most people didn't wear full sets on the battlefield (and in the hot regions it was quite common for people to go to battle almost naked), and advanced control of the blade sword provides makes hitting unarmored body parts easier than most other weapons.

There is also another half reason of '''status''' - quality metal was often relatively expensive, and the skills required to make a sword were likewise very specialised and expensive. Therefore, swords were a good way to show off how baller you were.

Considering all of this, sword was mostly used on the battlefield as a backup weapon, as while most soldiers through history went to battle with something way more specialized, almost anyone who could carry the sword would, often even choosing it over better armour if he cannot afford or carry both. Out of the battlefield it held the title the best self-defense weapon up until revolver pistols were invented.

That being said, swords are weapons and weapons only. You cannot use them to cut firewood like battleaxes, construct the camp or set field fortifications like warhammers, or use them as carving knives like daggers and have you ever heard of people going hunting with a sword? Going against a bear with a sword is generally a fucking stupid idea, even more so if you face things like battle elephants; you need either pole-arms or ranged weapons against them unless you have a death wish. Their sole function is to kill other humans. To warriors and societies run by warriors it's only natural that some symbolism would wear off.

Considering all this, it's strange that swords are the go-to weapons of your average melee [[murderhobo]]s in any fantasy setting where they are supposed to fight giants and dragons on a daily basis. Though this may partly be the fault of unimaginative game designers or GMs, as the majority of magic weapons tend to be swords, or else you need to specialize in order to train with another weapon even if said weapon would realistically require less training in real life. Then again, murderhobos almost exclusively fight in duels and smaller skirmishes rather than large formation warfare, where bringing a pike or other main battlefield weapon would be stupid in comparison. The close confines of the average dungeon also rule out the use of polearms in most cases, to say nothing of the ability to carry a sword and still leave the other hand free.

== Dissection of swords in battle ==
Because swords are so versatile, it's best to go over a few of their various benefits to the user and why they're so commonly used:

*'''Balance:''' To start off, most combat swords have their center of mass near the handle. This means you have much better control over their movement than with any other weapon, able to stop it or change the movement angle much faster. However this same balance has a double edge, thanks to their good balance a sword can't hit as hard as an unbalanced weapon since you have less weight and mass at the point of impact. It's why relatively untrained axemen and halberds are still a strong threat, the heavy weight of the head means that when you hit, you hit hard, even if it is hard to change your blow's speed or angle and it's why swordsmen need more training than with other weapons.

*'''Defense:''' Swords also offer more protection than most other weapons - most swords are one handed, so it's easy to use a shield with most types. You can also use them to parry other weapons if you're really desperate, however parrying anything but another sword is generally difficult and/or dangerous. Spears, pole-arms, and other weapons designed for thrusting (including some swords) are hard to parry, weapons that have gathered huge momentum, such as axes or maces, would have a high chance of damaging either your weapon or your hand, or throwing you off your balance and flails (at full speed) can hardly be parried at all, but that's to be expected given it's their main shtick. However the sword shines in attacking first before they build up the momentum which the sword's superior agility can allow. Or, if you are skilled enough, you can try to redirect their momentum so their weapon misses you instead of parrying it head-on with your edge and then counter-attack while they are trying to recover. Most swords also usually include crossguards to protect the hands of anybody using them unlike... pretty much every other common weapon.

*'''Training Time:''' One of the worst things about swords, they require more skill than most other close combat weapons, and while untrained militiamen with spears, halberds, or axes still could be a threatening foes, untrained men with swords possess a danger mainly to themselves. While high skill floor is a definite disadvantage, skill ceiling with a sword fighting is also much higher than with most other weapons, meaning if you can dump a lot of time into training sword training would give you more result - one more reason for it to be a staple weapon of warrior/noble classes in most culture. Additionally, a sword is just a sharp metal stick with a handle, so if you manage to master it, most of the core swordsmanship skills and martial art basics in general transfer well to other long, shafted weapons like axes, spears and quarterstaves, if you decide to train in using them.

*'''Space:''' One-handed swords require much less space to build momentum, so you can effectively use them in a tight shoulder-to-shoulder formation (unlike axes, maces and hammers), even two-handed swords will usually have a Ricasso (an unsharpened part of the blade immediately above the crossguard) which can be used to allow them to fight better in close quarters and even if they don't, they still don't require nearly as much space as great axes or two-handed warhammers and if you're really hard pressed (let's say somebody comes at you in armor), a fighting technique of the time was to just use the pommel at the end of the grip and just clobber your opponent with it (a German technique called "mordhau"); after all, this is the origin for English word "pummel". Or you could hold the sword in the middle (even though it's sharp, it's okay if you use gloves; it's called half-swording) and use it like a makeshift short spear, doing quick jabs with its point or trying to wrestle your opponent to the ground by using your sword as a lever. All of these are fairly good techniques for very close quarters combat.

*'''Availability and Reliability:''' Swords ran the gamut between very cheap and very expensive, more so than pretty much any other weapon of the time. Using England in the middle ages as an example, a sword could cost between 3 pence and thousands of pounds. A line archer made 3 pence a day on average while a professional archer made around 10. This means that the cheapest of swords were extremely affordable for pretty much anyone who actually needed them (remember, mythical beasts didn't tend to run around in real life), even if the sword was of lower quality it was still a tool of war and useable. Depending on the period of time and region, swords were legally made "nobility only" weapons of status, though in practice many people got around this through rule lawyering, most commonly by simply calling a particular type of sword a "big knife." Fun-fact: the rapier (commonly thought of as a nobility-only dueling sword) was an extremely common back-up weapon for soldiers.

*'''Lethality:''' How a sword kills is entirely dependent on the type of sword that it is (this will be covered more later). The main types of damage they inflict could be divided into three categories:
:*''Slashing'' deals huge, extremely painful and bleeding wounds. The pain alone would incapacitate most foes, leaving them to the finishing blow, and if you didn't finish them, they would just bleed to death in a matter of minutes. It's effective against opponents with partial armor, prevalent through most of the history, as limb hits are just as painful and lethal as body hits, and limbs are usually more exposed, and if your opponent happen to have no chest piece, disemboweling becomes a nice effective option. Two main issues with slashing is that pretty much any armor renders it completely useless, and that opponents with high enough pain tolerance (Berzerkers and Mameluks did it through painkiller drugs) can continue fighting for minutes even with their lethal wounds, taking their killers (and likely more poor bastards) with them.
:*''Stabs'' from a sword on the on the other hand can be instantly fatal since if you hit someone pretty much anywhere on the torso you are almost guaranteed to hit an organ that's full of blood like a liver or a kidney, and then have the blood pour out of the big hole you just made in them. The issue with stabs is if your opponent wears any kind of metal armor on his torso (like all soldiers worth their salt before the age of the musketeer), your stabs generally cannot do shit unless you manage to get that sharp point between the gaps between the plates. Another issue with stabs is that they lack in stopping power, and while they're considerably more immediately lethal than any other attacking move other than chopping the head off, they're not ''instantly'' lethal, so they guy you've just impaled on your sword still have few seconds to take you with him if he's angry, crazy or high enough.
:*''Half-swording'', or grabbing your sword by the blade. It may seem utterly retarded at first, and you need a bit of practice not to cut off your fingers, but works surprisingly well against armoured opponent. If you encounter an enemy in full plate or even chain-mail or a padded gamberson, you'd better forget about hitting him with a blade, as it would only serve to damage your weapon, as swords don't cut through metal. Like at all. You'd be far better with ''bashing'' him with a pommel, or yet better use half-swording known as "deathblow", holding your sword by the blade, and bashing your enemy with a pommel or a cross-guard like a makeshift mace or warhammer respectively. By the end of the Medieval period, when plate became widespread, pommels and cross guards became arguably more important than the blade itself, especially if you want to [[Meme|End Him Rightly]]. And if you hold your sword with the main hand on the handle and the off-hand on the blade close to the tip you get a short spear or a dagger with a very long handle, that you can jam between the plates of your opponent's armor. It was also a good way to use the Zweihander against pike and halberd formations: You used the long blade to cast the pikes aside, and when you're inside the ranks you switch to half-swording and started slashing and stabbing around.
:*"Chopping" is more common in axes, but the element is still present in some swords. The chopping value of a heavy, weighted sword allows it to slice through tissue and bone, cutting off part or all or a limb or neck. In areas with plentiful armour, this feature is less effective and therefore less common. However, warm areas such as Southeast Asia have machete-like blades intended to do just that.

== Types of Swords ==
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Unlike, say, the [[spear]] or the [[mace]], which were pretty much the same all over, swords, being essentially jack-of-all-trades weapons that could also be designed to excel in specific circumstances, came in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes to fit the needs of the people using them. This is not a complete list (nor should it be, go to wikipedia), but it should give you a good introduction.
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===The Ancient Days===

A fair number of early bronze age swords look like big knives, because that was basically what they were. Societies figured out bronze working or learned it from someone else, found out that they could make serviceable bronze knives like their older rock ones, then began enlarging the shape. They also were composed of just a blade with a handle (or hilt) bolted on, rather than having a tang, Others were simply a single piece of bronze with maybe some leather or cloth tied around the handle to make it easier to hold. While bronze is quite easy to forge and shape, it's relative rarity compared to iron and it's softness means that bronze wasn't an ideal cutting material; swords made of bronze can't be too large or they'll bend after a strike, and they can't hold an edge as well. Later societies moved to iron, and then steel, once they mastered the smelting techniques necessary.

[[image:Khopesh.jpg|thumb|300px|right|An Egyptian Khopesh, a serviceable first draft that would be overshadowed by latter models]]

*'''Khopesh''': One of the oldest varieties of sword with a distinct sickle shape. Originally of Egyptian design, this weapon's distinctive blade allowed it to cut, hook shields, and even thrust. It was fairly good for its day in the bronze age, but in that day armor better than leather or padded cloth was a rarity. Its time was done once [[mail|chainmail]] and scale armor became common in the iron age. Despite most fantasy depictions of khopeshes having them as long as longswords, these blades were fairly small at 50-60 cm, since anything bigger made out of bronze tended to get bent easily.
*'''Kopis''': An ancient Greek short sword from the age of Hoplites, about 50-70 centimeters long. It curved inward and was a single bladed weapon on the inward curve. This did limit flexibility in slashing attacks somewhat when compared with swords with blades on both sides, but meant that a sharper edge could be put on the edged side, which was important since at this point the Greeks only had bronze to make weapons, which does not hold an edge very well. A similar sword, the Falcata, was used by the Spanish, which also featured a knuckle guard.
*'''Xiphos''': Another Greek short sword, this one was double-edged and the blade resembled more of a leaf shape, giving it some extra heft toward the point. A secondary, cut-and-thrust weapon.
*'''Gladius''': The standard sword of the Roman Legions, a short sword about 60 to 80 centimeters long. This sword was the (main?) weapon for the average Roman legionary. As one of the smallest one handed swords of its time, the gladius was decent at chopping and slashing, but excelled at stabbing; combined with Roman shield formations and the bash-step-stab-block move, this gave it a deceptively large effective range surpassed only by [[polearm]]s. The fact that Roman legionnaire maniples were able to crush Macedonian phalanxes in melee should tell you a lot about their effectiveness (though outflanking the formation helped). It was later phased out in favor of the longer spatha (a cavalry weapon adapted by the infantry, mainly as a reaction to increasingly mounted adversaries), which was itself a precursor to the viking sword, and by extension arming swords and longswords. (Historians are actually still divided on whether the pilum, a cross between a javelin and a spear, or the gladius was the legionnaire's main weapon. What is know is that each legionnaire carried two pilii and a gladius, but whether they were supposed to throw both and engage with their swords or keep one to engage in melee and only draw their sword later is unclear, with surviving evidence hinting at both tactics being used.)
*'''Macuahuitl''': These were Aztec swords, made without the use of any metalworking. They consisted of a sturdy wooden paddle whose edge was beset with rows of sharpened obsidian. This made the sword ridiculously sharp, but also prone to chipping.

===Medieval Times===

As a rule, during the Middle Ages in Europe most peoples settled on straight double edged swords for the most part.

*'''Arming Sword''': Also known as the side-sword, this was a one handed weapon about 70 to 90 centimeters pretty much carried by every decently equipped man-at-arms/archer/spearman/knight ever. This was also the sword that developed the cruciform crossguard, which would be used by nearly every European sword design due to its defense value and versatility. Often carried with a shield of some sort, it can also be used if your main weapon breaks or happens to be too long to use in corridors. The standby weapon of knights, it retained some degree of use even after the advent of longswords due to their greater degree of adaptability. When most people hear the word "sword", this sword is what most often comes to mind. Often incorrectly called a longsword in games and other fiction.
:*'''Viking Sword''': Often considered the progenitor of the arming sword, the Viking swords featured ornamental hilts, and many had unusually high-quality steel for their time, particularly the [[wikipedia:Ulfberht_swords|Ulfberht swords]].
:*'''Messer''' A straight single-edged sword, this German weapon basically became the poor man's sword because, according to the law, [[rules lawyer|its construction meant]] [[wat|it counted as a knife]]. Besides its association with shady criminals and brutal gang violence, It also featured an early knuckleguard called a "Nagel", or nail, which became very useful for parrying blows.
*'''Longsword''': A 90 to 120 cm long knightly sword, befit of any self-respecting knightly individual, it's your two-handed or hand and a half go-to man killer with multiple functions such as sword(duh), crowbar, spear, and hammer. Though there are dozens of techniques to use the longsword, two of the most common and useful styles are the Italian and German styles. The Italian longsword technique allowed wielders to strike and parry quickly, greatly emphasizing on using the general physics of a longsword combined with well planned footwork. The German style of "half-swording" (gripping the sword with the right hand on the handle and the left on the percussion point of the sword) this technique allowed the wielder to use the sword like a crowbar and fight armored opponents more efficiently in close quarters, the objective being to use the sword to catch and topple opponents, leaving them vulnerable to follow-up attacks through gaps in their armor. It is also good to note that the longsword strikes faster and harder than the arming sword because two hands are used to wield it (though it could be wielded with one hand in order to use a shield in the other, albeit not quite as effectively).
*'''Falchion''': This single-edged sword almost resembles a great machete, designed to combine the advantages of a sword and an axe. The blade is much wider in order to increase its weight, giving it better chopping power at the expense of balance and thrusting ability. Interestingly enough, there is very little information on how falchions were used in combat, though it is theorized that it was used with a shield (quite unlike the common fantasy depiction of a big two-handed fuck-off machete).
*'''Cinquedea''': Literally "five fingers", this Venetian blade straddled the line between a short sword and a long dagger (about 18-20 inches). One noteworthy feature was that the blade was obscenely wide, being as wide as five fingers, hence the name. It was a civilian weapon used in narrow streets, and frequently pimped out with etched blades. While the wide blade won't do much good against armor, it can give an unarmored opponent a pretty nasty wound.
*'''Estoc''': When plate armor became more common, some men carried the Estoc, which was basically a longsword with no sharpened edges but a very sharp and narrow point. The edges were left unsharpened, partly because a slash does no good against most armor, and partly because the actual blade wasn't flat and wide, but thick and narrow, reducing flex and making it more rigid for dealing with heavy armor. The blade could be triangular, square, or even hexagonal.
*'''Greatsword''': Or Zweihander, is a mighty 120-150 centimeter blade that appeared somewhere around the 15th century which was mainly carried by fuckhuge men with fuckhuge biceps and fuckhuge balls whose jobs were to run forth as the vanguard and hack enemy pikes, pikemen, swordsmen, and occasionally cavalry to meaty chunks or to guard vulnerable flanks. Greatswords bear many of the same qualities as the longsword, though it was a bit slower and struck harder due to the weight, and also require even '''more''' training. One unique ability of the Greatsword was that it could be wielded like a short spear, featuring an extra handguard past the primary hilt. Good greatswords were some of the most expensive close combat weapons in medieval Europe, and good [[landsknecht]]s were the most expensive foot soldiers, but for the good reason, as they combined the devastating killing blow and armor piercing capability of the axe, speed of the sword, and were also able do chop through tough spear or halberd formations (and mind you Swiss pikemen, and later halberdiers, were the deathstars of this era). This, however, comes at a great risk, as while a highly skilled landsknecht can swing the zweihander pretty fast, he cannot react fast enough to reliably block enemy strikes because of the fuckhuge momentum of his sword, leaving him vulnerable to counter-attack if something survives his swing - even while they usually wore heavy armor, landsknechts were known to die young.
:*'''Claymore''': Scottish variant of the Greatsword. The claymore is distinguished by its forward-sweeping hilt ending in [[wikipedia:quatrefoil|quatrefoils]]. Not to be confused with later basket-hilted swords of the same name. These things stuck around for use as weapons into the Napoleonic era, for their intimidation and national pride as much as practicality.

===The Far East===
{{topquote|In few countries has the sword had so much attention and honour paid it as in Japan; for regarded as being of divine origin, it has been worshipped as such.|Francis James Norman, ''The Fightning Man of Japan'' (1905)}}
Like in the West, the peoples of East Asia made use of a wide and diverse variety of swords which evolved on their own lines. Here are a few of these.

*'''Katana:''' The unstoppable God-weapons that can cleave through tanks, cut through time, and cure cancer. ''No wait, come back!'' That's all bull and no one who isn't stupid disputes this. ''But'', they were perfectly functional swords for their place and time. Japanese blacksmiths didn't have access to the quality of iron that their European counterparts did, neither did they have proper smelting techniques to filter out most of the slag out of steel, so they had to develop techniques to get the most out of what they had, including folding the billet and laminating steel of different hardness together, which is why Katanas have there distinctive curve, the different types of steel cool at different rates. Because of this, the katana was made using heavier steel with less carbon, using uneased hardened steel wrapped around a softer core to give the blade a strong edge while the core could absorb more force than a blade made of a single grade of hard steel. As a result, Katanas were harder and held the edge better then European swords, but were way more vulnerable, prone to chipping and bending (it was fairly common for BOTH opponents' swords to bend when parrying, hence why Japanese martial arts avoided parrying whenever possible), and being made of very inflexible steel types it was less prone to vibrate at wrong blade alignment, which actually lowered skill requirements a lot - in other words it trades reliability for the ease of use, which is, in all truth, a strange trade, considering that it was mostly used by very skilled swordsmen that usually don't require something of that nature (however it IS partially responsible for katana fanboyism, as it's actually an OK weapon in the hands of complete amateur, unlike most other swords). Katanas were pretty good all-around weapons that excelled at slashing - as you might expect from a relatively short (60 to 73 cm long - a longsword would be 89 to 109 cm long), thick, heavy, curved blade with a long handle, and was still decent at stabbing - being thick means that it didn't flex much and so the energy of the blow was transferred very efficiently. You didn't swing it like a baseball bat (though of course you don't swing any sword like a bat), you pull inward as you swing so the blade cuts as it goes. Historically, it was often kept with a shorter sword called a wakizashi, which was commonly used as an alternative to the katana in situations where the longer blade would be a hindrance (e.g. indoor fights). While in most circumstances, only one of the pair was used at a time, at least one school of martial arts (the Niten Ichi-ryu) exists that teaches a swordsman to wield both swords at once (Note, however, the school commonly teaches one to use a SHORTER blade in the off-hand, as carrying two swords meant for carrying with both hands is kind of, well, stupid). Katanas and similar swords were used by the Koreans and the Chinese to some degree. Contrary to popular belief, the katana was not the main battle weapon of the samurai, that was the bow or the naginata, a glaive-like pole-weapon. They were, however, pretty valuable status symbols as only the samurai class was allowed to wield them. Following the dissolution of the samurai during the Meiji Restoration and the subsequent ban on carrying swords for all but a handful of former lords and military officers, the katana's use declined in favor of the cruder but more easily mass-produced guntō until the end of World War II when sword manufacture and all sword-related martial arts were banned entirely. Following the end of the US occupation in 1953, the new Japanese government re-legalized katana construction, but with hefty limitations to ensure that katana quality could not decline over time. Modern Japanese swordsmiths now must be licensed (which is possible only after a five-year apprenticeship) in order to produce authentic katanas, and even then they are only allowed to produce two full-sized katanas per month (the katanas themselves must also be registered with the Japanese government).
:*'''Tachi''' - The katana's predecessor was between 68 to 79 cm long and had slightly more curvature, though direct visual comparison would be difficult. The real difference is how the blade was signed by the smith and the way it was worn (edge down) compared to a katana (edge up), even the word "''Katana''" means "''Sword that is different from a tachi''." The additional length and the extra curvature made the blade more suitable for cavalry, which was the primary role of the samurai at the time. The later katana was shorter and straighter which was more practical for a footman or a duelist.
:*'''No-Dachi''' ''(or O-dachi)'' - Translates as "Fuck-Massive Tachi" which was the Japanese version of the greatsword. Made famous to the west by [[/v/|Sephiroth]]. They had a blade usually 120 to 150 cm length and was a weapon intended for infantry, though the shortest could also be used on horseback, though it then focused on downward cuts rather than side to side slashes which could rape hordes (Samurai prefered to use bows or Yari (Sengoku) and Naginata (prior Sengoku) when on horseback, since it did a better job than making one's Tachi longer). Some of the biggest Nodachi include ''Tarômaru'' (Nagasa 180cm, Zenchô 262cm, 7.2 kg, forged in Kamakura period, widely considered to be the golden age of Nihontô), ''Nenekirimaru'' (Zenchô 324cm, Nagasa 215cm, weight unknown, forged in Nanbokuchô period) or ''Tarôtachi'' (Nagasa 220cm, 4.5 kg, total lenght around 3m). The latter belonged to a Sengoku period General, [[Gabriel Seth|Makara Jûrôzaemon Naotaka]], who actually [[Kor'sarro Khan|wielded it on horseback]]. Such swords are the longest, biggest and highest quality blades around. Generally got banned by the Tokugawa Shogunate when they legislated how long a samurai's swords could be, so most of them got cut down or relegated to ceremonial duties. A lower quality version of the Nodachi called Wodao (Japanese Sword) was used by the Chinese after a Kage-ryû manual got [[looted]] by the Chinese Imperial army, who then mass produced it to use against northern barbarians in [[Landsknecht|specialized units]], unlike in Japan where only specialists individual fighters used them (contrary to popular Shogun Total War induced beliefs).
:*'''Kodachi''' Like the Messer mentioned above, a sword that's ''technically'' a knife for classes not allowed to own/carry swords.
::*'''Legendary Blades:''' So you might have heard in RPG's of the the Masamune and Muramasa blades, but in real life these actually refer to specific swordsmiths (though Japanese swords are often called by the name of their smith in a pseudo-brand sort of way) of which Masamune is the most famous, being lauded as one of the greatest sword-smiths of all time and his swords are held as national treasures even today. Muramasa came 200 years later and produced swords during the Muromachi period. In modern fantasy fiction, Masamune's blades are far more elegant and the mark of a more refined warrior while Muramasa's blades were considered to be bloodthirsty and were even banned by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Though directly comparing them is unfair, as they were both the greatest masters limited only by the processes of their time. Masamune's era had less technical knowledge to process the impurities from iron creating brittle metals, but Masamune worked this disadvantage into his blades as an artistic expression, causing crystals of impurities to form making his swords appear to sparkle. By contrast Muramasa most likely had all the same technical knowledge of Masamune in addition to 200 years of engineering development and probably suffered a bad reputation because his blades were far more utilitarian.
*'''To''': Korean sabers were 60 to 86cm in length and have a very similar appearance to Japanese katanas, though straighter and often with a shorter handle, making them primarily one-handed which is more suitable for its function as a cavalry saber. In fact, many katanas could have been converted into ''To'' by cutting down the length of the handle, but considering the shape of most surviving Korean swords, it is unlikely they did it a lot. Contrary to popular belief on both the Western and Eastern side of the Internet, caused by K-Pop propaganda, the [[Tau|Koreans]] DID NOT had traditional schools of swordsmanship, Muyedobotongji was published in 1790. This is because Korean had a mainly Confucianist society dispising violence under the Kingship of the Joseon dynasty, and as such had no martial culture. Before the Invasion of Korea by the Toyotomi clan's Hosts (1592 - 1598), they used mostly Chinese style Jian, which the Korean wore hung diagonaly from a waist or a shoulder in back to front. This is because the only traditional martial art of Korea was archery. Because of those reasons, the Imjin war was initialy a huge success for the Japanese Samurai armies ; on the land it failed in the end for logistic and strategic reason rather than tactical ones, and on the sea it failed due to very recently developped Korean warships (ironicaly, based on the Japanese warships), as it is often the case (for exemple, in the Satsuma rebellion during the Meiji era, the samurai rebels killed twice their numbers, but lost because they were outnumbered and lacked guns, artillery, munitions, comfort, support...). Even after the war, the Korean used mostly blades who were abandoned / forgotten during the Japanese retreat, or low quality replicas of Nihontô. All those swords were often rusted, because unlike the Japanese, Koreans didn't knew how to maintain them healthy. Some other exemples of the [[Derp|low quality of ancient Koreans replicas of Japanese swords]] include the absence of ''Kogai'' (kind of stylet) and thus the uselessness of holes in Korean ''Tsuba'', the absence of ''Shinogi'' (or only 1 sided Shinogi) or the use of hardware to keep the blade inside the sheath (while the Japanese Sword do have a Habaki that will fit the Saya perfectly). Those latter Korean swords' sheath were not kept hung by the swordsman, but thrown away as to not be bothersome, and indeed, none of the many illustrations of Korean ancient martial arts books are shown wearing a sheath, and does not mention the sheating process (unlike Japanese ''Iaijutsu'' and ''Battôjutsu''). One might hence wonder from where does come from Haidong Kumdo, Taekwondo, Hapkido and others. Those were in fact derived from Japanese Martial Arts taught to Koreans by the Japanese for purposes of cultural exchange and peaceful cohabitation through sportsmanship, mostly during the occupation in the Shôwa era, which is why they use Japanese inspired clothing, weapons and techniques, but also have controversial stories when trying to pass as older as they really are (mostly for [[Edgy|Nationalistic purposes]]).
**Of note, you might have heard of the '''ninja-to''', a fictional weapon invented by Hollywood to be used as props for movie [[Ninja]]s and perpetuated by RPGs and video games (including D&D). Well the Korean ''to'' is probably the closest physical analogue to the ninja-to as there has never been any historical evidence of ninja-to's as a ninja would never be stupid enough to carry a weapon that would identify him as such. Save for the Japanese Historicaly acurate ''Shikomizue'', which came in a variety of forms, some easier to hide than others (similar to the European cane sword).

[[File:Chinese_Dadao.jpg|thumb|300px|right|The Chinese 29th Division all carrying dadao against katana-wielding IJA troops.]]

*'''Dadao:''' A Chinese sabre meaning "Big Knife" in English. It has a thick, long, curved blade, and often has a handle half-as big as the blade itself, much like a very thick falchion or großemesser two-handed sword. This made the blade extremely durable and tough. During World War II, the Chinese Nationalists used them for defending Chinese territory against Japanese invaders. To just about everyone's surprise, was actually fairly effective in deterring any Japanese troops from getting too close, which was very useful when your foe likes to bayonet charge when they run out of ammunition. One highly specialized division, the 29th, (Ershi jiu jun) specialized in the dadao and became infamous for their beheading cavalry raids.

*'''Bolo:''' A Phillipeno sword that resembles a machete in almost every aspect. Originally designed as an agricultural tool for cutting rattan and bamboo, it comes in many shapes and lengths, but your battle-ready bolo was typically between 60-90cm with a wide, slightly curved blade. The bolo lacks a cross guard, leaving the hand vulnerable, but the traditional martial arts of the region (Kali/Eskrima/Arnis, depending on when/where/who you’re asking) favor using it more like an axe, with the sword arm frequently in constant motion. When the Spanish showed up in the 16th/17th centuries they outlawed both the weapon and the martial arts, leading it to be kept alive through practice and ritual using hardened rattan sticks which are still used for practice in the sport today. Sometimes paired with a second Bolo (for maximum shred) or a dagger called a Begaw or, the latter of which grew in popularity under the Spanish who imported their style of Espada y Daga (English: sword and dagger).

===Other places===

The guys outside of east Asia and Europe did some swordsmithing of their own, here we acknowledge their contributions to the world of swords.
*'''Ida''': A sword design native to Sub Saharan Africa (specifically Nigeria). There were a fair number of several types of swords used by sub-Saharan African peoples, some of which being similar to Middle Eastern scimitars, a few of which having a fairly common straight sword shape more commonly associated with European swords and others had rather exotic shapes. The ida is notable for having a straight blade which bulges towards the point.

*'''Macuahuitl:''' Some would dispute this weapon is a sword, but it still deserves a mention. The macuahuitl is from Central America and was used by the Aztecs and such civilization. Basically, imagine a paddle with grooves in the narrow faces that hold sharpened obsidian to make the cutting edge. Shards of obsidian can get really really damn sharp, sometimes having a monomolecular edge, and as such a macuahuitl could cut through flesh and bone like nobody's business. But this sharpness comes from obsidian's nature as a volcanic ''glass'', which means when a macuahuitl went up against metallic armor (such as, for example, the breastplate worn by a Spanish conquistador), said bits of glass would shatter and leave its wielder helpless against the wearer of the aforementioned armor. The Spaniards, though, feared the Aztec warriors, who could almost behead their horses in but one swing.

*'''Scimitar:''' A family of swords of Middle Eastern design, including a number of offshoots such as the tulwar or shamshir, the scimitar was a curved single bladed sword, but could be one-handed or two-handed depending on its function or region of manufacture. Was made extremely popular by [[Drizzt]], who was famous for fighting with two of them on foot, though historically they were far more suited for fighting from horseback as the curved blade allows for fly-by attacks without the blade getting caught in the victim's bodies and pulling the rider off his horse. These blades were lighter than European counterparts (such as the sabre and the falchion) and had limited flexibility (since they only had one edge), but they were remarkably quick and sharp. Scimitars are one of the few blade weapons still in actual use today, with some Middle Eastern nations using them for executions of criminals. Fantasy scimitars and real scimitars are often two entirely different beasts. Fantasy scimitars tend to look like thinner, slightly more curved sabers while real scimitars were usually very thin and had such an extreme curve it was essentially impossible to stab with them.

*'''Yatagan:''' An inward-curved sword, popularized by Turkish Janissary, and adopted by many nations that fought against them or were conquered by them. Legally counted as a knife (seeing a trend here?), since Janissary being slave-soldiers weren't allowed to wield swords which were weapons of free people. Notable by being the least skill-demanding sword in the Middle East and later Balkans and being not as terrible at fighting people in armor as most other swords.

===Sword and Shot===

The age of the sword did not end the second someone worked out that a combination of a strong tube with one end sealed off, some black powder, and some pebbles could be used to shoot one's enemies. Swords and [[Firearm|guns]] coexisted for nearly a thousand years. The following latter day swords arose and were used alongside (and sometimes by) arquebusier, msuketeers, dragoons, and riflemen:

*'''Flamberge''': Not actually a sword but a technique for making a blade meaning "Flame Bladed Sword" which was a primarily decorative single handed blade usually used by officers who practiced rapier forms. While it could be said that the blades caused more damage due to the curves on the edge giving a saw-like motion with each swing; remember that rapier forms were practiced during the gunpowder-era where there were much easier ways to kill a man, and to properly utilise this in combat would require a very different form that required swinging rather than thrusting. Therefore the flamberge's REAL benefit was that anyone who attempted to parry a strike from a waved blade would catch their sword on the curves and unbalance their hold on their own weapon or make their arms ache. This is all theory, of course, as the minor discomfort from parrying a flammarded blade would only really build up over time... and personal combat doesn't last that long.

*'''Flambard''': Forget what you think you know from fantasy books and video games, flambards are the two handed versions of flamberges. Unfortunately the terminology has been confused mostly by fanboys and collectors in the same manner as katanas have been. Just like a zweihander blade, flambards were meant to be heavy and the blows inflicted by them were absolutely lethal, so you could easily chop lumps out of dudes stupid enough to get close to you. On the other hand, the waved blade served a different purpose than the flamberge, of focusing force in a smaller area, thus increasing cutting power in a similar way axes do. This allowed it to cut through shields and armour almost as good as great axes (and don't get stuck inside them as often ass axes tend to), while retaining the speed and versatility of the zweihander. Flambard got a really bad reputation, due to ragged wounds left by it's waved blade having a nasty tendency of catching a gangrene (as this factors in ''after'' the battle it ''does not give the wielder any advantage'', maybe aside some psychological pressure if his opponent knows about this effect), so people assumed the blade itself was "wicked", "cursed", or even "demonic" - during the Reformation wars people carrying ones were often blamed as Devil-worshipers by Catholics (who banned it as unholy weapon) and subsequently BLAMmed, which naturally meant surrender was not an option for flambard-wielding protestant landsknechts. In a way this reputation had partially carried to modern days, where flambards are often carried by villains and outright demons in fantasy or even historical fiction. Once again, this is all theory and there has been no proven advantage to having a flammarded blade. In fact, many historians lump the flamberge style weapons in with the flambard style weapons as it is simply that, a blade style.

*'''Kriegsmesser''': A single-edged rigid top-heavy balanced longsword (sometimes slightly curved, sometimes not), favored by many German and Swedish mercenaries during the clusterfuck the 30-year war was. Basically what katanas should have been if Japanese swordsmiths had all the technology Europeans stole from Arabs (who stole it from Indians) and all the juicy high-quality iron ore - it had the same benefit of easy cutting even without much training (very useful for a merc), but made with a spring steel it was quite resilient to bending and chipping, and of course it had cross-guards and a pommel, unlike it's eastern analogue. Despite the benefit of ease of use, however, the main reason mercenaries used kriegsmesser was because in some of the German states it was illegal for a commoner to own a "knightly" longsword. It was mostly used as a sidearm alongside some-pole-arm or a musket, and later fell out of use in favor of much cheaper arming swords.

*'''Cutlass''': A European broadsword from the age of Enlightenment. Cutlasses had a point which went off to one side and were often slightly curved, but were usually double bladed. A very effective weapon for chopping and cutting. The stereotypical user of this sword is a pirate, which is not an exaggeration as it was commonly used by sailors and pirates during the age of sail, though it also saw use on the ground in the hands of infantry. Cutlasses were still used into the first world war, although they had largely been superseded by close-combat firearms.

*'''Rapier:''' As firearms became more prominent, swords became relegated to the purposes of self-defense and dueling rather than full-fledged military warfare. Unlike most swords, rapiers possess long, thin blades (commonly about a meter long and 2.5 centimeters wide) with a sharpened point- useless for cutting, but perfect for thrusting. They were frequently made with elaborate hilts meant to guard the wielder's hands more effectively, preventing them from being disarmed (both figuratively and literally). Over time, the rapier evolved into the smallsword; as the name suggests, the blade was made shorter and the hilt was simplified. At this point, they served more as status symbols than weapons in their own right, as duels to the death (at least with swords) had become increasingly frowned upon. While often portrayed in media as light and flexible due to their conflation with their descendents, the modern fencing foil and épée, real life rapiers were nothing but: they were about as heavy as an arming swords and about as stiff as technologically possible, and given they where longer then arming swords, fighting with a rapier was actually more taxing on the wielder's strength, contrary to "go-to weapon for [[-4 Str|girls and feminine guys]]" reputation they have nowadays. Rapiers were actually extremely common as infantry weapons and were not the sole purview of the nobility, with their identification as a noble's weapon occurring long after their military use had ceased. Smallswords are still used by some military branches as part of their formal/ceremonial uniforms.

*'''Pistol Sword:''' In the 1600s, someone got a bright idea that seemed ingenious at the time: what if you stuck a [[firearm|gun]] barrel onto the side of a sword so you wouldn't have to fumble around changing your weapons in the middle of a battle? Unfortunately they were born well before they could make this into a videogame weapon, and much like most things in real life, the answer was not as cool as it sounds - instead of getting a weapon that could be used both as a sword and a pistol, you got a sword that was unbalanced and a pistol that was too heavy to aim with (and was also too expensive to mass-produce). Needless to say, they weren't all that popular, and remained more of a curiosity than anything else.

*'''Saber:''' The last type of sword to see any type of major military use. After firearms became the dominant battlefield weapon, sabers were still primarily used by infantry officers and cavalry up until WWI, when cavalry was finally made obsolete by machineguns and trench warfare, and more portable short-range firearms such as revolvers and submachineguns were readily available. Some officers still carry sabers today, such as those of the US Marine Corps, though for purely ceremonial purposes. While both cutlasses and sabers are curved weapons, the saber is distinguished from a cutlass in that they were mostly derived from the Middle-eastern Mameluke sword, being longer and more slender than the thick and short cutlass. The extra reach was more useful for cavalry while the weight of a cutlass was unnecessary for attacking at a full gallop.

*'''Shashka:''' When Russians conquered the Caucasian mountains, they banned locals from owning swords because they tended to rebel all the time and because it was a good excuse to prosecute undesirables. Apparently Russians weren't paying attention to German and Turkish history, and predictably the Caucasians made a saber that by legal definition counted as a big knife and named it (you guess it) "A Big Knife", or Shashka in Adyghe. It's heavier and straighter than a proper saber and lacks a guard, so it's a bit worse at drive-bying people from a horseback, but better at slicing them open when fighting on foot, being a bit of an all-rounder well suited for a region that favors cavalry that can fight on foot (because of all that mountains and valleys). Naturally, Russian cossacks that handled the brunt of peacekeeping/oppressing (depending on your view) work in the region found out it was a damn fine weapon for the task and adopted it to the point it quickly became their hallmark weapon. Later shashkas became so popular in Russia they almost pushed out sabers from the military and civilian use and by the late 18th century only hussars and high nobility were still using sabers instead of shashkas. Modern Russian Cossacks still wear them, but nowadays they're mostly ceremonial.

*'''Machete''': Somewhere between a short sword and a long knife, the machete is, like the bayonet, still with us today. Essentially a short one-handed blade with a curved edge, it is mostly intended for cutting through undergrowth in tropical climates in the modern era. However, it is just as effective at cutting through flesh, and the ease of their acquisition by civilians has made them popular among guerillas and other paramilitary forces, especially in Latin America and parts of West Africa.

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== Sword related stupidity ==

There is oh so much of it...

=== Carrying a sword ===

For some reason, everyone in fiction carries their sword on either the left hip or on the back, from the right shoulder to the left hip. The latter we will come to in a moment, first we will discuss the hip-holstered sword.

While it is certainly true that carrying a sword on the hip opposed to one's sword arm, one has plenty of room to dramatically unsheathe their sword. In the Middle Ages and earlier though, this was not done like that for a few practical reasons. First up is the shield: when one is in formation and wants to draw their swords having a raised shield in one hand means that one has to keep their shield hand out of the way when drawing their sword, compromising their defense. If one is mounted on a [[horse]] (like a [[knight]]) however, the sword is not carried on the opposing hip for a different reason: drawing one's sword form the opposing hip would mean either pulling the sword past the reins or the horse's neck, which might very well result in cutting the reins or the animal's neck. These two problems for both mounted and pedestrian soldiers was solved in a very simple way: the sword was carried on the same hip as one's sword arm. This limits one's drawing distance, but unless one is a [[C.S.Goto|deformed munchkin]] you should be perfectly fine drawing a one-handed sword from the same hip as the sword arm. The katana on the other hand were carried on the opposite hip, but this was because the Katana was a slashing weapon as such you could turn your draw motion into a cut.

The second point is back-mounted sheaths. Useful for carrying, not combat. Unless you are Dhalsim from Street Fighter or are armed with knives you are not going to be able to draw a single-handed sword from your back. Doing so would involve over-stretching, pulling the sheath down with your shield arm (giving up your defence, a big no-no) and a short sword. Go watch a movie featuring someone with back-mounted swords: you never see them draw their weapons on-screen. And two-handed weapons are right out. Carrying a sword on your back is for hiking across open country, NOT marching to the battlefield. Soldiers armed with large two-handed swords carried them into battle much like their [[spear]]-wielding colleagues: [[Dwarf|held over the shoulders as the soldiers sung songs of war and victory.]]

===Sharpness===
There are two misconceptions about swords - one is that combat swords were rather blunt and relied on the power of impact, and another that they were sharp enough to shave with and could cut padded cloth with little to no effort. The truth as always in the middle - blunt blades are obviously stupidly impractical (such a "blunt edge" comes from a flanged mace, not a sword), while extra sharpness leads to extra brittleness making the edge extremely vulnerable to chipping. Sure, in some cultures swordsmiths could get away with razor sharpness if metallic armor, shields, etc. weren't widespread and fencing styles developed in ways to avoid parrying, but really it only lasted for long in Japan. Now with ''modern'' swordsmithing, using modern materials and techiques it's quite possible to make the blade both resilient and razor sharp, but even then most HEMA practitioners prefer reasonably sharp swords, because they last fucking FOREVER when made with top-grade modern steel, while razor-sharp ones made from the same stuff would ''eventually'' wear down from use. Ironically, some of the absolute sharpest swords are also the most primitive. Stone swords made from obsidian or other vitreous (i.e, glass-like) rocks are absolutely sharp enough to shave with. However, any sort of vitreous material tends to be quite brittle. Some swordsmiths circumvented this by setting many sharp "teeth" into a sturdier frame.

===Cutting off limbs and heads===
Possible, but heavily impractical and dangerous (to one attempting it). The reason is swords are really bad at cutting through solid hard materials, and one of such materials is bone. You can cut through a bone with a sword, but it needs excessive force, meaning either excessive speed of a swing or mass of a sword itself, to a point it becomes hard to control the sword and can lead to a dangerous overswing that leaves you '''dead''' open to counterattack if you don't end up hitting yourself by mistake. And because the sword blade isn't magically immune to damage, it '''would''' blunt, chip, or even break in contact with a human bone. Worse even, it could ''stuck'' in the bone, effectively disarming you. And the best part is, cutting ''to'' the bone most times does as much damage as cutting ''through'' it - a man with his neck arteries and veins cut is just as dead as the one with his head chopped off, and an arm or leg with severed muscles and strings is just as useless and painful as the one cut off clean. And don't even start with cleaving people in half. Machetes are better at damaging bone because they are meant to chop hard material such as wood and sugarcane, though at best it would cause a compound fracture. There are a few varieties of swords created for untrained peasants that were made to be both heavy and cheap, hoping to cause a single limb or head cut.

=== Parrying all day long ===

If you have a sword and your enemy has a sword, one thing that you can do is use your sword to stop the enemy's blade. This is called Parrying and it is a valid thing to do in a sword fight. However, in fiction (especially visual fiction) sword fights will often involve each side constantly slashing each other for minutes at a time hitting nothing but the opponent's blade. In real life this did not happen. Usually a sword fight is over in a few swings, especially one on a battlefield. Even in a "pure" sword duel (No shields), opponents do not slash and parry continuously like how they're stereotypically portrayed in media and instead only attack in short intervals before retreating and attacking again or until one of you suffers a fatal wound. This was the case for three reasons:
*Eventually, you will suffer from fatigue and make a mistake, costing you your head if you don't take a few seconds to catch your breath and your rational opponent will be thinking the same.
*Dodging the attack completely is preferable to parrying as it leaves your sword intact and actually leaves your opponent open for an attack.
*Unless both of you have Slaaneshi-tier reflexes and are telepathic, it is nearly impossible for any sword fighter to match their opponent's moves in that magnitude for minutes-on-end that doesn't involve the duel being choreographed like a play (even if you were trained by the same teacher).

A real sword fight is NOT parrying all day, as seen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQMqlFY7T64 here]

The first reason why this is the case is simple, the objective in a sword fight is to get your sword to hit the enemy, not his blade. The second reason is (if you have one) a shield is better suited to staving off an enemy blow than a sword. The third is that in a battle situation, you are vulnerable to another attacker if you are occupied in endless parrying. The fourth is that swords are not magically immune to other swords. If you parry a blow, your sword gets damaged, which is why the sort of "edge-to-edge" parry you always see in movies are questionable. It would dig huge divots out of the softer sword, if not both of them at once. Sword fighters of some schools tended parry with the flat of the blade unless they're using a specialized weapon with flanges or notches to catch and disarm or break the other weapon, while in others edge-to-edge was considered an acceptable move, since it provided better grip, more reliable block, better use of cross-guards and inevitable blade damage could be repaired later, while your cracked skull could not. It was a matter of [[skub]] both when sword-fighting was relevant and in modern HEMA community.

For those wondering why movies do this if it's so unrealistic and bad, it's simple: most actors and stunt doubles aren't trained swordsmen. Having untrained actors swing at each other's swords instead of each other's faces (a practice called "Flynning" or "pirate halves" after Errol Flynn swashbuckling pirate movies) is just safer and easier, with the added benefit of cool metal-on-metal sound effects. It also means that the two characters can play off each other in various ways during the fight.

=== Swords and dual wielding ===

If you go to battle with a one-handed sword, you'd generally want some other weapon in your off hand as well. Ideally it should be a shield or a buckler, but lets face it: if you're going into battle, a sword is probably your sidearm, and your main weapon is likely to be two-handed or incompatible with shields in some other ways, and if you use a sword for self-defense against bandits or assassins on the town's street, chances are you didn't bring a huge-ass shield as part of your civilian outfit, and the only other weapon on you would likely be a dagger. So you grab your ''other'' sidearm, like a dagger or a small axe, or maybe even a mace or warhammer. Why not another sword? Well, wielding a single sword requires a lot of skill and attention to do it properly, and operating two requires ''more'' than twice of both, since you use the other sword with your off-hand, which by definition is weaker and less dexterous. That's not to say, master swordsmen didn't try it - some of them did, often with quite a success on tourneys and duels, but none of them was crazy enough to go to war with double swords when sword and something less skill-intensive is so much more sensible. Once you got two weapons in your hand you ''do not'' get to attack twice as often, like it's normally portrayed in traditional or video games - a good attack move requires muscle effort from a whole body, but by attacking with both hands simultaneously (like with showy "scissors" move movies and video games so love) you can only use your arms and to an extend shoulder strength. What dual wielding is really about, is attacking with one weapon and defending with another. This allows you to parry an enemy attack with one weapon and simultaneously retaliate with another, or attack with one weapon without compromising your own defense (much). So contrary to how it's normally portrayed in media and games, dual-wielding is a defensive technique rather then offensive one. And you'd need that extra defense, since with one-handed weapons you would have lower reach. This is also the reason why people didn't block enemy attacks by both their weapons crossed, which is another showy but extremely impractical move popularized by media - one weapon is almost always enough to deflect a blow, and using both you'd just throw away the immediate counter-attack feature, which is the prime selling point of double-wielding. Now double-wielding might look to you like a poor man's sword-and-shield style, but there is one more thing: your options for attack angles are doubled with two different lethal weapons no less, which makes defending against your attacks hell of a lot more difficult for your opponent. Sure, shields and bucklers could and would be used for bashing people, but it's nowhere near as lethal as dagger or axe to the face.

Now, in the Renaissance there was such a thing called the main-gauche or "parrying dagger," but these usually required special training to use effectively, and some models came with specialized designs to aid in parrying; for example, "swordbreakers" had notches to catch the enemy blade and twist it out of their hands, while the trident dagger had spring-loaded sides that could also catch the blade. However, daggers were not used to attack unless the wielder was able to lock blades and close in... which would put you in range of the other guy's dagger as well.

Another notable exception are the Chinese Butterfly Swords, a pair of short single-edged swords used in Wing Chun martial arts. The blades have to be short so that the user doesn't accidentally stab themselves as they swing them around; its also very handy to keep them short since using the swords just require the same moves as unarmed Wing Chun, so no specialized training was needed if you were already a practitioner. As far as we know, these were never used as battlefield weapons, but were pretty handy in a street fight.

=== Cutting arrows and bullets ===

Actually, this is possible: if hit straight-on, a sword will cut a bullet in half in mid-flight. Sometimes you'll see this as evidence by the Katana-cultists ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPQ1W3qobys The glorious bastards actually tried it!]) that the Katana is a uniquely sharp/strong weapon, but ''any'' blade will cut through a fast-moving block of lead, even a butter knife. The problem with this is that you are standing right behind where the bullet is going, meaning that unless your sword is shaped in such a way that it causes the bullet to split in a wide angle (This is usually done by shaping the sword's blade like long, flat diamond/parallelogram.), you are now shot twice. If you're not standing right behind where the bullet is going... why are you bothering cutting it in half? The same goes for arrows, but there is likely more batting aside involved (sort of like it goes in [[Star Wars]] with lightsabers and blaster bolts). Also the arrow won't split in half like a bullet, for various reasons related to wood grain, arrow wobble, etc. and unrelated to swords. The thing is, if you can move so fast that you can deflect incoming projectiles (the projectile from a decent [[Bows and Arrows|bow]] can easily go faster than your car does at close range) you should be able to just dodge them instead of bothering with looking fancy. But no human being is capable of dodging a battlefield's worth of arrows/bullets because those thing are just too fast and you do not (or even cannot) see them coming. So unless you're precognitive or have some kind of [[Weeaboo Fightan Magic]] you're not going to do well stopping projectiles with your sword. Oh, and this damages your sword of course. As you can see in the test video above the blade only broke on the seventh impact, but each bullet being cut chipped away at the blade... and would all other things have been equal, forging a blade costs one hell of a lot more money and time than casting and loading a cartridge. Just get the hell out of the way!

=== Pistol and Sword ===

40k is in love with combining a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other and as far as 40K weapon stupidity goes, Games Workshop actually gets it almost right this time. In ye olden times, pistols were slow to reload and inaccurate so it only made sense to have a melee weapon along with the pistol. Pirates were partially famed for this combo. Rather than shoot at range and run the risk of missing, they would close to melee range, deflect the enemy's sword, then stick the pistol in the enemy's gut and pull the trigger. Afterward, they would either drop the gun and draw another or flip it round and hold it by the barrel to use it like a club, only reloading in opportune times. Beyond pirates, this was basically universal practice among all civilian or military sailors at the time.

The other and somewhat more relevant reason that 40K uses pistol and sword was because this was a common weapon combination of the assault troopers in World War I; if you look at the Imperium's other tech, they take a lot of "inspiration" from WWI (several tanks are blatant ripoffs of real world tanks of the era). As the war progressed, commanders realized that defending a trench from an oncoming wave of men was handled sufficiently with bolt action long rifles supported by static machine guns, but these were useless when assaulting a trench. Thus, after discussing with the men who had the most experience in taking enemy trenches, they gave them the weapons they requested: small, handheld weapons that were easy to use and wield within the confines of a trench: especially pistols, trench knives, clubs, sharpened shovels (and later trench guns and sub-machineguns). These were much easier to bring to bear in narrow, muddy trenches where the rifles of the defenders were much harder to maneuver. Officers in WWI were also equipped with a sword and pistol as standard, and they weren't just for show, they'd get used both to direct their own troops and to clear trenches, both theirs and the enemy's.

Also, there are several additional reasons why it makes perfect sense in the 40k or 19th century context:
* A sword can never jam or run out of ammunition. Handy when you are engaging [[Tyranids|a swarm of enemies]]. Though you still need to sharpen and repair it from time to time, this isn't nearly as much of a problem as it is for earlier firearms.
* A sword can parry. If you are fighting in melee against [[Orks|an opponent who prefers hand weapons]], and are armed with just a rifle or a pistol, you can only hope to hit your enemy and incapacitate him before he chops you down. Good luck doing that to an Ork. On the other hand, having a sword means you can at least try to defend yourself against other melee weapons. Makes sense now why a sword continued to be an officer's and nobleman's weapon well into the gunpowder age?
* A sword is not that noisy compared to firearms (or bolters, for that matter). Sure, a melee fight isn't silent, there are bound to be clangs and screams, but it's not nearly as overt as an unsuppressed firearm discharge which can easily reach an ear-shattering 130 dB. There is a reason why people need to wear ear protection at gun ranges. Never mind it also produces flash and smoke, more so if you are using non-smokeless powder. So if you, say, managed to take an isolated enemy position within a wider front line [[Kayvaan_Shrike|with melee weapons only]], there is a good chance the enemy won't know about it for a while. Granted. you can [[Raptors_(Chapter)|snipe from afar using advanced suppressed rifles and scopes]]- but you don't always have the luxury of doing that.
* 40k has [[Power Armour]], which can only be reliably threatened either by melee [[Power_weapon|Power Weapons]], or goddamn anti-tank guns. And unless you are a Space Marine yourself, you can't just fasten a [[Lascannon]] onto your belt and call it a day, so if you don't want to end up facing a Space Marine or [[Tyranid_Warrior|a similarly armored xeno monstrocity]] with just a lasgun, grab that power sword. Also, in fluff, power swords are remarkably good at breaking enemy non-power weapons while parrying, adding to their value in defense. Two reasons why they are very popular amongst officers and champions alike.
**This means there are gradations in weapon/armour interaction; [[Flak_Armor|flak armour]] defeats weaker [[Autogun|firearms]] and [[Lasgun|lasguns]], but falls to [[Bolter|bigger]] [[Shuriken_Catapult|and]] [[Gauss#Necrons|scarier]] [[Plasma#Pulse_Weapons|advanced]] guns, which are nigh useless against [[Power_Armour|power armour]], which can't protect against [[Power_weapon|power weapons]] or [[Plasma_gun|advanced]] [[Meltagun|anti-tank]] guns. So unless you happen to have the latter either [[Incubi|on very fast elite melee units]], on [[XV-8 Crisis Battlesuit|sufficiently mobile weapon platforms]], or simply [[Aspect_Warrior#Fire_Dragons|in abundance]], when Adeptus Astartes come for you, you are beyond screwed, just as in fluff.
**While [[Terminator]] armor does protect against most common power weapons, the aforementioned advanced anti-tank guns still have a good chance at hurting them anyway and the greatly reduced speed puts them at a disadvantage against enemies that are either faster than they are or can hit them from far away. And while they do have Power Fists equipped as standard, they're slow enough to give an appropriately geared opponent the chance to kill them before they get a chance to use said power fists. So it all works out...unless you're dealing with Assault Terminators, that is. In that case, you're screwed if you're stuck in melee with them if you're not a Dreadnought or something equally big and nasty.

=== Unsheathing fun ===

Quick: what sound does a sword (or any blade weapon) make when you unsheathe it? If your answer is something along the lines of SHWING!, think about how a sword would make this sound upon being drawn. It has to be dragged against other metal, but this can causes a whole series of engineering nightmares: if your sword is dragged alongside its sharp edge it blunts, which is obviously not desirable. If you draw it against it flat (or its non-sharp edge if your sword is single-edged) the engineering involved would have to be so precise that the sound is produced, but this would create such a narrow fit for your blade that it would be very difficult and heavy to draw and sheathe, and when temperatures cause the metal to expand or contract your sword gets either stuck or dangles loose in its scabbard. This is obviously not desirable as well.

A more accurate reproduction of what sound a sword makes is to pull up the sleeves of whatever shirt you are wearing: a soft "ffffp"-esque sound. This is because sword sheathes were often made out of wood or leather, with sometimes some kind of fur inside of it. This held the blade snugly in place, would prevent it from falling out if held upside down and would not provide more wear on your sword than combat would.

And whatever dumbass thinks he's 2cool4sheathes will soon learn that cutting his furniture/legs is a very good reason to start wearing a sheathe for his sword.

=== How not to make swords ===

[[image:Conan sword casting.jpg|thumb|300px|left|How to make a sword shaped ingot of pig iron which is of less value to you in a fight than a nice heavy stick]]

Making a sword from steel is a fairly complex and tricky process. Generally it was done by specialized swordsmiths once societies got big enough to support them. Village blacksmiths could make swords, though not good ones. Making a steel sword involves taking a form of ferrous metal (be it an ingot of iron, a hunk of scrap metal or a sandwich of different types of steels) and heating it until it got soft, gradually hammering it into a sword shape, re-heating periodically as it cools during forging and then getting reheating it again to temper it and quenching in oil to give it strength. A sword does take a fair bit of time to make. As it's a tricky job, swordsmiths did not live alone in isolated workshops but rather worked together in guilds to help train new swordsmiths, while whole families (male and female) were involved in the process of making swords one way or another. They were also not adverse to using mechanical assistance such as water powered trip hammers to help them get things done quickly and efficiently, though forging by hand did allow them to be more precise about things.

[[image:Chinese_Trip_Hammers.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Trip Hammers, for when a smith does not want to use his muscle for all the hammering]]

In any case, as it gets the hell beaten out of it during forging what you start with does not look like what you get when your done. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E6TzT0eCYs What a medieval swordsmith would not do is cast a sword shaped form of Pig Iron (the type of liquid iron which you can make with pre-industrial technology, full of impurities and carbon), wait for it to cool into a semi-solid form, hammer it on an anvil for a bit and dunk it into water.] If you try that and it does not shatter on the anvil or shatter after being dunked into water due to cooling so rapidly, it will shatter after the first blow. Note that casting was a legitimate way to make one type of sword; the ones made of bronze, although bronze swords do not match up to the performance of an properly-made iron sword. (Note for the pedantic: you CAN quench in water instead of oil, but it's extra work for no real benefit since you risk warping the blade and need to temper it afterward).

Also, nobody ever quenched a blade by thrusting it into a living guy's chest. That is an obvious bit of often repeated embellishment and rumor about Damascus Steel blades (which were made with the previously mentioned sandwiches of steels) which wormed its way into folklore and you're a moron if you think otherwise.
Firts there's a, let's say, logistical problem: a sword is a meter long or more, and you need to immerse it completely to get a proper quench - and the supply of people at least a meter thick is quite unreliable... Or did they use elephants and walruses?
Then there's the metallurgical problem: when you quench steel you want it to cool in a quick, controlled and homogeneous way to avoid warping and having differtial hardening where you don't want differtial hardening. Flesh is not a good at dispersing heat, so your sword will probably not harden at all, and even if this gruesome process did somehow work, you'd need an army of clones to get repeatable results.

=== Folded a thousand times ===

''Ah, Grorious Nippon Steel, Forded Over 1000 Times....''

This is, as you might expect, bullshit, even if it contains a (small) grain of truth. Japanese swords were created by combining three types of iron alloys, which (if you drop weaboo names) were basically low carbon steel, high-carbon steel and extra-high-carbon pig iron. The limitations of Japanese smithing techniques made it so smelting of those alloys happened below their melting point temperature (or, in other words, they became soft and malleable but not liquid), hence they were unhomogeneous and contained lots of impurities. So it was ultimately plain common sense to "knead" the mix (like you would do with bread) to get an homogeneous bar by stretching it on an anvil, folding it back, forge-welding the 2 parts together again. Repeat, repeat and repeat until (almost) all of the impurities were driven out.

This process, called lamination, was meant to spread the carbon content in the steel and remove inclusions by bringing them to the surface where they could be hammered away as slag. It also created layered laminated steel with layers of hard but brittle high-carbon steel and soft but plastic low-carbon steel (actually pig iron and high-carbon layers initially, but by the time laminating was done enough carbon would burn out of them to change their type) which combines the strong points of both, so the blade could be almost as sharp as hard steel and almost as flexible as soft steel. (You have to give it to them, the Japanese swordsmiths did a pretty good job, all things considered the limitations they had to work with.) This was however an horribly time-consuming process (and thus costly), not to say prone to errors. And even if everything works correctly, the very act of working the steel means you lose some every time you work it: external layer of steel burns off, slag detaches from the workpiece, small pieces fly away with every hammer strike - so you would try to keep work to a minimum. Keep in mind that the number of layers of your sword doubles with every fold: 2-4-8-16... and so on, so after 10 folds you get 1024 layers, and after 20 your steel is as homogeneous as it can get due to having over a million layers that blend in each other, losing all the sexy benefits of laminating. One thousand folds would theoretically get you more layers than there are atoms in the perceivable Universe (it's 302-digit number in case you wonder), you'd also end up with only a small fraction of steel you started working with, and almost all the carbon in it would burn out long before you reach 100 foldings, leaving you with almost useless soft iron. A traditionally forged Katana isn't folded a thousand times (perhaps a dozen, if even that), however it does possess over a thousand discernible layers in its structure when looked at with a microscope.

Other nations also used techniques similar to folding (welding) to get over impurities and make layered steel sandwiches, but then one day some smart Indian smith invented crucible smelting to make much purer steel right of the bat, and after that another Indian smith invented tempering that was both cheaper, easier and more cost-effective than laminating. Some enterprising Chinese and Arabian traders spread these techniques all over Asia and Europe, so people there immediately stooped folding/welding their Glorious Steel and adopted the better (mostly less time-consuming and hence cheaper) technology. All, of course, except for fucking Japan that decided to isolate itself from the rest of the world and only found about these technologies when Commodore Perry gently knocked their front door off.

A huge chunk of the reputation of Japanese swordcraft comes from the fact that, by the time Europeans forced their way into the island, swords had became largely a ceremonial part of officers' uniforms in the Western militaries and so little attention was given to their crafting that their quality had become quite poor, not even half as good as they were made but a century before. Low-tech Japanese swords, on the other hand, were still crafted for actual battle and killing people rather then pointing at the enemy to inspire your troops, so they were of the highest quality their technology allowed. Naturally westerners were amazed by the quality of Japanese swords compared to their own stamped mass-produced junk (and keep in mind this was during a low point for Japanese swordsmithing due to reduced demand for swords- a law passed in 1876 banned public carrying of swords for all but a small number of military officials), and here's where Glorious Nippon Steel bullshit took its origins.

One a sidenote: none of the swords the IJA used during WW2 were Katanas, they were actually similar-looking Guntō; mass-produced with modern means. The ones made for NCOs were produced from train tracks while the officers got hand made units, and due to a shortage of the steel traditionally used for making swords they were often made from steel that wasn't layered at all. While effective when compared to mass produced bayonets, this was the age of automatic weapons where bringing a blade to a gun fight was pretty much suicide in most instances- as a matter of fact, since they were made with the same mass production process that led to the decline of sword quality in the West, these swords were actually ''worse'' overall than the old Katanas. Anybody who claims that they got a genuine Katana from killing a Japanese soldier in WW2 or that their grandfather picked one off the body of a dead officer are full of shit, since construction of traditional-style katanas didn't restart until 1953. While modern katanas are of much better quality, this is due more to the extensive quality control standards placed on swordsmiths by the Japanese government rather than the quality of the steel itself. That said, you can always buy mall ninja grade trash that looks like a katana but is actually stamped stainless steel less deadly than a heavy stick.

Odds are if your buddies claim to own a genuine katana at all they're either mistaken or lying; genuine katanas cost $3,000 at the very least, and that's before factoring in the cost for a licence to own them due to their legal status as art objects. It's much more likely they own a replica made with modern machine production techniques and composed of ordinary stainless steel. While stainless steel may not get rusty and works fine for kitchen knives, it's much too brittle to be used for any sword that isn't purely ornamental.

== Swords in Fantasy & Science Fiction ==

Swords are probably the most commonly used weapon in Fantasy, especially by main characters (the characteristic of the sword listed above makes it symbolic for a leader). While certain fantasy races have certain specific weapons associated with them (Dwarves and Axes, Elves and Bows), all of them will make use of swords at least on the sidelines.

Alongside the usual racial variants, many fantasy universes has some kinds of sword you wouldn't see in the real world.

Swords have an occasional presence in Science Fiction as well. Said presence is usually "justified" by the inclusion of either Magical Pseudoscientific Bullshit, or very special considerations, depending on how justified the "justification" is. (For an example of probably valid special considerations: You need a weapon that can be used around explosive gasses that also doesn't have any EM emissions and doesn't make much noise? You're pretty much down to a melee weapon (of which the sword is probably the best all-rounder) or a harpoon.)

===Lightsabers===
[[Lightsaber]]s are the iconic weapon of the [[Star Wars]] universe, and argued over sufficiently enough - especially with regards to sword-related stupidity as covered in the section above - that we have an article linked just for them. Much of what's said there also applies to their many knockoffs throughout numerous sci-fi settings.

===Busters===
Named after the "Buster Sword" from [[/v/|Final Fantasy VII]]: these are basically unrealistically huge greatswords. By unrealistically huge; we mean that a Buster Sword is about as tall and wide as a fully-grown adult human, with the weight being a dozen or more kilos. Depending on the make, it's either shaped and used like a giant greatsword used to chop unfortunate enemies with extreme prejudice or it can also be a heap of metal affixed to a grip where it can be used to bludgeon targets with maniacal glee. There's no strict criteria on what exactly qualifies as a buster sword, but if its almost as tall and wide as its wielder (or larger); it gets lumped into this category. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cHqPYnnLpo Much to the joy of neckbeards everywere, somewhere in Martha's Vineyard there's a guy who makes real Buster Swords and similar insane weapons for a living, and he's as awesome as you'd expect.]

Realistically speaking: busters would be unsurprisingly unwieldy to use. Its heft and size makes would make it nearly impossible to be wielded effectively during a confrontation where a more agile opponent can simply avoid the first swing and attack while the wielder takes their time readying the damn thing for another go, it'd be like trying to swat a fly with a tree trunk. Not to mention because the weight of the sword isn't focused on single point (like how the weight of a battle axe is largely focused on the axe head instead of all over itself), trying to damage armored opponents would be an incredibly tough, if not impossible affair (Plus a blade this large would have to be hardened to withstand the heavy damage done by its attacks; so this also isn't counting the blade doesn't outright shatter under its own weight after striking plate armor).

That also isn't counting that your wielder would have to rival the strength of an Olympic body builder in order to even bring it to bear in combat in the first place([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BIfrA6CIIk and using it combat is another problem due to the weight])], something an army would not bother with, given the tons of better, much more cost-effective alternatives - most appropriately battle axes. When you swing a top-heavy heavy object in one direction with all your might; the inertia of that is incredibly hard, if not impossible to, stop mid-swing for a normal human being (if you do, your joints and muscles will pay the price), so unless you happen to be a heavily augmented super-strong cyborg or blessed with inhuman muscular bulk to put most strongmen to shame; you will either only be doing vertical downward slashes (which isn't really that effective, unless your opponent is stunned in place) or spin around like an out-of-control top while swinging it horizontally (in which case, you might get one lucky kill before you collapse from dizziness and someone else gives you a good stomping).

In fantasy, however, the rule of cool takes over and the lore can make up a proper explanation for why that particular universe need these fuckheug weapons. Busters in fantasy (or really any impractically large weapon) are typically used in settings where they make a lick more sense; a fantasy world populated by giant creatures. You see, if you were to bring something like a claymore or a gladius to your ho-hum fantasy setting; chances are that they'll lack the mass to cut through monsters the size of city buses and beyond. With a sword as big as a human being, however; the weapon's size and weight plus the user's presumably augmented strength and the fantasy's general disregard for inconvenient things like realism and physics, allows them to cleave through thick materials like scales, bones, armor, muscles...etc, with ease. Its not the most practical way to go about it, but then again this is fantasy; your imagination and sanity is the limit.

More examples of Busters could be the [[Iron Kingdoms]], who have a type of sword called "Caspian Battleblades", very heavy, dull swords with a head that spikes out to either side broader than the blade, made crucial for warfare because of all the [[Warjack|heavy armour]] walking about, and tend to have lots of cut-outs in the blade's center to reduce its weight. [[Berserk]]'s Guts also wields an ordinary Buster Sword, though he's super-humanly strong, has a mechanical arm, and regularly battles giants and demons. Curiously 40k of all settings managed to make its two busters more or less reasonable or at least usable: Eviscerators are outfitted with their own anti-gravity propulsion systems, throwing most issues with busters out of the window, and Incubi Klaives ares made out of light materials and have extra grips, so they can be used like polearms despite looking like giant swords.

===Gunblades/Pistol Swords===
As mentioned before, they were an idea that started in Ye Olden Times of the 16th century, where a flintlock or revolver pistol was given a blade or bayonet attachment to so that the user could get the benefits of two weapons in one system- only to get the drawbacks of both weapons in just the right way to make it worthless as a sword ''or'' a pistol. It evolved from the idea of mounting daggers on pistols, which had a bit more practical sense in comparison.

[[/v/|Final Fantasy VIII]], however, took it a step further and made a sword with a fucking pistol-grip for a handle, a revolver's chamber built into the hilt, and a long, rifle-like barrel welded to the flat side of its one-edged blade. Though, this is offset by the fact that the weapon isn't meant to be fired in the traditional sense at all; all bullets fired by a gunblade are blanks, intended to [[What|set the blade oscillating such that it cuts through monsters and other opponents better, like a chainsaw.]] (See also: Oscillating Blades.) Which begs the question: if it doesn't even deal damage by firing a projectile, why build a gun mechanism into the sword at all?

In other works of fiction, this problem is solved with [[Necron|advanced technology]]. Starting off with the most well known [[/tg/]] example from Warhammer 40K, we have the Sentinel Warblades used by the golden BFFs of the [[Emperor of Mankind]]. The [[Adeptus Custodes]] put the short barrel equivalent of a [[Storm Bolter]] with a halved range on their massive swords. Since Custodes are larger than a Space Marine on average, they might as well be full sized guns. They also have direct energy weapons on their Guardian Spears, which is a better option than a projectile weapon as the user won't have to reload as often. Reduced range is not much of a problem for the Custodes; there won't be many survivors left after they are hit with [[Anal_circumference|Melta Beams or Adrathic Destructors.]] After a few volleys, the Golden Bananas will charge the unlucky bastards who weren't vaporized.

The transforming variant from gun to blade or vise-versa is often used in Japanese Media, mostly [[/m/|Tokusatsu]]. The earliest examples are from Kamen Rider 555; one is a primary weapon of the main character, Kamen Rider Faiz. Toei, unlike a [[Games Workshop|certain model making company]], likes to stretch a budget and tries to outdo themselves as technology advances. Many Kamen Rider and Super Sentai (too many to list here) will have transforming Gunblades just about every other season, some bigger or more detailed than the last. If the Sentai Team or Kamen Rider of the season has tech based powers, these Gunblades fire lasers or some other form of energy beam.

Special Police Dekaranger has a strange example in the form of the D-Sword Vega, a sword that was used as a ranged weapon on two occasions. [[What|The special effects imply it is both a blade and a direct energy weapon]]. The primary user, Doggie Kruger, typically [[awesome|shoots lightening]] out of it as his finishing movie. However, since the Space Police in the show have more advanced technology than a typical terrestrial officer the D-sword Vega itself is a century or more ahead of anything in IRL or most works of fiction have.

So TL:DR. Gunblades, while possible to turn into a useful weapon sometime in the future, will require advancements that have yet to be made and are likely to require incorporating directed energy weapons rather than solid projectiles. While fixing the gun part will be easy enough, another problem is the blade itself, which can't be easily replaced on the user end. If and when this becomes possible. In practice, the sword part would still be of questionable use compared to the gun part, and we already have bayonets for that.

===Oscillating blades===

Also known as: "vibraknives," "high-frequency blades," et cetera, these are blades made so that they vibrate at such extreme speeds that they weaken the molecular bonds of the material being slashed, translating into the blade being able to cut things that a normal sword would snap against and making them nearly indestructible in the process. These actually have a real-world counterpart in the form of electric knives and jigsaws, which are saw-toothed and cut a variety of materials, but not to the degree or speed that proper HF blades can. Completely relegated to sci-fi stories and vidya. One of the most famous examples thus far is Metal Gear Rising: [[Derp|Revengeance,]] featuring a psychopathic weeaboo cyborg with a high-frequency katana against the world. The HF blade is depicted as being capable of slicing through everything, except materials capable of withstanding HF weapons. Against these, they have to be weakened enough that the HF blade can chop it into mincemeat.

The science SEEMS sound, but they don't ever explain how the extreme vibration needed to electrically sever molecular bonds doesn't shake apart the human wielder's skeleton or the sword itself, which is why even if it was possible to make them, they'd likely never be used in real life. After all, Newton's third law is still in effect. You can test this yourself and try holding any vibrating appliance for a few minutes; your muscles will start feeling numb from all the vibrations. They also state that the power of an HF blade is determined on how the original blade was forged before being modified, meaning that higher-quality blades yield better HF blades, as the HF technology only augments the properties sword. Though Jetstream Sam, a Brazilian samurai in the game, wields his own master forged high frequency blade, which is so good that it could slice pretty much anything, even the megalomaniac final boss ''who manages to block and snap Raiden's sword in half with his bare hands''.

While his blade is apparently made from a well-forged katana that has been passed down in Sam's family since the 16th century; they don't ever really elaborate on how the blade's quality affects the transition into an HF blade, especially when Raiden's modern-forged blade is somehow of lesser quality than a genuine Japanese katana made of low-quality steel folded in forging to work out the heavy impurities. The only way this makes sense is if the Katana was reforged with more durable materiel. As even the best weapon will break down with regular use.
It could have been explained better by stating that HF Blades have Monomolecular edges and are built with Carbon Nanotubes like the cyborgs themselves. So it seems that Platinum is ignorant about how swords are made like most [[Fail|fan fic writers]].

===Mechanically-powered weapon===

This basically means that the sword is powered by an external power source, like motors. The [[chainsword]] for example, is common in sci-fi worlds that have close combat, as it's basically a chainsaw in sword form and the motor helps the sword do more then if it was just a sharp chunk of steel. Realistically speaking, power weapons would be bottom heavy, making them awkward to use, and if it goes the chainsaw route, then it would be hilariously impractical to use at all in combat situations; things softer than wood or ice tend to get caught in and gum up the teeth of a chainsaw, flesh being one such material. So, your custom chainsword would be rendered useless almost immediately, and in fact would be rendered less useful than an ordinary sword against whatever you were trying to [[RIP AND TEAR]] at the time.

One could argue that the chainswords in 40K are made differently from actual chainsaws in that they're designed for cutting people in mind; the teeth are mono-molecular and are shaped like knives rather than the thick, axe-like notched blades of real chainsaws (which are designed to chew away at thicker and harder materials, like wood); allowing them to nick through flesh more cleanly than your everyday chainsaw. The motor would have to be more powerful than a car's engine, yet light enough to be carried in one hand, allowing it to run the blade at speeds that it the teeth won't get caught, while still making it as maneuverable as a standard sword. But that's technology in the grim future, as trying to make a chainsword with today's technology and engineering would make for a very impractical weapon.

Impracticality aside, there's an argument to be made that in the 40k universe that chainswords and their non-imperial equivalents have a well-established purpose in the setting, analogous to the Buster swords 40k generally eschews. Beyond rogue humans or possibly Eldar (for which any sharpened stick should be a more sensible weapon), most opponents of the imperium pack incredibly tough flesh, extremely heavy armor, sheer mass enough to ignore grievous wounds, or any combination of the three. A chainsword, for all its downsides, can inexpensively provide some measure of response to any of these. The additional power yielded by the engine would exacerbate physical trauma, blowing physical injuries way out of human proportion. The sharp teeth provide concentration of force beyond any sword and can scrape through or catch in the gaps and seams inherent in any armor designed to move. The added motion and dimensions of force applied would help the wielder cut through limbs or body parts far too thick to slice apart for the same reason a chainsaw can gouge through thick tree trunks. All in all a chainsword gives the imperium a cheap one-size-fits-all answer to killing up close, with the acknowledgement that the weapon must be wielded not like a sword but like a saw. For all its technological improvement, the downsides are largely the same as they would be today: the wielder gives up grace, balance, most ability to parry, and accepts that they will be wounded by almost anything they fight. To take it one step further, it's an apt metaphor for the imperium itself: capable of grinding down anything through sheer low-tech single-mindedness, but always at grim cost in blood and lives.

===Magical materials===

In folk lore you can make weapons, typically swords since they are the weapon most associated with nobles in most cultures, out of any of a number of different types of special materials that have properties that grant it magical properties. A few of the more common examples are:

*'''Treasure Steel:''' the legendary super-steel from the Slavic and Norse mythology. Legends attribute it with extreme durability and ability to cut through "lesser steel". It was for a long time thought completely fictional or just the name for an Iranian Bulat steel, but eventually historians found out the stories were based on the early steel-age forging techniques. IRL it was just an alloyed high-carbon steel in the early age of very low-quality unhardened steel. It was made with a very wasteful process that included burying a huge steel ingot into the ground (aka "Treasure"), letting it rust for few years and reforging the remnants - then repeating the process several times each time the ingot loosing a sizeable percent of it's mass to the rust and smelting burnout. As iron corrodes faster then natural alloys found in the ore and carbon, repeated treasuring and reforging increased alloy and carbon concentration resulting in a a great metal for it's time. Needless to say, only the nobility could afford to waste so much iron, so it also became a trademark of warlords and their champions. Mostly due to how shitty everyone else had it, these things were nasty.
*'''Thunderbolt Iron''', which is a fancy term for weapons made from meteorites. In fantasy space iron swords tend to have magical properties or are treated as some kind of super steel: in D&D they are the source of adamantine. In real life, this was for many civilizations their first experience with iron and for some civilizations, a lump of iron-rich meteorite could be many times purer than what they could naturally forge and smith. That is if they could even make iron at all: the otherwise Bronze Age Egyptians managed to get a meteoric iron dagger into King Tutankhamun's tomb. The problem of course is the term "iron-rich" and many meteorites are either very small or made of rock or nickel that can't actually be forged; there is a good reason why Tutankhamun had a dagger and not a sword. Additionally, many meteorites have [http://xkcd.com/1114/ impurities that weaken the blade]. Still, bad iron is better than no iron and we do get plenty of big meteors to make swords out of. The late [[Discworld|Sir Terry Pratchett]] famously [[Awesome|forged his own sword out of a meteorite when he was knighted]].
*'''Cold Iron''', On the other hand, just being made out of iron by itself was enough to grant magical properties, as Rudyard Kipling said, ''"But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of them all."'' Iron, and by extension steel, have strong folklore traditions perhaps because that blood smells and taste metallic due to its iron content, or perhaps the "mystical" attraction of a lodestone to iron. In folklore, you could use iron scissors to ward off changelings, nail an iron horseshoe to your door to give luck, while an iron knife buried under the entrance to your home would keep witches away. In the modern "sci-fi approach," fantasy iron weapon's "magical" abilities are sometimes explained by its magnetic properties that can disrupt "magical" being's senses and abilities based on electromagnetism, and in some instances can cause them great pain or even instant death just from a physical contact or even being near. ''"All well and good,"'' I hear you say ''"but what does this mean for swords?"'', well honestly not much. It does mean your best weapon against things not weak to some other magical material like silver, such as fairies or demons, is a steel sword, but you were going to use that anyway since steel is better than any material not from the future. The importance of iron as an anti magic weapon only becomes important in settings where iron as a weapon is rare. The "cold" part is often a point of contention and it can mean that the iron has to be cold forged, i.e. never heated, or that it's just not hot now, or sometimes it's just a poetic term for any iron, Room-temperature metals feel cool to the touch because, when held, they conduct heat out of the skin more readily than air does, the same way we use the term "Hot Lead". [[Changeling: The Lost]] defines it to mean 'relatively pure iron (i.e. no steels, oxides, or alloys- if it's something that the average person would think of as being made of iron, it counts)'. While iron in general has adverse effects on anything touched by Faerie, the most potent kind of all is "cold iron" (that is, iron that was never worked using any kind of heat and did not involve magic being used in its creation at any point in time). This means iron fresh out of the ground does the most damage (but is obviously just a rock so using it is hard, unless you plan to make a shotgun shell full of the stuff), and Meteoric Iron (see above) since it's never been heated by man, but re-entry smelted it making it easier to work with by comparison. On the other hand, weapons of pure iron tend to be less sharp and durable when compared to steel and other alloys- and are consequently much trickier to find outside of an antique collection. You're probably best off breaking off a piece of a wrought iron fence and making it into a weapon. Even then it's not guaranteed it'll be pure enough to have any special effects since almost all "wrought iron" products made nowadays are actually made of low-carbon steel.
*'''Silver''', unlike iron and meteoric Iron, doesn't work as weapon material in real life. Cost aside, silver is softer, heavier, and dulls much easier than a steel blade, but silver's tradition of magic goes further back than iron and in settings with werewolves a silver sword may be your best friend. The reason why Silver's magical tradition likely goes back further then iron (at this rate may as well make a page for magical metals) is because of a a unique property of silver: [http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Silver_as_an_Antimicrobial_Agent water in silver pitcher takes a lot longer for it to get scummy, as silver ions damage bacterial DNA and enzymes]. This led to it having reputation for healing and since healing is good (duh), for being holy. This trait of silver is also why we get the reputation for why vampires can't cast a reflection: old timey mirrors used a silver backing to get a clear reflection, and since vampires are unholy, they wouldn't cast a reflection in the holy silver. As for werewolves, in olden times it was thought werewolveism was also like rabies, hence the whole 'you become a werewolf if bitten by one', bring to mind rabid animals hence silver against werewolfs stems from it's anti microbial, and so healing, property's. In modern times though the logic behind silver and werewolves tends to be that since silver is the same color as moonlight and werewolves are empowered by the moon, it would suppress their powers or otherwise weaken them. In fantasy settings, silver weapons often do less base damage but deal more damage against, or are the only thing that can hurt, unholy monsters like ghosts. It is also possible to [[Grey Knight|coat your realistic steel blade with silver]] (or gold, for that matter) without dulling it too much, and keeping it dangerous for supernatural creatures weak against silver. Although given silver and iron lie on the opposite sides of electro-activity scale you'd better keep your silver coated blade very clean all the time, least it rusts down in a matter of months or even weeks, effectively being a huge-ass chemical battery only waiting for electrolyte to work (this is even worse with gold coating BTW).

===Super Sword===
Super Swords are a broad category of fictional weapons includes weapons made with advanced technology (Lightsabers, Necron Phase swords), Magic (Shardblades from Words of Radiance), divine origins or just are the product of super duper swordsmithing abilities (your memetic Katana). What they have in common is the fact that they can cut through basically anything with minimal resistance. They'll cut through armor and steel like nothing. Generally another super sword can resist them and maybe a few special items, but they'll go through a boulder like nothing.

==Worldbuilding Considerations==

One further point, if you're doing worldbuilding: Swords, due to their versatility, will always be important in military contexts '''until''' four weapons appear, each of which absorbs a lot of the sword's unique functionality:

# The decline of the sword will usually begin when guns start appearing; the obvious combination of guns and spears to protect them quickly moves combat ranges to the point that swords are almost never needed in planned, open field combat outside of full-on charges. At this point, they still have a role in unplanned or close-quarters combat and will probably still see civilian use, although that will diminish as gun technology improves. Further, the close quarters and unplanned combat utility will eventually be completely absorbed by knives and other weapons that double as useful tools. For example, you wouldn't use a sword to cut through thick vegetation while a Machete can do both that and fill the sword's combat niche for less money.
# Reliable repeating handguns finish removing the sword from civilian contexts, as they are both more comfortable, easier to learn to use, and less difficult to repair than a sword (although, admittedly, more prone to breaking in the first place). You don't have to be an expert armorer with thousand of dollars worth of equipment to fix a firearm.
# [[Shotgun]]s and sub-machine guns are superior to swords in the field of close quarters fighting; as soon as this is realized, that's another major area the sword vanishes from. In particular, hallways are called "death tunnels/corridors" by the military for a reason: there is little room for fancy maneuvers such as dodging bullets.
# Reliable machine guns prevent open field cavalry charges, which is usually the last vestige of military value the sword has.

Equivalent weapons to the above work just as well in absorbing the sword's usefulness, so long as they remain ''reliable''. As each of these show up, expect the sword to vanish steadily from importance; the last stop before vanishing entirely will probably be as a symbol of office for officers in Empires where that still implies "nobility" in the "born a lord" sense.

Superswords, or shielding that interferes with guns but not short range weapons, are necessary for swords to reappear. Keep in mind, though, that this can easily be overdone to the point of wankery. If this supersword is in any way unique, you probably have a [[Mary Sue]] on your hands, which is usually felt to be a bad thing.

In more advanced settings a Plasma or Laser weapon could plausibly emulate an energy blade or create a [[Meltagun]] style burst (e.g. the Plasma Gun from [[Doom|Doom 2016]] does the latter). While serving as a close range armor/door/wall breacher at the same time. This also makes swords redundant, but in situations where defenses against energy-based weapons and projectiles are used, the sword (and other melee weapons at that matter) can still make a comeback as a weapon. (Case in point, 40K- a bolter might not be able to penetrate power armor, but a power sword can do so, and unlike plasma guns, power weapons don't run the risk of a lethal overheating accident.) Or you can go the [[Dune]] route and make it so that armor is ''so'' advanced that only swords work on them because they're too ''primitive'' to be blocked so remain the only viable choice without being forced to chuck nukes at individual enemy infantry.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Firearm

2019-12-12T10:18:37Z

2601:1C0:5C00:C130:798E:CBB3:E7F2:A1E4: /* Types of Rounds */

[[image:Shotgun After Firing.jpg|thumb|450px|right|Nothing like the smell of burnt powder in the morning]]
About twelve hundred years ago in [[China]], some people figured out that certain chemicals mixed together (such as potassium nitrate, carbon, and sulphur) rapidly combusted when brought to spark, which became known as "black powder." After some experimentation, they discovered that a tube sealed off at one end could be used to contain the pressure of said combustion and focus it into an explosion to propel an object at high speeds. After a few centuries of refinement, and invention of the frag grenade, they managed to take that mechanical principle and apply it as a weapon of warfare which changed the game: the arquebus. Comparatively cheap, easy to make, easy to learn to use, and capable of penetrating all but the heaviest armor, this marked a transition away from close quarters to ranged warfare.

In modern times, firearms are the staple weapons of any nation. Speculative fiction showcases weapons that doesn't even fire solid projectiles, like [[lasgun|lasers]].

From an engineering standpoint, firearms had a big difference from previous weapons in that they don't require the user's muscle power to work. Swords, maces, and axes are swung, spears are thrust, and bowstrings need to be drawn. Even crossbows and siege weapons work by storing muscle power via tension until it's released. The energy required to accelerate a firearm's projectile comes from explosive propellants; all the user needs to do is to hold the weapon, aim, brace themselves and set off said explosive charge. The significance of this is illustrated in the American Proverb: "God made man, Sam Colt (the inventor of the first practical revolver) made them equal." Having a reliable repeating gun means that your simple brute physical strength does not mean as much in a fight as it would in a bare knuckle brawl or a swordfight (either defensively or offensively).

The firearm's bigger bro is the [[Cannon]] and its cousin is the [[Rocket]].

==How Traditional Guns Work==
For our non-firearm oriented friends, here's a brief, heavily condensed explanation of how these murdersticks work. These instructions will probably vary depending on the type of gun you're using.

[[image:Teppo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Some Tanegashima matchlocks]]
===Olden Muzzle-Loading Guns===
====The Slow Way====
1. Put your musket in half-cock position. Take your powder flask, and pour a few grains into the flashpan. Pour some more down the barrel (amount can vary wildly; later powder flasks come with built-in measuring tools for ease of use and safety). Ram the powder, bullet, and cloth wad down the barrel of your gun. Ensure you're doing this in correct order because [[Not as Planned|putting the ball first, then powder, for example, can lead to hilarious and/or lethal results]].
 2. If you're using a matchlock gun: light up the fuse, aim and brace yourself, and lastly wait for the fuse to burn out. If you're using a flintlock gun: just cock the mechanism. With percussion caps, replace the explosive cap on the firing nipple after cocking the hammer. In any case, aim once you're done setting it up.
 3. Once the powder burns; the gasses from explosion of the black powder will send the bullet flying out of the barrel like a bat out of hell and penetrate into something or someone, and if you're lucky it might actually hit what you were aiming at. Also, hope you aren't downwind because guns during this time generated ''a lot'' of black smoke.
 4. Take stock of the situation. If you've managed to hit anyone or you're currently still in a shooting war; repeat step 1. If your firing line missed most of their shots and those barbarians are charging up your position; [[Imperial Guard|affix bayonets]].

====The Not-Quite-As-Slow Way====
1. Take your paper cartridge, and bite off the end with the powder in it. Carefully pour a few grains into the flashpan, and the rest down the barrel. Take the remainder of the cartridge, ball and paper, and ram it down the barrel.
 2. Follow steps 2 through 4 as above. Paper cartridges have the advantage of saving you a few seconds of precious time while reloading, which can mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. Another advantage is that they can be made somewhat weatherproof with a grease coating. But if you're just hunting or can't find/afford paper, most people didn't bother with the time-consuming preparations.

===Single-Action Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action (pump the slide, rack the bolt, et cetera) to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger, this will cause the hammer to strike the primer on the chambered round and cause the powder inside the shell casing to ignite and explode; sending high-pressure gases screaming out of the barrel while propelling the solid bullet out at high speed towards whatever you were aiming at. If you're using single-action flintlock guns; see above for the result.
 3. Because the gun lacks a mechanism to re-chamber itself; you now have to work the action again to eject the spent shell (unless its a revolver, in which case you do that while reloading) and load another round into the chamber. How you do this depends on the gun in question.
 4. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

===Auto-Loading Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger and this causes the same effect as stated above.
 3. Because of the mechanism of the gun; it redirects some of the forces used to propel the bullet to work it's action, eject the spent shell (unless its a DA revolver), re-chamber another round, and allow you to shoot again by just pulling the trigger. The forces used depend on the gun in question, some use a gas block to redirect some of the gasses expelled by bullets, while other uses the force of the recoil itself, to work the action and chamber another round. Additionally, it could also re-chamber itself using a mechanical sequence (like revolvers) or is electrically operated.
 4. If you're using an automatic; hold the trigger down and only release it once you want to stop shooting (or are forced to do so due to lack of ammo). If you're using a semi-automatic; pull the trigger again to fire another round.
 5. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

==A Brief History of Firearms==
'''800's:''' Taoist monks attempting to find an elixir of immortality stumbled on the next best thing: a substance that would suddenly and violently make things very dead. They'd discovered potassium nitrate (alternatively called saltpeter), a white crystalline powder that burned with a purple flame. When mixed with powders of charcoal and sulfur the resulting substance would burn instantly and aggressively on exposure to flame. It didn't take long for the Chinese to start inventing ways to use it.

[[image:Firelance.jpg‎|thumb|150px|left|The Firelance, the Chinese invention that started this all]]
'''1000s to 1200s:''' The Chinese realize they can make barbarians shit their pants by shooting hollowed arrows packed with powder and bamboo tubes filled with powder and pebbles at them. Bamboo gradually gives way to cast iron and bronze.

'''1300s:''' Various gunpowder weapons begin to proliferate westward along the Silk Road, aided by the [[Mongols]]. Crude versions of hand cannons, grenades, rockets, and flamethrowers all see use. Despite considerable psychological effect and good armor penetration, most of these weapons are only marginally more likely to kill the target than the user and had a range of only twenty or so meters. As such, their use is not widespread. For the most part, these weapons were used by skirmishers and guards. The fact that they were so dangerous meant they were mostly used by low class soldiers, and in turn this meant that the smiths making them were generally not the most skilled artisans; which did little to improve quality even given the limitations of the day. Even so, the designs and methods of manufacture were gradually refined and improved by various early gunsmiths through trial and error.

'''1400s''': Hand cannons see continued and expanded use. Bit by bit from the crude handgonnes of previous centuries, the first "true" firearms evolve with the gradual development of the matchlock, taking on the basic shape of lock, stock, trigger, and barrel (which is where we get the saying from). By clamping a lighted wick into a flashpan via a trigger, the shooter is able to aim ''and'' fire at the same time, making him markedly less likely to blow his own jimmies off. Despite advances, the matchlock was unwieldy, unreliable, and generally inferior to a good bowman. The issue of course is that only England (in Europe) HAD good bowmen; bowmen were the scum of the army everywhere else. This didn't stop some inventive commanders from seeing their potential, particularly with poorly trained conscript soldiers. [[Weeaboo|Some forces]] made a go of it by carrying two or three guns at a time and just throwing the spent ones away like a really shitty Matrix movie. Note: while we use a "weeaboo" hyperlink up there, it's worth remembering that troops like cuirassiers and even pirates would do the same thing with pistols, carrying a whole brace of them, but they just did not exist yet. By the 1400's having more then one gun was the only way to have any real rate of fire before breechloaders existed.

'''1500s:''' Guns continue to evolve with the invention of spring-loaded firing mechanisms. The wheel-lock spins a steel plate against sulfide rocks to produce sparks (think cigarette lighters), which ignites powder a flash pan. This was revolutionary, allowing soldiers to prime their weapon in a matter of seconds instead of fucking around with a lit wick, and allowed calvary to use guns for the first time while on horseback, giving rise to the cuirassiers. It also means that for the first time, guns weren't completely fucked in the rain, just mostly fucked. They also cost a lot to make and were still not completely reliable, so most people stuck with matchlocks. Powder formulas had improved considerably, including the development of the more powerful, stable, and moisture-resistant corned powder made by wetting raw gunpowder, forming it into cakes, crushing them, and sieving them for size. Japan's Oda Nobunaga was particularly notable in the history of firearms for his heavy transition from blades to guns after discovering the novelty of matchlock guns. In fact, by the end of the 1500s, they had more trained arquebusiers in their armies and produced more matchlocks than any other country to date during that period and had the most guns per capita in the world. Meanwhile, virtually every army figured out how to use a combination of volley fire in dense square formations surrounded by pikemen (called Pike and Shot); making armored cavalry, crossbows, & longbows outdated. Accuracy still sucked but that was what the massed shooting was meant to compensate for.

[[image:FlintlockMechanism.jpg‎|thumb|200px|right|The flintlock mechanism. Now you did not need to light some string and put it into a serpentine before firing]]
'''1600s''' The wheellock is refined into the simpler and more reliable flintlock, though it would take some time to supersede the matchlock. Muzzle loading is simplified with the creation of paper cartridges, essentially the pre-measured cake mix of murder. Some German dudes came up with the idea of cutting spirals into the barrel, which they called "rifling," to spin-stabilize the bullet so that they wouldn't have to walk up right next to their targets to hit them, but this required a barrel tighter than a nun's cunt, a hammer to ram the ball in, and grooved bullets made for the gun so it could fit the rifling of the gun like the cap to a soda bottle. To put all that into perspective: well-trained musketeers could fire three to four shots a minute, while a rifleman could only manage one shot every minute. Not great, however the idea of spin-stabilisation hung around and payed off in later times.

'''1700s''': The French invent the bayonet, allowing their troops to be [[choppa|choppy]] while they were [[dakka|shooty]]. Thus, the Pike and Shot formation became the Bayonet and Shot formation. That and refinement of tactics led to the dense but slow and cumbersome square formations being reformed into thinner but more responsive rectangle formations. This is the point where gun infantry tactics become the dominant (though still not only) form of fighting when guns go from one a few common infantry weapons to the primary weapon used by most infantry. Formations of musketeers go from big square blocks to lines two or three ranks thick to put enough bullets in the enemy's ranks as quickly as possible.
[[image:Chassepot.jpg‎|thumb|200px|left|The mechanism of a French Chassepot, an early bolt action rifle, as well as its paper cartridge]]

'''1800s''': Pretty much everything that makes up a modern firearm is invented here. Some fool came up with an explosive that would go off if you slam a hammer into it, which led to the first explosive primers. So flintlocks transitioned to percussion caps. This basically involves putting explosives in ur explosives to explode your explosives. Eventually, standardized methods of making copper & later brass casing replaced paper cartridges & made gas leakage in breechloading mechanisms a thing of the past. Cartridges that contain a primer, propellant, and slug, similar to modern-day bullets, are developed. With this, not only was loading ammunition simplified with a package that contained everything needed for a gun to fire, it also made it waterproof & easier for conscripts to load. Furthermore, the brass casing’s small expansion when firing served to seal the firing chamber to prevent hot gases from leaking and burning users’ hands. By this time, wars were largely fought using firearms rather than melee weapons, though also by this time firearms were also melee weapons as in the early 1800s the bayonet charge was still both an accepted and useful tactic.

By the late 1800 inventors had finally gotten the technology to contain the force of the gunpowder explosion with a tight seal and do so cheaply. Experiments that had been done earlier like the Puckle gun (1718), Ferguson rifle (1776), and even the bizarre 1780 Girandoni Air Rifle, [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Steampunk which was an air gun with a 20 round magazine], all failed to create breech loading rifles cheaply. See, despite that it was well known that that slotting in bullets from the rear and using a mechanism to load it into the chamber is much simpler than spending about half a minute to ram it down a long barrel, the technology was just not there as without cheap steel (cheap is important for hand guns you are going to mass-produce), getting iron to contain the explosion without deforming and leaking gas, thus weakening the shot, was a nightmare. The Industrial Revolution, among other things, gave birth to the concept of "breech-loading" and later "magazines" and simpler mechanised feeding systems like tubes, slides, cylinders, and bolt-actions. The likes of pump-action shotguns, bolt-action rifles, and lever-action rifles, and revolver and semi-automatic pistols, are developed and/or developed upon, giving a glimpse on how weapons in the future would function. Near the end of the decade, some French guys worked out that they could both improve firepower and keep their guns considerably cleaner by replacing black powder with nitrocellulose, the first of many "smokeless powders."

Just as important as the new designs that came about during this period were the new methods of production. People like Eli Whitney worked out devices such as milling machines, which allowed for the quick production of finely tuned parts which were so close in size that you could take one bit off one gun, stick it on another from the same line, and it would work just as fine. Breech loading and repeating firearms had existed for centuries beforehand, but were not cost effective to mass-produce until the Industrial Revolution.
[[image:Lee-Enfield Rifle.jpg|thumb|200px|right|A British Lee-Enfield Bolt Action Repeating rifle]]
This is also the time where the first "automatic" guns were invented and put into production. The word "automatic" is in quotes because these early machine guns were not self-reciprocating; they did not load and fire themselves and were instead manually powered. The most famous (and successful) of these weapons is the Gatling gun, which saw limited action in the American Civil War, but became much more widely used the world over in subsequent wars. But while it was the most famous, the Gatling was not the only manual machine gun developed; dozens of different types were produced during the US Civil War alone on both sides, but because these guns tended to be mounted on cannon carriages they were treated like cannons instead of the close support weapon machines guns are, so it took some time for them to hit their stride.

'''1900-early 1930s''': The heyday of guns because of the advent of WW1. The idea of bolt-action rifles are popularized, along with semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Bolt-action rifles meant that riflemen no longer had to be confined to shooting one round at a time before needing to reload as they could now load individual clips that contained 5-10 rounds a piece. Machine guns are now becoming more and more popular in the battlefields, drastically changing the way infantry would maneuver the battlefield as a single MG emplacement can effectively cripple platoons with the right positioning. Submachine guns, the first automatic infantry weapon, are developed by the German Empire and issued to their stormtroopers, giving the rest of the world an idea of the wonders of a lightweight fully-automatic weapon that could easily be used by infantrymen, which was previously restricted to crew-served heavy machine guns. Not liking to be one-upped, the Americans came up with the trench gun (a 6 shot, pump-action renforced shotgun with a bayonet that was pure murder in the confines of a trench) that ultimately evolved into the modern combat shotgun.

On the subject of the machine guns, if there was ever a weapon that represented this part of history it would be the heavy machine gun. To go back to an early quote "God made man, Sam Colt made them equal and John Browning (designer of a large number of machine guns including the m2 .50 cal or 12.7mm) made them civilized!". We talked about the hand powered machine guns above, and while good when used correctly, these weapons have their issues. In order to use most of them, you had to be standing up to turn the crank and sustained fire was tiring, but the hand cranked guns had one major advantage: the most successful of the hand-cranked guns, like the Gatling or Gardner, had multiple barrels meaning you can fire them with little or no need to stop to let the barrels cool down. At the dawn of the 20th century, this is what the early machine guns had to be compared to when European generals went window shopping. The solution was water-cooling, which allowed machine guns to fire for countless hours with little or no failures, but at the cost of weight rendering them truly static, though highly effective, weapons. If you could point to two developments that caused the First World War's trench warfare, you can point to water-cooled machine guns and barbed wire.

'''late 1930s-1940s''': At the start of World War II, all of the powers involved, France, England, Germany, and Russia, were armed with bolt action weapons. Over the course of the war, automatic and semi-automatic rifles started to become more common; however, only the Americans completely phased out bolt-action rifles for standard infantry by the time of the war (Marines and Army units in the Pacific Front were stuck with the old stuff for a few months due to the Germany First policy). Submachine guns are now becoming more popular with various armies around the world, making it the staple lightweight automatic weapon for infantry troops, totally redefining urban combat due to the weapon's great effectiveness in close combat. Nazi Germany invents the ''Sturmgewehr 44'', the first widely produced assault rifle (the Fedorov Avtomat was the first to be put into service, introduced in 1915, but production was limited due to costs). This weapon would later become the template for modern assault rifles used by the world over.
[[image:QBZ-95.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A QBZ-95 Assault Rifle, the current service rifle of the People's Republic of China, note bullpup configuration (the magazine feeds behind the trigger), thus saving space]]
'''1950s-1990s''': With World War II over, the armies of the world had a chance to study Germany's assault rifle and built their own. The key invention was selective fire, which allowed a single weapon to serve as a traditional rifle or a somewhat long and unwieldy submachine gun. Burst fire was also developed, intended to fire a grouping of rounds to defeat personal body armor but automatically stop before the recoil of fully automatic fire would have a significant impact on aim. The USSR's entry was the AK-47, which was powerful, easy to mass produce, and legendarily tolerant of mistreatment after briefly flirting with the SKS (a semiautomatic carbine fed by stripper clips). On the other side of the world, the US briefly experimented with an automatic version of the M1 known as the M14, before (mostly) getting their shit together and developing the M16, which was expensive, complicated, and notoriously finicky. One thing not to be underestimated is the standardization introduced by NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Gone were incompatible calibers unique to each nation, and in their place were a single pistol caliber (9x19 for NATO, unless you were an American snowflake, and 9x18 for Pact.), a single intermediate caliber (5.56x45 for NATO, 7.62x39 for Pact, later 5.45x39 in certain Pact countries), a single full power rifle cartridge (7.62x51 for NATO, unless you were a French snowflake, and the venerable 7.62x54 for Pact), and heavy machine gun cartridge (.50 BMG for NATO and 12.7×108mm for Pact) for small arms. Even before NATO standardization was officially a thing, many western countries eagerly armed themselves with American surplus M1 Garands and M1 Carbines, which greatly simplified things.

'''2000s''': With the invention of more advanced materials such as plastics and carbon fiber, along with numerous technological advancements of the modern world, firearms are... basically the same they've been for the last fifty years, just usually lighter and with more options. Serious efforts were made to look at new designs like caseless ammo and fused smart grenade bullets, but most went nowhere. The most significant development in firearm technology was the advent of practical ranged tasers; essentially wired dart launchers with high voltage capacitors, they're the first handguns ostensibly intended for less lethal force (occasional heart attacks not withstanding) that weren't a total joke (like pistol caliber tear gas rounds).

'''2010s''': Development of more robust weapons (such as the POF P416 and HK 416), modularity (FB MSBS, similar to the ACR with the variation count of a Lasgun), practical telescopic and caseless ammo (LSAT project), and ship cannon sized railguns (The Naval Research Laboratory currently working with a practical version, i.e. can reload at the same rates as an Abrams 120mm loader). Apparently, it can fires rounds with 32 megajoules of energy, or 23,601,988 foot-pounds.) So apparently even in 2017, we outpace the Imperium in development, makes you wonder what the Dark Age of Technology holds. Few of these have progressed far enough to get fielded and may just be dead ends. The main innovation at this time comes from optics, where even cheap sights makes the professional equipment of old look like crap. Also cheap rifle parts and market (at least for Americans) due to advances in manufacturing. No seriously, you can get a basic AR for $500 or even just make it yourself from parts for less than $400 (Firearms are taxed 10-11%, parts are not. Thus there is significant savings by only buying a small block of aluminum as a "firearm".), and that's if you aren't diving into sub-milspec stuff. New designer rounds to outpace rounds such as the 5.56 and .308 in performance are also coming out, such 6.5 Grendel, 6.5 MPC, .224 Valkyrie, .300 Winchester Magnum, and so on. These only see widespread uses among snipers however, as the cost of replacing existing guns and ammo for what is a marginal increase in performance is of questionable budget use.

[[File:LSAT telescopic ammo.png|200px|thumb|right| An example of humanity developing practical telescopic ammo. Designed to be light weight while not compromising muzzle energy, it'll bring much benefit to anyone needing to bearing the ammunition (assuming the kinks are worked out).]]

Many countries around the world are now looking for new ways to either improve or adapt combustion-based firearms as a whole, and are looking for ways to make what were once sci-fi-only ammo and weaponry, such as [[lasgun|laser]], [[plasma]], direct energy overall (involving the last two), [[gauss]], telescopic/caseless ammo, and more, a reality. While met with some degree of success, nobody (pardoning America, 'cause you gotta do something with that large budget) has found a way yet for these weapons to be man-portable (or cost-effective in the case of telescopic and caseless ammo) that a single soldier could carry these into combat or be affordable/reliable to an extent that it would be more feasible to make these instead of the traditional ballistic weaponry. There is also the problem that if you get a hard projectile (think tungsten and steel) going fast enough, it will just over-penetrate and go through a target, doing little actual damage as compared to our modern bullets that hit, create a temporary cavity the size of a dinner plate, then tumble going through the target sideways (which means that against unarmored targets your average 5.56 round would likely do comparable damage to a bolt round). Rounds that fragment and inbuilt post-penetration destabilization fix this, however the main point here is that there is little reason to equip your soldiers with some [[Bolter|fancy dandy overly complex and costing a half-million dollar gun and ammo]] when a [[Lasgun|good ol' service rifle and some traditional ammo costing a few hundred bucks]] will allow them to do their job just fine. Leading off from the previous statement, even if such projects were successful, there is a strong point to be made that, as least as far as infantry weapons are concerned, chemical-based firearms will remain both cost effective and lethal enough to last at least another century or two, if not longer. While elite units will certainly benefit from new developments, the ordinary grunt will have to wait until they become cheap enough to mass produce. Most modern work is either completely experimental, or fine tuning already present technologies with developments from other areas.

== GUN SAFETY ==
Should be self-evident, but to be frank it isn't. Between the movies having actors brandishing guns everywhere, the video games and toys like airsoft that make them look more harmless than they are and plain human ignorance and negligence; people forget that they're holding something that could easily scatter someone's brains or outright remove their skull.

That said, there are four main rules to gun safety.
*Muzzle sweep: Avoid this. Muzzle sweep is one when points or sweeps a gun in a direction onto people or objects that could get harmed. To avoid this, one should keep the gun's barrel pointed away from anything that you don't intend to destroy or value. This means one must be conscious of where they are pointing it. Or in other words, '''never point the gun at something you don't want to shoot!'''

*'''Treat every firearm as if they were loaded at all times.''' Even if you fully know the gun is empty after removing the magazine and checking the chamber, still treat it as if it wasn't. This creates a force of habit so that if you are ever in a rush/interrupted while handling your gun/given a weapon by someone else/whatever... you will avoid any mishaps and tragedies that could arise because you think the gun is empty where it actually isn't.

*'''Know the target, what's in front of the target, and what's behind the target.''' Remember, bullets are designed to punch holes in things. Even if you've got pinpoint accuracy, the bullet might go right through the target and kill some guy who's just minding his own business. This is why any self-respecting firing range has a thick wall or a pile of packed-down dirt behind the targets. Bullets that don't punch through the target and don't shatter (like frangible rounds made of sintered metal) can ricochet back at the shooter or others around them. For this reason, shooting at metal targets is usually done with the targets angled down.

*Trigger discipline: '''Never put your finger on the trigger unless you want to kill/destroy whatever you're pointing your gun at.''' Also pretty much self-explanatory.

Easy, right? Well... apparently not. Ask any gun enthusiast and they'll gladly tell you all sorts of horror stories that happened because [[That Guy|somebody]] failed to follow these simple rules.

And for the love of the God-Emperor, don't be a fucking tool and mix alcohol/drugs and firearms together. Doing so, very, very unsurprisingly results in the breaking of one or more of the aforementioned rules.

==Types of firearms==
Having been around for well over 1500 years there have been many types of firearms over the course of time. Humans are, if anything, very inventive when it comes to coming up with new and interesting ways to kill each other. A rough list are:

===Ye Olde Gonnes===
*Firelance: Oldest of the Oldschool guns, simple bamboo tubes stuffed with gunpowder and pebbles used in the Ten Kingdoms period and the Song Dynasty. One inaccurate spray of flaming fuck-off in close quarters, often tied to a spear.

*Handgonne: A catch-all term for a primitive gun without a lock that need their powder charges. Majority of these guns were handcannons, as in literal man-portable artillery pieces that had a 50/50 chance of either working or malfunctioning, the worst of which would be the gun exploding in the shooter's face.

*Arquebus - A basic matchlock Firearm. A note of clarification: 'Arquebus' and 'musket' are both used to describe firearms from this time and they are often used interchangeably. But if you want to be ''really'' technical in this period an Arquebus is a regular two handed matchlock firearm while a musket is a larger heavier gun firing a larger projectile, sometimes up to an inch in diameter. Latter (about 1700 onward) musket would refer to any muzzleloading long barreled handheld firearm used for mainly shooting solid shots. This is not too much of a big deal and is nothing to get mad about, but it is worth noting.

*Musket - Today, the musket is a catch-all term for all early smoothbore, shoulder-fired, muzzle-loaded firearms. Technically this isn't the case, the musket was an improved Arquebus, one of the earliest muzzle-loaded guns. However because of romanticism and literature; people who aren't acquainted with firearms will commonly refer to any muzzle-loaded long weapon as a musket (about the same reason why most people today refer to any automatic weapon as a machine gun). Muskets were inaccurate as people have yet to put serious research into firearm ballistics, generated a lot of smoke due to primitive gunpowder mixtures, and were temperamental to environmental conditions (rain will pretty much render a musket into an wet stick of wood), but still enjoyed a lot of popularity due to their lethality and ease of use compared to other man-portable ranged weapons at the time. Muskets were quickly phased out once rifles became a feasible thing, who did what a musket could do, but better. Muskets were categorized by what firing mechanism was used in the lock:
:*The earliest versions used matchlocks, which fired by poking a slow-burning fuse into the firing chamber. These were fairly unreliable and somewhat hazardous since you had a smouldering fuse close to the flashpan when you were reloading.
:* Flintlocks replaced matchlocks, which ignited by generating sparks when it struck the iron frizzen, igniting the powder in the flashpan. The flint would periodically break and need replacing, but it was still safer than a matchlock.
:* With the invention of the percussion cap came the Caplock, or Cap & Ball. This was the final evolution before breachloading became widespread. The cap would be fitted onto a tube to the firing chamber after the musket was loaded. Caplock firearms did not generate sparks in and of themselves; rather, they used a simple hammer to strike the cap, which would in turn ignite the powder in the firing chamber. Far more contained than flintlock, until the fully self-contained cartridge superseded it entirely.

*Multi-barreled gun - In the olden days, people wanted more dakka launched at enemies, but things like magazines and self-loading weapons were still an alien idea during its time. So as an alternative people took a breach/muzzle-loaded firearm, slapped one or more barrels onto it, and reworked the trigger so they can fire more shots before needing to reload. This resulted in some particularly wacky times for guns. To this day, the only multi-barrel weapon still commonly used (disregarding military rifles with underslung grenade launchers, door breaching shotguns, or rotating barrel Gatling-style guns) is the double-barreled hunting shotgun. Some notable guns were volley guns called ribauldequin, which were a line of infantry dudes without most of the dudes. The problem was that this took very long to load, because you have 2 or two people ramming shit rather than 20 dudes each loading. So, that was a colossal fail in a long term artillery exchange, but quite effective for countering a charge when all you need is one volley to make mincemeat out of that cavalry coming at you.

===Modern Firearms===
*Handgun - Also called "pistols", handguns are small-sized firearms that can be comfortably fired in one hand (hence the name). Handguns are mainly used for close defense and as a sidearm, making them akin to daggers. Modern pistol calibers are commonly between 8mm and 11mm, although popular magnum rounds like the .50 GI and .50AE are also exist for handguns (albeit they tend to be large, heavy, and likely to fuck up your wrist from the recoil).
:*Machine pistol - A machine pistol is a handgun that can fire in either bursts or in full-auto. While they're commonly thrown into that category, machine pistols are not submachine guns due to their size and use. Machine-pistols are not in widespread use with traditional military forces as SMGs and PDWs do better damage and have a longer range, but they remain popular with personnel like bodyguards, who require a highly portable but powerful sidearm.
:*Derringer - Another case of the concept being named after its inventor, "derringer" refers to tiny pistols, often used as concealed or backup sidearms, that could fit into the palm of your hand. These things have been around since the 19th century and were single-shot, though could have multiple barrels to fire off more shots before reloading, which were fired in a sequence. Due to their size and intended use (i.e: shooting someone while literally next to them); derringers typically used small rounds like .22 and below. But if you ''really'' wanted someone dead (and your wrists obliterated); some packed larger shots like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COP_.357_Derringer .357 magnum rounds].
:*Pocket Pistol - Modern versions of the derringer, those are really small handguns or revolvers that sacrifice range and ammo count in order to be as small and easily concealed as possible. Also called "subcompacts".

*Revolver - A revolving gun is any weapon that uses a revolving cylinder to load new rounds after every shot. While its commonly now relegated to pistols (a revolver typically meant a revolver pistol these days) the style is still used for some shotguns (like the Armsel Striker) and grenade launchers (like the MM1-Hawk). Revolvers are still in use for a few reasons: they're simple and cheap to make, can easily be used by left and right-handed shooters (since spent casings aren't automatically ejected like in the case of modern firearms) and is still pretty robust compared to today's modern weapons as fewer mechanisms means fewer points of failure. Downside is that they have very limited ammunition space (because the gun was made around the cylinder you can't expand it like how you can with detachable magazines, so you either had a gun with 5-8 rounds or a bulky gun with a 12-round cylinder) and reload time (revolvers in all generations were a pain in the ass to reload. If you had an old revolver with a loading gate; you had to eject each round by hand, ''then'' load new rounds. If you had a newer one; you had to empty the cylinder, load the rounds, then cock the hammer. This is in contrast to modern guns where you just had to eject the magazine, load a new one, and charge the weapon). Thanks to the American old west era and subsequent movies about it, revolver-styled handguns have achieved a kind of rustic yet sleek appeal to them. Revolvers come in generally the same calibers as handguns, from the modest .22 Long Rifle used for practicing and target shooting to the behemoth .500 S&W Magnum which can put down a bear. "Snubnose" revolvers refer to revolvers with shortened barrels in an attempt to make them more compact.
:* Top Break - A revolver with a hinged frame that opens to expose the cylinder. Top breaks were originally designed for cavalry, as they are very easy to load. However, the two piece frame is a weakness that limits the power of cartridge that can be used.
:* Swing Arm - By far the most common type of revolver, the swing arm mounts the cylinder on a moving arm known as a crane, which allows the cylinder to be exposed for loading. The chief limitation of the swing arm design is that the crane can bend over time and due to rough handling.
:* Gate Loading - Named for their loading gate, these revolvers can only expose one cylinder for reloading a a time, with the spent casing being pushed out through the gate by a long ejector rod. Gate loading revolvers are the earliest style for cartridge revolvers, dating back to conversions of percussion cap revolvers. Gate loading revolvers are now rare except for reproductions and revolvers designed to big cartridges. The fixed cylinder is the strongest possible configuration of revolver and thus the most tolerant of high power ammunition.

*Submachine gun - A submachine gun (abbreviated to SMG) is a fully automatic weapon that fires pistol cartridges instead of the larger rifle cartridges. One of the first true fully automatic infantry weapons outside of the machine gun, hence the name. The weapon fulfills a similar role of the carbine, striking a balance between firepower, recoil, and bulk. They also make good stealth weapons, as most pistol rounds are subsonic with heavier bullets and thus much quieter when suppressed.

:*Personal Defense Weapon - A PDW is a bit of a mix of a carbine and an SMG, firing specialized cartridges with rifle-like characteristics (usually in the 4-5mm range, shorter than a rifle cartridge but longer than a pistol cartridge) at the cost of additional weight. Its original role is as its name implies; a personal defense weapon for nonfrontline infantry, like artillery spotters, scouts, vehicle crews, commandos, etc. Back in the day PDWs weren't necessarily automatic; a pistol with a longer barrel and mounted stock could be classified as a PDW (This was done with the German C96 and Luger P07), today however these would qualify as "pistol carbines". These days PDWs are commonly lumped into the same category as SMGs, as they now fulfill similar roles.

*[[Shotgun]] - Shotguns are smoothbore weapons (as in the barrel is not rifled) designed to fire either shot (multiple steel or lead pellets) or slugs (a single, heavy projectile), although modern times have included other types of ammunition. The ability to fire multiple types of ammunition without modification is one of the main advantages to using a shotgun; converting an anti-infantry weapon into a door-breaching tool, a mini-flamethrower, or a less-lethal weapon with but a switch of the munitions. The vast majority of shotguns are pump-action or breech-loading, though as of 1905 shotguns can come in semi-automatic or fully-automatic configurations, but sheer variety of shell loads makes their reliability highly ammo dependant. For more information see the [[shotgun]] page. The most common bore size for shotguns is 12 gauge (about 18.5mm). Confusingly, higher gauges are lower in size because its based on weight of spheres of lead rather than diameter; a 20 gauge is about 15.6mm, while a 10 gauge is 19.7mm (.410 bore exists outside this and is .410 inch/10.4 mm/67 bore).

*Rifle - Rifles were originally shoulder-fired weapons that had their barrels "rifled" to increase precision, by putting spiral grooves into the barrel in order to have the bullet spin before leaving the barrel; reducing it's wind resistance (otherwise known as drag) and giving it more momentum as it leaves that muzzle. In ye olden days, these were specialist weapons given to marksmen while the common soldier carried a musket. However, because all modern non-shotgun non-explosive firearms now use rifling to improve ballistics, the term is usually reserved for a shoulder-fired long weapon, designed for accurate fire.
:*Assault Rifle - Assault rifles are a term given to any rifle that can be fired on full-auto and shoot intermediate-caliber rounds, typically in the 5mm range (or a shortened 7mm round if you're from the Eastern bloc). This is usually the standard weapon of a non-specialized front-line infantryman. The STG44 is considered to be the earliest one fielded in industrial quantity, though the idea has been around since at least the first World War.
:*Battle Rifle - Basically the assault rifle's big brother; battle rifles are bigger automatic rifles designed to fire high-caliber rounds, typically in the 7mm range. These were the mainstay for armies in the 1950s, but the US eventually found out that giving infantry rifles with smaller rounds is better since its lighter and can allow infantry to be more accurately engage enemies better due to lower recoil (albeit at the cost of power), so battle rifles were replaced by assault rifles for front-line use and battle rifles were relegated to specialists like marksmen or support gunners (who's job permits for a slower-firing but more powerful weapon). The M1918 BAR may count as one, though the first occurred no latter than 1942's FG42.
:*Carbine - A carbine is a compact rifle, primarily designed to be used in close quarters. In most cases, carbines are based from a parent rifle, and are scaled down by using lighter/smaller parts and shortening the barrel (such as in the case of the American M16 vs M4) or is its own weapon (like the Korean K1A). These are typically given to units who need to engage the enemy at close range and need a rifle for the job, like commandos, assault teams, or other specialist units, or given to units who are not expected to fight on the front but need a compact but decent weapon to defend themselves if the need arises, like pilots or vehicle crews. Carbine may also refer to pistol-caliber semi-automatic weapons that are longer than a pistol, but this is typically only used in the civilian market. The concept of a carbine predates modern firearms, though they existed primarily for cavalry.
:*Micro Assault Rifle - Even smaller than carbines; these are ultracompact rifles designed when someone needs a highly portable but powerful weapon. A MAR is basically a PDW that shoots actual rifle rounds. Much like carbines; a MAR can either be based on a parent rifle and scaled down or made as its own weapon. These tend to have low effectiveness for standard calibers, since those were designed for full length barrels, but the logistics of supply are superior.
:*Sniper Rifle - A sniper rifle is a special precision rifle, specifically designed to engage targets at extreme range with lethal efficiency. Many sniper rifles use standard 7.62mm rounds, but high-performance rifles will use more potent rounds up to 12.7mm rounds for extra range and stopping power. Preferably, sniper rifles should use match-grade ammunition to provide consistency and accuracy at high extended ranges. The vast majority are bolt-action for simplicity and power (much more reliable and because all the gasses are diverted into the barrel, rather than some being diverted to work the action; the gun can launch the bullet farther and faster), but there are also a decent number of semi-automatic ones. Sniper rifles are given to special marksmen called "snipers", who are capable of engaging the enemy from extreme distances, usually well away from the scrap.
:*Designated Marksman Rifle - A sort of compromise between battle rifles and sniper rifles, DMRs are precision weapons meant to be used by frontline infantry to accurately engage distant targets that regular infantry weapons cannot. Due to its role, it's generally more accurate than a rifleman's gun, but usually not as effective as an actual sniper's gun (DMRs are usually only effective within 1 kilometer, while SRs are typically effective beyond 1 kilometer). Generally speaking, DMRs avoid using the more high-performance rounds that snipers may use, as it may be detrimental for an infantryman's role.
:*Recoiless - Not a conventional gun in most senses; a recoilless gun (models with rifling are called "Recoiless rifles" though people often miss this distinction) is as the title suggest, a rifled weapon without (or at least reduced) recoil. It does this by basically being a cannon with the back taken off. When loaded the cartridge sits in an open back tube, there is no breach. When fired, the explosion propels the shell out the tube, but an equal amount of gas comes out the other side canceling out the recoil. This means that total muzzle velocity is lower than a cannon with a breech on it, but they make up for it by shooting bigger shells, and with HEAT shells (thanks to the nature of the Munroe effect) the wider the diameter of the shell the more effective it is, meaning even a large slow moving projectile can do a great amount of damage to tanks.
:*Anti-Tank/Materiel Rifle - Essentially modern elephant guns; these rifles are geared towards destroying tanks and hard objects, although they are very much still capable of demolishing infantry (albeit overkill since rifles of this type tend to outright cause body parts to explode by the sheer amount of force they carry.). Anti-tank rifles were the norm for years (From the 1910s to the late 1970s) as they were a cheap yet effective way of getting rid of tanks, but advancements in vehicle armor has largely rendered AT rifles obsolete (atlest for anti-tank roles, these things can still royally murder lightly-armored vehicles and urban housing, thus why they can be seen in use today). Anti-materiel rifles however, are a bit of an offshoot of AT rifles, and are still in use today. They are often used to take out lighter vehicles, to detonate ordnance at a safe distance or fuck up anything valuable to the other side like radars, communication devices, heavy weapons, etc... They have been successfully used against light boats and even to down the occasional helicopter. Likewise, they have been used by both professional and paramilitary forces due in thanks to their ability to annihilate cover (and hopefully what's behind it) where most conventional small arms won't.
:*Elephant Gun - A rifle that fires a ludicrously heavy bullet, usually as a single shot but rarely as a bolt action. As the name implies, these were developed to bring down big game like elephants, but eventually became the precursors to anti-material rifles. Unlike the later, range or penetration aren't big concerns so much as delivering a massive amount of energy to a soft-skinned target. While hunting elephants may be illegal today, a large caliber weapon is still useful for defense against large predators like bears or lions, who would shrug off a smaller 5.56mm or 7.62mm to the body. Firing such a heavy weapon while standing or even sitting isn't a pleasant experience; without the right stance, it'll go flying once you pull the trigger.
:*Everything else - Except sniper rifles and most Designated Marksman Rifles, all of the above rifles are generally "military-grade" and thus are generally not available to the public (unless you are in '''The Great United States Of America'''*, *NFA restrictions apply). Any other type of rifle will typically be called a "sporting rifle" or "hunting rifle", etc and are either bolt-action or semi-automatic. Technically speaking, most "military-grade" firearms can be modified to become semi-automatic to allow for use within the public.

*Machine Gun - Colloquially a machine gun is a large automatic weapon (though technically anything fully-automatic, ranging from a machine pistol all the way up to auto-cannons), typically fed from a magazine or a belt (or both, as is the case with the M249) and meant to either be man-portable or fired from an emplacement or mount like a tripod or turret. The main difference between MGs and the rest of the automatic weapon family is that an MG is a gun meant to fire with longer continuous bursts as a support weapon; meaning that the machine gunner applies continuous suppression fire at the enemy to keep them down (and occasionally kill those stupid enough to not get the message), while the rest of the squad maneuver. Machine guns are generally heavier, not only because of the volume of ammo they carry; but their parts (such as the barrel) are made of heavier materials so that the gun can withstand the punishing amounts of bullets it puts downrange (firing hundreds of rounds without pause can cause guns to overheat and malfunction, even catch fire or explode in the worst of scenarios, unless they're built for such a task.) Even then, barrel changes occur frequently to change warped and damaged barrels.
:*Light Machine Gun - an LMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same intermediate rounds as assault rifles. They are intended to be almost as portable as a rifle (as in, they can be shouldered, but get better performance with a bipod) and allow machine gunners to provide suppressing fire at the squad level. Some LMGs are magazine-fed rifles with heavier barrels and modified bolts (such as the RPK), or else scaled-down MMGs (such as the M249 SAW).
:*Medium Machine Gun - an MMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same full-power rounds as battle rifles. These tend to push the limit of what's practical for a man-portable weapon, and when deployed are usually fired from a stationary position either on a bipod or tripod due to the recoil they generate. These weapons usually overlap with General Purpose Machine Guns and tend to be deployed at the company level or as a vehicle weapon.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (classic) - The definition of an HMG has changed a bit over the last 100 years so the catagory has been split up into two category's. The classical heavy machine gun is exclusively meant to be fired from emplacements and mounts like a tripod due to their large size and weight and was designed to be fired from a fixed position: constantly, just spitting out bullets for days. Often done with the aid of a water jacket which further increased the weight of the weapon. These are the guns that created the quagmire of the great war. Their heavy weight made them impossible for an infantryman to fire on the move (regardless of what you hear; even Hollywood couldn't make these monsters man-portable in their movies, and those fire low-powered blank rounds and is being held by the like of [[Sly Marbo|Sylvester Stallone]]). But that weight also greatly limited their maneuverability and forced them to stay in a static defensive position. Usage outside of vehicle mounts died off when artillery became more precise and could easily wipe out immobile emplacements. Unlike modern heavy machine guns, classical ones used a standard sized rifle cartridge, the vickers for example used the .303 bullet same as the standard rifle of the day, what made them 'heavy' was the focus on sustained shooting to throw back waves of attacking infantry. Examples include the Maxim gun, Hotchkiss Mle 1914 and the Vickers.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (Modern): a modern heavy machine gun is not designed to fire constantly, but to fire a big bullet. Only slightly too small to qualify for the definition of 'cannon' are weapons like the M2 browning .50 caliber, or 12.7 mm machine gun. Modern HMG's are powerful enough to penetrate light armor and damage fragile equipment on heavy armor (like scopes), making them formidable weapons. Examples of modern HMG's are the Russian DHSK and the American M2 Browning.
:*General Purpose Machine Gun - Essentially a machine gun that can perform multiple roles of the previous stated. Examples of this are the German MG34 (arguably the first of this concept) and MG42/MG3, or (from an American prospective) the American M60 and M240, which can reliably serve both infantry-level support weapon and mounted gun roles by fitting them with the appropriate parts. The first ones used the general rifle cartridge, while modern examples are in 7.62x51 NATO or its equivalents.
::*Squad Automatic Weapon - An attempt to make a GPMG that use the intermediate cartridges everyone else in the squad used. Despite the weaknesses of intermediate cartridges (limited range, low barrier penetration/destruction), they is still commonly used by virtue of their reduced logistical requirements and lighter weight compared to other man-portable LMG variants. The RPD, RPK and M249/SAW/MINIMI family are the main entries here, though it seems every modern assault rifle has tried to make a SAW variant with varying degrees of success.
:::*Infantry Automatic Rifle - A more recent concept that seeks to combine the continuous firing properties of a machine gun with an assault rifle's accuracy and ease of use. So far only attempted seriously by the US Marine Corp with the M27; while the higher-ups are pleased with it so far, there is considerable debate about whether its lower rate of fire compared to the M249 will make it less effective at providing suppressing fire.
:*Rotary Machine Gun - Originally known as the "Gatling gun", man's first known attempt to have enough [[dakka]]; a rotary machine gun is an automatic weapon that uses revolving barrels that interchange every time the gun fires off a round. The kicker to this is that it allows the gun to shoot with little threat of the barrels wearing out as they interchange between shots; giving them a small window to cool off before firing again. The end result is a gun capable of firing over 3,000 rounds per minute without fail, or in a smaller scope; 50 rounds per second. Modern rotary guns are electrically powered to allow them to reach such insane speeds, and are given ammo drums that contain thousands of rounds to be able to sustain that amount of bullets being fired; so they're confined to static emplacements and vehicles (unlike what the media constantly portrays; these things are not even close to being man-portable without assistance from powered armor.) These types of guns are used almost exclusively on aircraft or anti-aircraft emplacements, as they're the only non-missile weapon that can reliably hit fast-moving aircraft. But a rotary gun that fires 30mm rounds is powerful enough to tear tanks in two, as well (metaphorically, they only have to penetrate top armor and rate of fire helps). Unlike what the movies would tell you a rotary machine gun does not need a long spinup time to get to full speed: when the trigger is pulled the gun starts to spin and fire immediately.
:*Chain gun - A chain gun is a machine gun that is fed using an electric motor. Instead of relying on the gasses from the bullet to work the action to cycle a new round; a machine automatically ejects and loads a new round in after firing a shot. Chain guns have the benefit of never jamming due to feeding failures, as even if the round is not discharged; the machine pops it out and loads a new one regardless. However, it is also not man-portable as it requires an electric motor to function, so it is only found on fixed emplacements or vehicles. Can easily fuck up any poor shmucks day by perforating the boat or car they are in. People sometimes use the words "chain gun" and "rotary machine gun" interchangably, but chain guns are typically single-barreled, as they don't need the high rate of fire that rotary guns do outside of anti-air guns.

===Actions===
"Action" refers to how ammunition is loaded into the weapon.

*Single-shot: The first and oldest of all; a single-shot weapon is when users manually load rounds into the chamber. This can be anything from loading a new round, cocking the weapon every shot, or pumping the action.
**Muzzle-loaded: The earliest form of how weapons were loaded. This meant you had to load a new round directly into the muzzle, which is where the bullets come out. In its earliest form; muzzle-loaded guns were complicated to arm; you had to fuck around with a wad, powder, and slug. In the heat of battle, you had to ram these down the barrel of your gun in the correct order, light the wick, then aim before the gun goes off. And you had to do all this while standing in the open within firing range of your enemy.
**Breach-loaded; An upgrade over muzzle-loading and developed shortly after cartridges were invented; breach loaders are where the bottom of the barrel can be unhinged so that you can load a new round into it. It is still a popular setup for multi-barreled shotguns. Certain revolvers are breach-loaded as well, but given the size and design of the revolver, this gives them a notable weak point at the top of the weapon where the parts connect together.
**Bolt-action: This type of action is where you pull the charging handle of a weapon, every time you shoot so that the mechanism would chamber a new round. These were pretty popular in WW1 and continues to be used today for precision rifles.
**Lever-action: The cool kid of the single-action club; lever-action weapons are those where you have to use a lever to chamber a new round, which was usually mounted near the trigger. This type was made popular by Winchester during the frontier age of the Wild West and even more by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he used a lever-action shotgun during Terminator 2.
**Pump-action: A pump action is where you had to pull the "pump" of the weapon to cycle a new round. This is the most common action used by shotguns. A few rifles used this setup as well, and there is one instance of a bunch of madmen creating a pump-action 3+1 (three in the tube, one in the chamber) 40mm grenade launcher.

*Automatic action: Unlike single-shot weapons, it uses gasses expelled by the cartridge or recoil to power a mechanism that automatically chambers a new round after each shot. Generally speaking, the semi-automatic to fully-automatic action is determined by the trigger sear, which may either inhibit the hammer from hitting against until the trigger is let go (semi-automatic), stops firing after a certain number of rounds have been fired (burst-fire), or continuously fires until ammo is expended (fully automatic).
**Semi-automatic: A semi-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire after every trigger pull, with the user only needing to work the action after reloading a completely empty gun. Most handguns and many rifles are semi-automatic.
**Burst-Fire: A setting sometimes included on automatic weapons, each trigger pull fires three (or sometimes two) rounds in rapid succession. This is used as a way to allow automatic capability without wasting bullets, as keeping the trigger held too long on anything other than a mounted weapon tends to cause it to lose accuracy very quickly.
**Fully-automatic: A fully-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire automatically, so long as the trigger is depressed, rather than pulled each time like how semi-autos work. Automatic weapons tend to be banned for civilian use and are only available to military.

===Ammo Storage and Feeding===
This refers to how ammunition is given to the weapon. Also the topic of a /k/ommando's greatest sources of rage; the clip vs magazine misconception. This section will give a short explanation for both.

*Pepperbox - basically the bastard child of a break-action long gun and a revolver; a pepperbox gun has 3 or more barrels loaded and ready to fire, with the gun rotating between the loaded barrels to fire in relatively quick sucession. As this was one of the only ways to get more than a single shot in less than a minute without resorting to carrying multiple guns; the design was wacky but popular during the olden ages (and still today to a limited extent for some pocket pistols). The Empire's Outriders are armed with these weapons if you want a visual of what they looked like. Most pepperboxes where smoothbore since they were made on the cheap and never intended for more than point blank fire.

*Volleygun - A variant of the olden multi-barrel family, the volleygun foregoes single, accurate shots in favor of alpha-striking to saturate the area in lead, having anywhere between 2 to 20 barrels (and you can go well beyond this if your contraption can handle it) and the size ranging anywhere from a pistol to a full-sized artillery piece. As the name describes; it fires all of it's payload in a single volley, basically making it a one-man firing line. This style of weaponry gradually fell out of disuse as more modern firearms were developed (mainly self-loading weapons, which were more reliable and accurate), but is notably still used for the "Metal Storm", a prototype weapon with truly absurd number of gun barrels that go off simultaneously to shred the ever-living fuck out of it's target. The only types still in use today are double barreled shotguns and derringers.

*Superposed load - the disadvantage to using a multi-barreled firearm is that it adds a lot of weight to the firearm. One alternative was to simply stack multiple bullets and charges into the same barrel, and then have the firearm set them off sequentially. The early version of this mechanism was prone to failures, as the bullets were not self-contained and a poor gas seal could result in multiple charges going off, destroying the gun (and the user if unlucky enough) if it was not designed to handle the stress. However, this setup was revived with the invention of caseless bullets and electronic triggers used most prominently in Metal Storm weapons. If combined with multiple barrels, a metal storm weapon can have a bewildering rate of fire. So far the technology is mostly used in multi-shot grenade launchers.

*Bullpup - A bullpup is any weapon where its action is located in the behind the trigger, instead of in front. Bullpups have the advantage of being more compact, compared to the traditional setup, as most of the gun's mechanism is located in the stock area. but has the disadvantage of not being ambidextrous (being that the shell ejection port is directly beside the shooter's face, left-handed shooters are forced to shoot from the right to not get their faces burned off) unless specifically designed to be so. This is usually resolved by cutting out ejection ports on both sides and swapping parts over, or else ejecting bullets downward or forward. And typically suffer from poor triggers due to the distance from trigger to action, though there are aftermarket kits for many that can mitigate it a good deal. Modern pistols and many SMGs that feed from inside the grip are ''technically'' bullpups, since their magazine and action are behind the trigger and connected by a transfer bar, but they generally aren't counted as such.

*Clip - A clip is a device, used for bundling bullets together for immediate use. Guns cannot use clips by themselves, they have to be loaded into a magazine first to be used by a gun. The most common version were "stripper clips": each clip held about five bullets, and to load the rifle you placed the clip on top of the magazine, then squeezed the bullets off the clip into the magazine. Another type, en bloc, was used by the M1 Garand and held eight bullets in a 2x4 configuration. The entire clip was put in the magazine, with the clip being ejected after being emptied. The last kind is the moon (or half-moon) clip, used specifically for revolvers, which holds bullets in a circular formation for loading the chamber up in one go. Clips are still used today, but exclusively to speed up loading external magazines. Filling external magazines generally requires a small disposable tool, which is included in any ammo lot packaged on stripper clips.

*Speedloader - A speedloader is essentially a clip that has moving parts, usually to aid with holding and/or loading ammunition. Two common types exist. The first is similar to a moon clip in that it holds bullets so that they can all be loaded into a revolver simultaneously, but use a locking mechanism to secure the bullets while they are being carried, then release them once they are loaded into the cylinder. While not as fast as a moon clip, it still makes loading revolvers considerably faster. Another type of speedloader is the magazine loader, which is designed to reduce the spring pressure in a magazine, making it faster and easier to load.

*Magazine - The magazine is part of the weapon that houses and feeds actual ammo into the weapon. In the olden days, many guns had magazines that were built into the weapon itself and were fed using clips of ammo that were loaded after the gun ran out of ammo. Built-in magazines, however, severely limited the potential ammunition capacity of guns as they cannot be expanded without significantly making the gun larger and was a pain in the ass to reload (such as in the case of revolvers). To counter this; people designed guns whose magazines were detachable from the gun itself. This allowed people to easily expand the ammo cap of a gun, as they only needed to ensure that the extended magazine will fit into their gun and cycle properly, they no longer needed to re-work the entire structure of the gun to enlarge a built-in magazine. It also greatly increased a person's reload speed, as instead of fumbling around with several clips to ram down the gun: they just had to detach a magazine, pull one out of their vest/bag, load it in (charge the gun if needed), and they're good to go. High-capacity magazines tend to take on weird shapes rather than the standard flat box; the most common variant is the drum magazine, but there are also double drums, caskets, and helicals. Typically the weakest part of any firearm. A large part of the misconceptions of the M16 were related to the fucktarded idea that it should be issued with DISPOSABLE MAGAZINES! They were initially not intended for repeated use, empty the mag. Drop it, crush it under your boot, reload a brand new never used mag. Worked well till some bureaucrat ordered reusing them which alongside some other bureaucrats skipping the chrome lining for the barrel and issuing really shitty ammo made with spare parts caused regular failures. Newer iterations of the magazine have since addressed these issues.

*Belts - The belt is what it is; a long belt filled with bullets, which can either take the form of a cloth belt or linked by metallic chains. Belts are the common loading method of most machine guns, who typically have ammunition capacities well beyond 100 rounds. The reason for this is that it simplifies the operation of the gun (since belts do not require them to be fed to the gun with a mechanism like in traditional magazines) and makes them less prone to malfunctions (with a gun designed to shoot continuously; you wanna make sure that there's less critical moving parts to fuck up as it's firing it's 300th round at the enemy). Belts are also much easier to transport, as the belt can be folded several times to make it more compact, versus a solid magazine. This is mostly because until H&K put out their steel high reliability 5.56 nato mag, most magazines couldn't keep up with the fire rate and were too flimsy(The Soviet counterparts that used magazines, used AK pattern magazines which you can open a beer with and then load into the gun). Pretty much every man issued a M249 with the magwell adapter, will attest to how dire you must be for bullets in the air to use it.

==Ammunition themselves==
To call a round or cartridge "a bullet" would be the equivalent of calling of calling a magazine a clip. Bullets are the projectiles that are or to be launched, while the "round" is the entire thing. To do otherwise would summon the wrath of the /k/ommando.

===Composition of the modern round/cartridge===

*Casing - The metal jacket that houses the propellant, primer, and to an extent the bullet (pardoning telescopic munitions which house the bullet completely.) Usually made from brass, they can be made from steel or plastics (at the detriment of the gun itself, unless designed for such).

*Propellant - Powder that is used to propel the bullet/slug/projectile. In the good ol' days, it used black powder, but those clouded the air and weren't powerful. Most modern rounds use a double base powder (generally gun cotton or nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, may include a variety of stabilizers (to improve shelf life of the round) and deterrents (to prevent the cartridge from being too "hot". For artillery, they make good use of triple base propellants, which is smokey as hell but burn well.

*Primer - What activates the powder in the rounds themselves. Generally a firm dent is enough to activate the munitions. Generally use non-corrosive compression sensitive materials.

*Bullets - What people get tripped up on in naming munitions. Being the projectile, anyone loading the munitions has a vast choice of what can be used as a bullet. Generally, lead, steel, and tungsten make the core of the round (thanks to their weight) while the outer coat for the round could be lead (since it is also very malleable), copper, and nickel, though Teflon and certain plastics can also be used. If you're feeling lucky, you can load a variety of other materials into the rounds (or shells for shotguns). Take for example salt, which doesn't kill, but you can mark people and they sting like hell.

===Types of bullets===
As a short note on bullets, its important to know that just because a bullet can easily penetrate armor doesn't mean its a definite upgrade over everything else. If a hard bullet like the FMJ or AP penetrates the human body and exits in the same shot; its gonna hurt like hell but unless that bullet was in the 12.7mm (.50 caliber) category or it hit something important like a lung or the head; the target has a good possibility to survive through a combination of medical aid, hormones (adrenaline in fight or flight), and willpower (with the side possibility of stimulants), and even still continue to fight onwards if they're that dead 'ard. That said, if a 12.7mm round came tearing through your body; it has enough momentum to potentially rupture a good chunk of your insides which is ''very'' lethal, but 12.7mm guns are generally not mainstay (these are guns like the Desert Eagle, M2 Browning, or M82 Barrett), so unless you're a real-life action hero, a turret gunner, or a counter-sniper; its unlikely for you to have access to these behemoths.

Likewise, if a soft bullet like the JHP or SP penetrates the body, then which expands, fragments, and/or tumbles inside; in short internal and external bleeding would be the most urgent of the target's concerns, with ruptured organs and torn muscles leaking like a broken sewage pipe, thus making HP lot more lethal and debilitating. That said, soft bullets fragment easily and body armor proportionate to it's caliber can reliably stop soft round. That said even if armored; the target is still gonna feel the impact of the bullet's force hitting against his body, and that still has the potential of killing someone if the circumstances are right (although its still unreliable).

In the end, a bullet is either specialized where it's only effective against either armored or unarmored targets, or a special combination that renders it effective against both types (although these require an experienced smith to manufacture properly).

*Ball - though if we start talking bullets we need to start with the first bullet: the lead ball, from where we derive the common term for bullets as 'rounds'. It's. . .just a lead ball though, not much to say about it. The balls were hand made, often by soldiers themselves since lead has such a low melting point, with the molds often being unique to each gun. This used largely the same process that was used for [[Sling]] bullets since antiquity. These early bullets would often 'rattle' down the barrel due to ill fitting the barrel of there guns, which combined with a lack of riffling would mean early guns were horribly inaccurate. If one used a smaller bullet that better fitted the gun, would could use rifling, but this required, (see above) hammering the bullet into place to make sure that there were no gaps.

*Minié ball- The first bullet we would know as a 'bullet', and the first truly distinct from a lead ball. A Minié ball is a conical bullet with a concave hole in the base. When fired the base flared out from the pressure of the blast, letting it engage with the rifling of the gun. This meant that it formed a seal with the barrel making it incredibly accurate, while not needing to be tightly hammered down the barrel. The best of both worlds. Combined with it's large size these things were lethal on the battle field maiming and crippling an entire generation of soldiers during the US civil war.

*Full Metal Jacket (FMJ)- Generally a lead or steel bullet encased in a soft metal such as copper. Acts a sort of lube as well as preventing fouling of the barrel. Depending on design, has a potential to fragment post impact, shredding internal organs.
**Synthetic Jacket- FMJ ammo with a plastic jacket, which has the advantage of reducing cleaning requirements and safer when hitting steel at the cost of various things not really relevant in practice ammo. Currently only in handgun calibers and only made as practice/match ammo (though some hollow points and AP rounds do also use polymer jackets).

*Hollow point (HP)- The hollow section in the center makes the bullet expand on impact, creating a bigger hole in its victim at the expense of being less effective against armored targets. That being said, the decreased penetration also makes it safer to use in situations where over-penetration could be dangerous (e.g. on an aircraft). Certain designs have bladed tips on expansion, causing additional cutting and bleeding too. It was banned from military use by the Hague Convention of 1899, so restricted to police, civilians, and, as of 2017, the United States Armed Forces (The US didn't sign that provision, but previously stuck with FMJ even after mass production became feasible for the sake of NATO compatibility).

*Semi jacketed Hollow point (SJHP)- Same as a hollow point, but has a copper jacket to help reduce fouling.

*Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP)- Same as above, but fully covers the bullet down to the tip.

*Wad cutter (WC)- Flat tipped bullet. Not very aerodynamic but it leaves a big hole to help tell you where you hit the target. Generally for closer range paper targets as they lose velocity very quickly due to the drag on them.

*Semi Wad Cutter (SWC)- Like the wad cutter, but more aerodynamic.

*Armor Piercing (AP)- As name implies, intended to penetrate armor, be it person or equipment. However, this ultimately depends on what gun you're shooting from and what armor you're shooting at. A 9x19mm AP steel round coming from a 4" barrel will do diddly to NIJ Level IIIA, where as a 7.62x51 AP flying out of a 24" barrel will punch through it easy as you please. Modern AP rounds are often jacketed in plastic, but this is purely to protect the barrel (turns out sending something meant to destroy steel through a steel barrel results in a wrecked barrel) and adds no armor piercing quality.

*Saboted light armor penetrator (SLAP)/Saboted bullets- Think of the discarding sabots fired from a M1 Abrams or a saboted slug of a shotgun, but redesigned to be fired like a standard rifle round. The sabot is designed to the grip the rifling until it leaves the barrel, then discard after leaving the barrel. This would leave the penetrator or bullet with a high velocity while providing a sufficient spin to the bullet to keep it stabilized in the air. With a higher density and/or thinner bullet, they can potentially penetrate better than potentially even APHE. Likewise for handcrafted bullets, they provide higher velocity for a smaller bullet in a cartridge intended for a larger caliber. G

*High Explosive incendiary (HEI)- Explosive tipped munition. Generally for larger rounds (think 7.62 and beyond), they typically are meant for non-infantry targets such as light vehicles, light aircraft, and barriers, showering those inside with speeding shrapnel. Despite their implication, they might not work as well as one might think against hard target.

*Armor Piercing Incendiary (API)/Armor Piercing High Explosive (APHE), High Explosive Incendiary Armor Penetration (HEIAP)- Designed with the intentions of penetrating hard targets that HE rounds can't do alone and being anti-material in general, API and HEIAP are the answer to those targets. Generally have sufficient power in and behind the bullet (think Raufoss Mk.211), it will penetrate body armor and light vehicles with awe-inspiring ease.

*Soft point or semi jacketed - Like a FMJ, except the tip is exposed. Designed to have the reduced drag of a FMJ, while expanding upon hitting a target similar to a hollow point. Generally designed for hunters in mind.

*Ballistic tip - Similar in performance to the semi-jacketed bullet, but rather than being a solid core of lead it is designed like a hollow point, but with a plastic tip at the end to reduce drag and ensure expansion.

*Ratshot - made for smaller-caliber guns and is basically birdshot for rifled barrels. The tip is a plastic cap that contains a small amount pellets, typically within the 1.5mm range. As the name implies; the gun is primarily designed for shooting pests and small animals like rodents and grass snakes. You can use it to shoot at larger pests like coyotes or humans, but it's woefully underpowdered for the job.

*Tracer - a regular bullet coated in pyrotechnic coating that ignites when fired. These are most commonly used with machineguns (every fifth round in a belt, to be exact) since it's useful for the gunner to accurately see where all his bullets are going, as well as make it clear to any enemies he's suppressing just who he's aiming at. Similarly rifle magazines are often loaded with tracers at certain intervals to provide indication of remaining ammo. Of course, the caveat is "tracer's work both ways" as they can give away your position; this can be mitigated by using "dim" tracers that can only be seen through night vision goggles. Sometimes also used by spotters or commanders to mark a specific target. They can potentially set fire to objects, if the incendiary compound hasn't burned out yet on impact.

*Less-lethals - Commonly known as 'rubber bullets' even though they're made of plastic these days instead. Used in riot control and such, where the shooter isn't allowed to kill. The key word is "less", however. They hurt like a sonovabitch and can still kill in the wrong circumstances, though. Airsoft this ain't.

*Silver - Pure fantasy, but common in there to counter supernatural creatures weak to silver. Silver bullets would suffer from many problems that rarely get mentioned in fiction. Chief among these are the cost, that silver shrinks when cast (so it's really hard to get the right size and shape), and that silver is too soft to engage rifling so even if you get the right size accuracy will be terrible. [[Monster Hunter International|More /k/ aligned works]] solve these issues with solutions like sabots (which helps accuracy but still worse than real bullets), ballistic tips made of silver and frangible bullets filled with powdered silver (instead of the typical competitively cheap metal).

===Types of Rounds===
Apart from the traditional type of rounds, here are some unique ones for reference.

*Blanks - What you commonly see loaded in movies. Blanks are basically that; the round has a primer and powder, but the bullet is just a paper or plastic sheet designed to keep the powder in, so you get the sound of a gun going off, but not the damage. That said, blanks ''can'' still kill people, the gasses used to propel the bullet forward are still there (just not launching any bullets); and its powerful enough to liquefy organs and break bones if you were dumb/desperate enough shoot someone with a blank at close range. Movie armorers make a point of demonstrating this with things like fruit before letting anyone touch blank firing guns. This is why instead of blank-firing guns, actors will use flash paper guns at close range for safety. There's also blank ammo specifically designed to make as much noise as possible for the purpose of disorienting and intimidating people in an area. In a military sense blanks do have a use: typically for turning your rifle into a grenade launcher, using the expanding gasses to launch a grenade held at the muzzle by a cup.

*Caseless - An old but futuristic concept, a caseless round has everything required for the bullet to be launched, inside the bullet itself. This removes the need for guns to eject spent shell casings after every shot, reducing weight and ammo costs. While this has been pioneered since WW2 and a few prototype examples for it were already developed (like the G11); caseless rounds are still determined to be unreliable for field combat use in comparison to traditional ammunition, so as of today their use is largely limited (mainly to grenade rounds like the Russian VOG-25 grenade).

*Gyrojet - A unique but largely impractical cartridge in the gun circuit, WH40K's famous [[bolter|boltguns]] run on the same concept as the gyrojet. Basically, the bullets are miniature rockets that build up speed as they travel, capable of exceeding the speed of sound after traveling 60ft. While the idea sounds cool; gyrojets were ''required'' to gain minimum distance to achieve their full effect (if you fired at point-blank for example, they didn't really do much), had a design flaw in their propulsion system that made the rockets prone to corkscrewing off-course, and were highly temperamental to environmental conditions, not to mention the costs. At the end the concept was a bust as it didn't really do a lot that couldn't be achieved with traditional small arms for cheaper. Still GeeDubs thought it was nice and became the basis of how boltguns work, where it's largely the same but with more techno-flubdubbery and "because future".

*Magnum - Unlike what vidya gaems portray, magnums aren't really super-mega handguns of death. A magnum round is basically a parent cartridge that's been enlarged so it does more damage due to a combination of larger mass and more powder used (so it flies faster and hits harder), and this can be anything from the .357 magnum handgun round used by revolvers, to the large caliber .338 Lapua and Winchester magnum rounds used for precision sniper rifles.

*Overpressured - Designated as "+P", overpressured rounds still uses the same cartridge (unlike the magnum), but is loaded with higher-pressure powder that releases more energy when fired. It sounds like a nice way to up your damage, but guns have a level of pressure they can tolerate, and if your gun isn't designed to do such and you use +P rounds; you run the very high risk of destroying your gun (and the rest of your body if you're that unlucky). There are guns that are proofed to fire +P and +P+ ammo but it typically used in SMGs. Certain batches of surplus ammo will blow up guns because they were made to be used in more robust SMGs and not commercial pistols.

===Types of shotgun loads===

*Buckshot - The shell is filled with lead or steel pellets, each of which is typically around 15mm each (it ultimately depends on the bore), that spread out once discharged. Poor at penetrating armor and limited effective range comparison to other firearms as the pellets scatter and the pellets are too small to do serious damage individually (Although do note that unlike what the vidya gaems portray; a decent 12G shotgun loaded with buckshot is effective upto 30-50m, not just in point-blank range); but they do cover a fairly large radius and the force of 8-12 pellets impacting against your body will send you tumbling and rolling on the floor in agony, even if they don't penetrate.

*Birdshot - Similar to buckshot and more pellets, but the pellets are smaller (5mm and less, although still depends on the bore). As their name describes; the ammo is designed to pelt down birds by [[Ork|throwing as many bullets at the target and hoping atleast a few of them hit]]. You can use them against non-avian targets aswell and they'll do something, but they don't pack the punch you'd like and don't expect them to dent body armor too much. Their ineffectiveness against human targets [[Wikipedia:Dick Cheney hunting accident|was demonstrated by a (possibly drunk) Vice President of the United States]] when he shot an old guy in the face with some and the only lasting damage was the voice.

*Slug - Instead of multiple pellets; the gun fires a single, heavy lead projectile, similar to how traditional ammo works. Because shotgun barrels are not rifled; slugs do not have the range nor accuracy rifles do, but because of their weight and the shotgun's fairly large caliber; they're fully capable of crushing their way through armor at close range. Slugs are typically used for hunting large game in areas where rifle ammunition isn't allowed due to the risk of overpenetration.

*Breaching - A specialized variant of the slug round, breaching rounds are designed specifically to destroy door locks at extremely close range. Generally composed of very dense powdered steel held together with wax.

*Less-lethals - Designed for riot control where the shooter isn't allowed to kill; the bullet is either made of rubber, paint, or beanbags designed for minimal penetration, while the powder used in the rounds is less to reduce the projectile's velocity. The end result is a bullet designed to simply cause shock and pain to the target in order to incapacitate them long enough to be arrested and not rejoin the fight in the meantime. That said, you're still talking about launching an object at someone at speeds similar to cars speeding on a highway; so hitting vulnerable parts of the body like the head, neck, or ribs can still result in a fatality. On the flip side, anyone wearing bullet-resistant armor won't be affected too much.

*Chain-shot - Typically reserved for olden cannons, the chain-shot is two cannonballs linked with a chain. The spinning contraption was intended to tear through a ship's mast and sails. Obsolete as fuck, but it is still possible to replicate this with shotgun ammo. Basically you tie two pellets or slugs together so that when they're discharged; they're basically flying garrotes. Awesome, but because of how unpredictable bullets are while in flight, it's highly impractical for combat use.

*Flechette - Buckshot, but instead of pellets; the shell is loaded with small metal darts. They achieved better penetration and range than traditional buckshot; but because shotguns aren't really designed as precision weapons; they were highly impractical for combat applications. They destroyed barrels and tended to deflect off really silly things like raindrops.

*Explosive Rounds - The shell contains an slug that explodes upon impact, capable of using anti-armor or anti-personnel shells, basically turning the shotgun into a portable grenade launcher. Not as powerful as the real thing, but invaluable when you need accurate explosions but not the excessive collateral damage or restrictive weight and mass. Has seen some use in rifle rounds on the eastern front of World War II as well as in .50 BMG (officially for use on objects, not people).

*Dragon's Breath - An odd type of ammo. DB shells are loaded with magnesium pellets. When discharged; they create a short but hot burst of fire that burn at temperatures upto 1,600°C. While not really used much for conventional combat due to its status as an incendiary weapon (which would give a warcrimes committee a field day); blasting a person with this at close range will create about the same results as a giant fire-breathing lizard incinerating an unlucky knight to death, hence their name. Also destroys barrels, as dragon's breath burns hotter than the melting point of steel, and close to the melting point of chromium (two of the most common metals used in gun parts).

*Misc - Shotguns aren't really picky with ammo since they are manually operated and don't depend on a gas seal as much; just about ''anything'' can be used for bullets if worse comes to worse/you're bored. Could be lego pieces, could be old hard candy, solid scrap,frozen meat [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-n4bxxn9gA or even glass]. Hell, it can be a Sly Marbo tabletop figure if you could fit him inside a shell and prevent him from disintegrating from the force while exiting the barrel, the choice is yours. (More likely blow up your gun as Sly refuses to die and gives you the finger for trying.) Incidentally this unfastidious in ammunition also means that in a fantasy setting you can basically load anything you want down the barrel of a shotgun to deal with basically any monster that had a weakness. Wooden stakes for vampires, Cold iron for fae, silver for werewolves, the aforementioned dragon breath for flame vulnerable monsters, salt if that's a thing demons hate in your mythos, freeze holy water into ice and you could still likely shoot it with a sabot. Basically shotguns should be the go to for the modern murder hobo.

==Manufacturing of Firearms==

===Brief Overview===

The production of firearms historically speaking has been an, err, interesting path. The first firearms were little more than metal (or whatever other material one so chose) cylinder with with one hole for the ignition of the powder and one for the projectile to be projected. As time passes on manufacturing techniques got more advanced, leading to triggers which frees up one hand from having to push a hot object into the powder. Most used a sort of striker to ignite the powder, be it flint or rope. Around the early to mid 19th century, self-containing cartridges became a possible reality. As such the firearm had to change too, with an action either simply accepting a round into the barrel or an action that would be worked to put it in. Near the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, auto-loading firearms became possible, but the actions had to become more complex to automatically feed the round by means of either recoil or gas. After that, guns haven't exactly changed too drastically (still major changes) in the current 21st century, pardoning the much higher efficiency of the modern weaponry. The complexity of modern firearms however doesn't interfere with how cheaply they can be produced. As such, there are endless aftermarket gun parts for sale around in places such as the USA.

===DIY===
[[image:.45 ACP ISB SMG.png|thumb|175px|left|.45 ACP ISB SMG designed from a STEN, but has many parts that differ. According to the designer "I like to think of it as a cross between an FG-42, a Welrod and a Sten."]]

First and foremost: guns are not toys, and should never be treated as such.

It comes as no secret that one can manufacture their own guns in one's own home so they chose to ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_copy Just ask the Afghans]). Depending on the skill of the user, the manufacturing tools used, material quality of the parts being used and/or made, design of the gun, and so on, a DIY can range from a explode-in-your-hand zip gun all the way up to high-quality rifles that have a minute of angle (MOA) of 1 or less. All one need is one's [[Ork|imagination]] and a [[Techpriest|firm understanding on how a gun works from the inside out and machining]]. In addition to that, the internet has a broad data base on the knowledge and schematics of guns.

[[image:Homemade_gun_exploding.PNG|thumb|150px|right| Careful you might blow your eye out]]
That said, DIY-guns require a decent understanding of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering to manufacturer at all, so unless you're a [[Mekboy]] with all the know-wotz implanted in your brain; its highly recommended you read up first, lest your firearm's first unwitting victim is you.

[[image:Stormbolter_IRL.jpg|thumb|223px|right|If a modern rifle was a stormbolter.]]

Examples of DIY are:

*Zip gun: Usually a metal tube attached to a piece of wood or object, within it some sort of trigger and striker. One example of this is a slam fire gun. Generally a 12 gauge shotgun shell loaded into a 3/4 inch tube that can be shoved into a 1 inch tube that has cap containing a nail at the end. When shoved in, the cap's nail will be more than enough to set off the shell, making the tubes effectively a shotgun.

*Experimental design: Every line of guns started out as a experiment somewhere. Some catch on, some don't, some just are there because why the heck not? Want to have dual barrels on your gun? Go for it! Add a counterweight to the gas block so that the recoil is next to nothing? Makes shoot a breeze! Add a round cam to your bolt so you can have a smooth action and reduce wear on the gun? No reason not to! The choices are endless if with time, diligence, and a bit of imagination.

*CNC Manufacturing: Avoiding the painstaking effort of machining it by hand [[Machine Spirit|a machine do it for you?]] A Computer numerical control (CNC) machine can easily mill out receivers and whatever other parts you need assuming you have the plans on the computer and the materials to be drilled out. The downsides of that CNC are a bit pricey relative to their hand milling machine counterpart. However some go for as low as $1200, which is roughly the same price as a mid-tier intermediate rifle in the USA.

==Relations here==
Most fantasy writers tend to exclude firearms. There are a variety of reasons for this, such as:
*Most fantasy comes from [[Tolkien]], who, being a naturalist who largely despised industrialization, did not put guns in Middle-earth, although gunpowder does exist, used by the wizards (Gandalf's Fireworks and Saruman's Fires of Orthanc) and by the orcs.
*Most fantasy (whether copy-catting Tolkien or not) is based on medieval Europe. Depending on your definition of "medieval," Europe did ''technically'' have firearms towards the very end (crude and unreliable ones, but firearms nonetheless), but most authors base their fantasy on earlier medieval Europe.
*As in real life, firearms mean that vulgar, dirty, peasant conscripts can take down the author's Mary Sue noblemen [[knight]]s that trained ''so'' hard in the arts of swordsmanship and melee combat, though if the writer had any historical knowledge they would know that armor can be made "proof" against early firearm bullets (which is partly what spurred the development of full-body plate mail to begin with, as a sidenote) or that a crossbow or longbow can just as easily (in fact, MORE easily due to the general shitty performance of old guns) turn an armored man into swiss cheese.

All that being said, most fantasy authors are much more open to cannons, which became viable on the battlefield long before smaller firearms anyway. Some even make room for crude rocket launchers, especially if there is a not-China/not-Korea in their setting. (Laugh, but a big firework rocket will put a sod on fire and ruin his day just fine, doubly so if the morons are in wooden fort.)

Generally speaking, if a world has both the "stock" fantasy races and guns, there will a strict hierarchy of who uses them, from most to least likely:
*[[Dwarves]]: They almost always have the best, most plentiful guns. If only one race gets firearms, it's likely going to be them.
*[[Gnomes]]: As tinkerers, they're frequently on a different tech level from everyone else, including firearms.
*[[Human]]s: Unlike the other races, which are usually an all-or-nothing deal, different human nations have different likelihoods of having guns. Italian and East Asian analogues, as well as the "industrious" or "scientific" nations, are much more likely to have them. Your barbarians, guys keen on knights and chivalry, and the more conservative less so. If the nation is Post Renaissance, expect pike and shot style IRL analogue armies.
*[[Orc]]s: Orcs would probably love guns if they could actually build some. However, they're usually either incapable of building things or have a hard time organizing themselves to the point that large-scale firearm and powder production is possible. Even so, they could still obtain them them by other means such as fighting as mercenaries for guns and stealing them off the corpses of the fallen and similar. They are higher on the list if they are more like Tolkienian orcs, which can be fairly well organized and "delight in explosions" enough to manufacture their own gunpowder, if only for simple bombs. If Orcs are of the more Chaotic Evil variety then they will barely have crossbows, let alone guns. If Orcs are of the Klingon variety, as in the violent tendencies are normal enough that the civilization can function, then they will LOVE big guns.
*[[Elves]]: Being arrogant pricks, they see guns as crude, inaccurate, foul-smelling contraptions that are no substitute for a bow. However, they'll still use them when necessary, even if they don't like it. That said, elves also had a good reason to not use them, namely most firearms in a fantasy settling are arquebus-type single-shot smoothbore weapons, which are outranged by longbows. Longbows are even decent against most kinds of armor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt ask the French]). The main advantage of firearms, even early ones, is ease of use and armor penetration though armor could be made that could stop an early handgun. The main problem with longbows is that it takes years to learn, which is not a problem for long-lived elves. Between a smoothbore handgun and a longbow, the bow is simply a better choice to an elf. The problem of course is that longbows are about as good as bow technology can get while handguns can be improved to rifles, against which bows only have rate of fire as an advantage, then Repeating Rifles, which bows have no advantage at all against. So while Elves may have an advantage to sticking with there longbows well into the age of pike and shot, if they're not careful their Longbows will end up fighting against Springfields and Winchesters and they will end up the worse in that exchange. If tech reaches that point, expect the Archer/Hunter stereotype to turn into Snipers/Mad minute riflemen.
*Wood Elves and other Fey/Nature types: They'd rather die than use a firearm, even if the rest of the world has moved onto biplanes, bolt-action rifles, shell-firing cannons, and tanks. If this happens, this means they either have powerful magic (so the actual weapons used are unimportant), they are ''really really'' good shots with a bow, they have much stronger friends (Think like the amish) or they're about to get colonized. That said: the problem they have are not guns themselves, but making them as mass production always has some environmental costs they can not stand for. If they could get there hands on some way to make guns that did not harm the environment in the process, at least anymore then making a sword does they might go small for small scale fire arm production, but this is rarely explored in fiction.

For how this conservative attitude tends to apply to tech in general for fantasy settings, see [[Medieval Stasis]].

Of course, sci-fi writers almost exclusively use firearms, seeing as how it's THE FUUUUUUTTTTTUUUUURRRREEEE. The exceptions are [[Warhammer 40,000]] and ''[[Dune]]'': although guns are the main combat implement in 40K, close combat is still alive and well, and most armies have at least one elite, close-combat unit wielding weapons that are distinctly not firearms; in ''Dune'', guns are pretty much dead as a weapon of war, as personal-scale force fields stop fast-moving matter (like bullets) from crossing them, but slower matter (like swung knives) can pass through, and if a lasgun blast touches the field, at least one end of the equation comes out "BOOM!!!". Most sci-fi universes do have close combat weapons on the scale we see in modern warfare, though, like in Mass Effect, where, as the Reaper forces (who are basically [[Necron]]s and [[Tyranids]] combined) invade the galaxy, people begin developing their Omnitools to snap-produce a white-hot blade of hard metal above the wearer's hand... And then there's the Krogan, who are too bloodthirsty and too large to properly take cover, so they headbutt things instead of using guns.

== Rules ==

Most fantasy RPGs deal with firearms the way they deal with lots of things that threaten their [[Medieval Stasis]]: terror, suspicion, and shitty rules. If you have the option of using a firearm in most games, it probably has one shot that's weaker than a bow, then takes an entire encounter to reload, and is illegal everywhere in-setting in case you didn't get the hint.

[[D&D#Basic_Dungeons_&_Dragons|BECMI]] Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have rules for firearms, but there were one or two adventure modules that incorporated a crash-landed spaceship, with weapons the players could loot. They were treated as magic wands and staves. A few issues of Dragon magazine offered rules for early cannons and hand cannons.

[[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] mentions guns in a tucked-away subsection on importing TSR's Cowboys & Indians game Boot Hill to AD&D (DMG, pg113). Revolver pistols and Gatling guns would do as much damage as a longsword; shotguns as much damage as a two-handed claymore, a (thrown) stick of dynamite does 4x the damage of a short sword. The rules insist "...when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk, ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it." To reinforce this concept, the ''Manual of the Planes'' included rules for factors of prime material planes, one of which determined if complex (read: setting destroying) chemical compositions like blackpowder would even work in said plane. If you have any knowledge of chemistry, you may cry now. Notably, [[Greyhawk]] had a [[Murlynd|god of firearms]], and his paladins were basically Wild West sheriffs.

[[Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#AD.26D_2nd_Edition|Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition]] included the arquebus in the Players Handbook, where they were depicted as slow, powerful and expensive (500 Gp!). They were also potentially dangerous to the user as the result of a bad roll. It was painfully stressed that the inclusion of firearms in the campaign was the call of the DM. Firearms were a bit more common in the [[Spelljammer]] setting. Moving away from the classic fantasy background, there was the historical campaign sourcebook ''A Mighty Fortress'' that introduced rules for firearms of the 16th and 17th centuries and the ''Masque of the Red Death'' setting for [[Ravenloft]] pushed everything into a gothic horror version of the 1890's.

[[Dungeons_&_Dragons_3rd_Edition|D&D third edition]] has a section on advanced technology (DMG, pp162-164) for Renaissance-era, 20th century, and futuristic weapons. The weapons are more powerful than what can be found among ranged weapons in the Player's Handbook, but also heavier and more expensive. You're better off with magic crossbows.

[[Pathfinder]] greatly over complicates guns: they have shorter range than bows without magical items, take longer to reload, and have at least a 1/20 chance to break or explode every time you fire it, and use up more expensive ammunition. As though this wasn't enough, they have a stiff feat tax needed to make use of them and the fact that there's really only one major gun factory in the land, the Gunworks of the small nation of Alkenstar, and they keep most of their guns to themselves. In return they hit harder, have a ''terrifying'' 4x crit modifier, and ''use touch AC'' in the first range increment, effectively ignoring armor when fired close up. A specialized class, the [[gunslinger]], is centered around the use of firearms. [[Lasgun|Energy weapon]] specialists in Iron Gods have it a bit better, though ammo is limited for most of the adventure.

[[Dragonmech]] has guns, sort of kinda, as well. Only instead of using gunpowder, they use steam to propel the bullet like an airsoft gun. they can only be fired once every other round as the pressure needs to build up. There Treated a bit like crossbows that do more damage and can shoot a little further.

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] includes a section on firearms in the ''Dungeon Master's Guide''. They hark back to 2nd edition in terms of stats, fitting the general tone of the game, but aren't quite as punishing for a player to learn to use and make. And with the increased emphasis on houseruling and homebrewing, modding the Crossbow Expert feat to work for them seems a simple leap of logic. The "race builder" guide in the back even suggests changing around the dwarf weapon proficiencies to include them! Furthermore, if you want to get your [[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks]] on, it includes some futuristic guns as well, like lasers and disintegrators.

[[Warhammer Fantasy]] features firearms based on early real-world equivalents, like flintlock pistols, musket rifles and the blunderbuss. Although deadly and still on the experimental side, they're also considered very unreliable and are prone to misfire and sometimes even to explode. Rpg-wise, firearms were already included in the core rulebook of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition, but were later somewhat expanded in the Old World Armoury supplement. Some variations that function like firearms were also added as weapons to some Skaven classes in the Old World Bestiary supplement. Generally speaking, firearms require more costs in order to be used, as each shot requires a firearm shot (bullet) and additional gunpowder. Except for the obvious disadvantages of becoming useless once getting wet and longer reloading times, firearms deal more damage than bows and crossbows, with more complex models even having a repeater function, but obviously longer reloading times for each barrel to be loaded again.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Firearm

2019-12-12T10:16:44Z

2601:1C0:5C00:C130:798E:CBB3:E7F2:A1E4: /* Types of shotgun loads */

[[image:Shotgun After Firing.jpg|thumb|450px|right|Nothing like the smell of burnt powder in the morning]]
About twelve hundred years ago in [[China]], some people figured out that certain chemicals mixed together (such as potassium nitrate, carbon, and sulphur) rapidly combusted when brought to spark, which became known as "black powder." After some experimentation, they discovered that a tube sealed off at one end could be used to contain the pressure of said combustion and focus it into an explosion to propel an object at high speeds. After a few centuries of refinement, and invention of the frag grenade, they managed to take that mechanical principle and apply it as a weapon of warfare which changed the game: the arquebus. Comparatively cheap, easy to make, easy to learn to use, and capable of penetrating all but the heaviest armor, this marked a transition away from close quarters to ranged warfare.

In modern times, firearms are the staple weapons of any nation. Speculative fiction showcases weapons that doesn't even fire solid projectiles, like [[lasgun|lasers]].

From an engineering standpoint, firearms had a big difference from previous weapons in that they don't require the user's muscle power to work. Swords, maces, and axes are swung, spears are thrust, and bowstrings need to be drawn. Even crossbows and siege weapons work by storing muscle power via tension until it's released. The energy required to accelerate a firearm's projectile comes from explosive propellants; all the user needs to do is to hold the weapon, aim, brace themselves and set off said explosive charge. The significance of this is illustrated in the American Proverb: "God made man, Sam Colt (the inventor of the first practical revolver) made them equal." Having a reliable repeating gun means that your simple brute physical strength does not mean as much in a fight as it would in a bare knuckle brawl or a swordfight (either defensively or offensively).

The firearm's bigger bro is the [[Cannon]] and its cousin is the [[Rocket]].

==How Traditional Guns Work==
For our non-firearm oriented friends, here's a brief, heavily condensed explanation of how these murdersticks work. These instructions will probably vary depending on the type of gun you're using.

[[image:Teppo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Some Tanegashima matchlocks]]
===Olden Muzzle-Loading Guns===
====The Slow Way====
1. Put your musket in half-cock position. Take your powder flask, and pour a few grains into the flashpan. Pour some more down the barrel (amount can vary wildly; later powder flasks come with built-in measuring tools for ease of use and safety). Ram the powder, bullet, and cloth wad down the barrel of your gun. Ensure you're doing this in correct order because [[Not as Planned|putting the ball first, then powder, for example, can lead to hilarious and/or lethal results]].
 2. If you're using a matchlock gun: light up the fuse, aim and brace yourself, and lastly wait for the fuse to burn out. If you're using a flintlock gun: just cock the mechanism. With percussion caps, replace the explosive cap on the firing nipple after cocking the hammer. In any case, aim once you're done setting it up.
 3. Once the powder burns; the gasses from explosion of the black powder will send the bullet flying out of the barrel like a bat out of hell and penetrate into something or someone, and if you're lucky it might actually hit what you were aiming at. Also, hope you aren't downwind because guns during this time generated ''a lot'' of black smoke.
 4. Take stock of the situation. If you've managed to hit anyone or you're currently still in a shooting war; repeat step 1. If your firing line missed most of their shots and those barbarians are charging up your position; [[Imperial Guard|affix bayonets]].

====The Not-Quite-As-Slow Way====
1. Take your paper cartridge, and bite off the end with the powder in it. Carefully pour a few grains into the flashpan, and the rest down the barrel. Take the remainder of the cartridge, ball and paper, and ram it down the barrel.
 2. Follow steps 2 through 4 as above. Paper cartridges have the advantage of saving you a few seconds of precious time while reloading, which can mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. Another advantage is that they can be made somewhat weatherproof with a grease coating. But if you're just hunting or can't find/afford paper, most people didn't bother with the time-consuming preparations.

===Single-Action Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action (pump the slide, rack the bolt, et cetera) to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger, this will cause the hammer to strike the primer on the chambered round and cause the powder inside the shell casing to ignite and explode; sending high-pressure gases screaming out of the barrel while propelling the solid bullet out at high speed towards whatever you were aiming at. If you're using single-action flintlock guns; see above for the result.
 3. Because the gun lacks a mechanism to re-chamber itself; you now have to work the action again to eject the spent shell (unless its a revolver, in which case you do that while reloading) and load another round into the chamber. How you do this depends on the gun in question.
 4. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

===Auto-Loading Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger and this causes the same effect as stated above.
 3. Because of the mechanism of the gun; it redirects some of the forces used to propel the bullet to work it's action, eject the spent shell (unless its a DA revolver), re-chamber another round, and allow you to shoot again by just pulling the trigger. The forces used depend on the gun in question, some use a gas block to redirect some of the gasses expelled by bullets, while other uses the force of the recoil itself, to work the action and chamber another round. Additionally, it could also re-chamber itself using a mechanical sequence (like revolvers) or is electrically operated.
 4. If you're using an automatic; hold the trigger down and only release it once you want to stop shooting (or are forced to do so due to lack of ammo). If you're using a semi-automatic; pull the trigger again to fire another round.
 5. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

==A Brief History of Firearms==
'''800's:''' Taoist monks attempting to find an elixir of immortality stumbled on the next best thing: a substance that would suddenly and violently make things very dead. They'd discovered potassium nitrate (alternatively called saltpeter), a white crystalline powder that burned with a purple flame. When mixed with powders of charcoal and sulfur the resulting substance would burn instantly and aggressively on exposure to flame. It didn't take long for the Chinese to start inventing ways to use it.

[[image:Firelance.jpg‎|thumb|150px|left|The Firelance, the Chinese invention that started this all]]
'''1000s to 1200s:''' The Chinese realize they can make barbarians shit their pants by shooting hollowed arrows packed with powder and bamboo tubes filled with powder and pebbles at them. Bamboo gradually gives way to cast iron and bronze.

'''1300s:''' Various gunpowder weapons begin to proliferate westward along the Silk Road, aided by the [[Mongols]]. Crude versions of hand cannons, grenades, rockets, and flamethrowers all see use. Despite considerable psychological effect and good armor penetration, most of these weapons are only marginally more likely to kill the target than the user and had a range of only twenty or so meters. As such, their use is not widespread. For the most part, these weapons were used by skirmishers and guards. The fact that they were so dangerous meant they were mostly used by low class soldiers, and in turn this meant that the smiths making them were generally not the most skilled artisans; which did little to improve quality even given the limitations of the day. Even so, the designs and methods of manufacture were gradually refined and improved by various early gunsmiths through trial and error.

'''1400s''': Hand cannons see continued and expanded use. Bit by bit from the crude handgonnes of previous centuries, the first "true" firearms evolve with the gradual development of the matchlock, taking on the basic shape of lock, stock, trigger, and barrel (which is where we get the saying from). By clamping a lighted wick into a flashpan via a trigger, the shooter is able to aim ''and'' fire at the same time, making him markedly less likely to blow his own jimmies off. Despite advances, the matchlock was unwieldy, unreliable, and generally inferior to a good bowman. The issue of course is that only England (in Europe) HAD good bowmen; bowmen were the scum of the army everywhere else. This didn't stop some inventive commanders from seeing their potential, particularly with poorly trained conscript soldiers. [[Weeaboo|Some forces]] made a go of it by carrying two or three guns at a time and just throwing the spent ones away like a really shitty Matrix movie. Note: while we use a "weeaboo" hyperlink up there, it's worth remembering that troops like cuirassiers and even pirates would do the same thing with pistols, carrying a whole brace of them, but they just did not exist yet. By the 1400's having more then one gun was the only way to have any real rate of fire before breechloaders existed.

'''1500s:''' Guns continue to evolve with the invention of spring-loaded firing mechanisms. The wheel-lock spins a steel plate against sulfide rocks to produce sparks (think cigarette lighters), which ignites powder a flash pan. This was revolutionary, allowing soldiers to prime their weapon in a matter of seconds instead of fucking around with a lit wick, and allowed calvary to use guns for the first time while on horseback, giving rise to the cuirassiers. It also means that for the first time, guns weren't completely fucked in the rain, just mostly fucked. They also cost a lot to make and were still not completely reliable, so most people stuck with matchlocks. Powder formulas had improved considerably, including the development of the more powerful, stable, and moisture-resistant corned powder made by wetting raw gunpowder, forming it into cakes, crushing them, and sieving them for size. Japan's Oda Nobunaga was particularly notable in the history of firearms for his heavy transition from blades to guns after discovering the novelty of matchlock guns. In fact, by the end of the 1500s, they had more trained arquebusiers in their armies and produced more matchlocks than any other country to date during that period and had the most guns per capita in the world. Meanwhile, virtually every army figured out how to use a combination of volley fire in dense square formations surrounded by pikemen (called Pike and Shot); making armored cavalry, crossbows, & longbows outdated. Accuracy still sucked but that was what the massed shooting was meant to compensate for.

[[image:FlintlockMechanism.jpg‎|thumb|200px|right|The flintlock mechanism. Now you did not need to light some string and put it into a serpentine before firing]]
'''1600s''' The wheellock is refined into the simpler and more reliable flintlock, though it would take some time to supersede the matchlock. Muzzle loading is simplified with the creation of paper cartridges, essentially the pre-measured cake mix of murder. Some German dudes came up with the idea of cutting spirals into the barrel, which they called "rifling," to spin-stabilize the bullet so that they wouldn't have to walk up right next to their targets to hit them, but this required a barrel tighter than a nun's cunt, a hammer to ram the ball in, and grooved bullets made for the gun so it could fit the rifling of the gun like the cap to a soda bottle. To put all that into perspective: well-trained musketeers could fire three to four shots a minute, while a rifleman could only manage one shot every minute. Not great, however the idea of spin-stabilisation hung around and payed off in later times.

'''1700s''': The French invent the bayonet, allowing their troops to be [[choppa|choppy]] while they were [[dakka|shooty]]. Thus, the Pike and Shot formation became the Bayonet and Shot formation. That and refinement of tactics led to the dense but slow and cumbersome square formations being reformed into thinner but more responsive rectangle formations. This is the point where gun infantry tactics become the dominant (though still not only) form of fighting when guns go from one a few common infantry weapons to the primary weapon used by most infantry. Formations of musketeers go from big square blocks to lines two or three ranks thick to put enough bullets in the enemy's ranks as quickly as possible.
[[image:Chassepot.jpg‎|thumb|200px|left|The mechanism of a French Chassepot, an early bolt action rifle, as well as its paper cartridge]]

'''1800s''': Pretty much everything that makes up a modern firearm is invented here. Some fool came up with an explosive that would go off if you slam a hammer into it, which led to the first explosive primers. So flintlocks transitioned to percussion caps. This basically involves putting explosives in ur explosives to explode your explosives. Eventually, standardized methods of making copper & later brass casing replaced paper cartridges & made gas leakage in breechloading mechanisms a thing of the past. Cartridges that contain a primer, propellant, and slug, similar to modern-day bullets, are developed. With this, not only was loading ammunition simplified with a package that contained everything needed for a gun to fire, it also made it waterproof & easier for conscripts to load. Furthermore, the brass casing’s small expansion when firing served to seal the firing chamber to prevent hot gases from leaking and burning users’ hands. By this time, wars were largely fought using firearms rather than melee weapons, though also by this time firearms were also melee weapons as in the early 1800s the bayonet charge was still both an accepted and useful tactic.

By the late 1800 inventors had finally gotten the technology to contain the force of the gunpowder explosion with a tight seal and do so cheaply. Experiments that had been done earlier like the Puckle gun (1718), Ferguson rifle (1776), and even the bizarre 1780 Girandoni Air Rifle, [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Steampunk which was an air gun with a 20 round magazine], all failed to create breech loading rifles cheaply. See, despite that it was well known that that slotting in bullets from the rear and using a mechanism to load it into the chamber is much simpler than spending about half a minute to ram it down a long barrel, the technology was just not there as without cheap steel (cheap is important for hand guns you are going to mass-produce), getting iron to contain the explosion without deforming and leaking gas, thus weakening the shot, was a nightmare. The Industrial Revolution, among other things, gave birth to the concept of "breech-loading" and later "magazines" and simpler mechanised feeding systems like tubes, slides, cylinders, and bolt-actions. The likes of pump-action shotguns, bolt-action rifles, and lever-action rifles, and revolver and semi-automatic pistols, are developed and/or developed upon, giving a glimpse on how weapons in the future would function. Near the end of the decade, some French guys worked out that they could both improve firepower and keep their guns considerably cleaner by replacing black powder with nitrocellulose, the first of many "smokeless powders."

Just as important as the new designs that came about during this period were the new methods of production. People like Eli Whitney worked out devices such as milling machines, which allowed for the quick production of finely tuned parts which were so close in size that you could take one bit off one gun, stick it on another from the same line, and it would work just as fine. Breech loading and repeating firearms had existed for centuries beforehand, but were not cost effective to mass-produce until the Industrial Revolution.
[[image:Lee-Enfield Rifle.jpg|thumb|200px|right|A British Lee-Enfield Bolt Action Repeating rifle]]
This is also the time where the first "automatic" guns were invented and put into production. The word "automatic" is in quotes because these early machine guns were not self-reciprocating; they did not load and fire themselves and were instead manually powered. The most famous (and successful) of these weapons is the Gatling gun, which saw limited action in the American Civil War, but became much more widely used the world over in subsequent wars. But while it was the most famous, the Gatling was not the only manual machine gun developed; dozens of different types were produced during the US Civil War alone on both sides, but because these guns tended to be mounted on cannon carriages they were treated like cannons instead of the close support weapon machines guns are, so it took some time for them to hit their stride.

'''1900-early 1930s''': The heyday of guns because of the advent of WW1. The idea of bolt-action rifles are popularized, along with semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Bolt-action rifles meant that riflemen no longer had to be confined to shooting one round at a time before needing to reload as they could now load individual clips that contained 5-10 rounds a piece. Machine guns are now becoming more and more popular in the battlefields, drastically changing the way infantry would maneuver the battlefield as a single MG emplacement can effectively cripple platoons with the right positioning. Submachine guns, the first automatic infantry weapon, are developed by the German Empire and issued to their stormtroopers, giving the rest of the world an idea of the wonders of a lightweight fully-automatic weapon that could easily be used by infantrymen, which was previously restricted to crew-served heavy machine guns. Not liking to be one-upped, the Americans came up with the trench gun (a 6 shot, pump-action renforced shotgun with a bayonet that was pure murder in the confines of a trench) that ultimately evolved into the modern combat shotgun.

On the subject of the machine guns, if there was ever a weapon that represented this part of history it would be the heavy machine gun. To go back to an early quote "God made man, Sam Colt made them equal and John Browning (designer of a large number of machine guns including the m2 .50 cal or 12.7mm) made them civilized!". We talked about the hand powered machine guns above, and while good when used correctly, these weapons have their issues. In order to use most of them, you had to be standing up to turn the crank and sustained fire was tiring, but the hand cranked guns had one major advantage: the most successful of the hand-cranked guns, like the Gatling or Gardner, had multiple barrels meaning you can fire them with little or no need to stop to let the barrels cool down. At the dawn of the 20th century, this is what the early machine guns had to be compared to when European generals went window shopping. The solution was water-cooling, which allowed machine guns to fire for countless hours with little or no failures, but at the cost of weight rendering them truly static, though highly effective, weapons. If you could point to two developments that caused the First World War's trench warfare, you can point to water-cooled machine guns and barbed wire.

'''late 1930s-1940s''': At the start of World War II, all of the powers involved, France, England, Germany, and Russia, were armed with bolt action weapons. Over the course of the war, automatic and semi-automatic rifles started to become more common; however, only the Americans completely phased out bolt-action rifles for standard infantry by the time of the war (Marines and Army units in the Pacific Front were stuck with the old stuff for a few months due to the Germany First policy). Submachine guns are now becoming more popular with various armies around the world, making it the staple lightweight automatic weapon for infantry troops, totally redefining urban combat due to the weapon's great effectiveness in close combat. Nazi Germany invents the ''Sturmgewehr 44'', the first widely produced assault rifle (the Fedorov Avtomat was the first to be put into service, introduced in 1915, but production was limited due to costs). This weapon would later become the template for modern assault rifles used by the world over.
[[image:QBZ-95.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A QBZ-95 Assault Rifle, the current service rifle of the People's Republic of China, note bullpup configuration (the magazine feeds behind the trigger), thus saving space]]
'''1950s-1990s''': With World War II over, the armies of the world had a chance to study Germany's assault rifle and built their own. The key invention was selective fire, which allowed a single weapon to serve as a traditional rifle or a somewhat long and unwieldy submachine gun. Burst fire was also developed, intended to fire a grouping of rounds to defeat personal body armor but automatically stop before the recoil of fully automatic fire would have a significant impact on aim. The USSR's entry was the AK-47, which was powerful, easy to mass produce, and legendarily tolerant of mistreatment after briefly flirting with the SKS (a semiautomatic carbine fed by stripper clips). On the other side of the world, the US briefly experimented with an automatic version of the M1 known as the M14, before (mostly) getting their shit together and developing the M16, which was expensive, complicated, and notoriously finicky. One thing not to be underestimated is the standardization introduced by NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Gone were incompatible calibers unique to each nation, and in their place were a single pistol caliber (9x19 for NATO, unless you were an American snowflake, and 9x18 for Pact.), a single intermediate caliber (5.56x45 for NATO, 7.62x39 for Pact, later 5.45x39 in certain Pact countries), a single full power rifle cartridge (7.62x51 for NATO, unless you were a French snowflake, and the venerable 7.62x54 for Pact), and heavy machine gun cartridge (.50 BMG for NATO and 12.7×108mm for Pact) for small arms. Even before NATO standardization was officially a thing, many western countries eagerly armed themselves with American surplus M1 Garands and M1 Carbines, which greatly simplified things.

'''2000s''': With the invention of more advanced materials such as plastics and carbon fiber, along with numerous technological advancements of the modern world, firearms are... basically the same they've been for the last fifty years, just usually lighter and with more options. Serious efforts were made to look at new designs like caseless ammo and fused smart grenade bullets, but most went nowhere. The most significant development in firearm technology was the advent of practical ranged tasers; essentially wired dart launchers with high voltage capacitors, they're the first handguns ostensibly intended for less lethal force (occasional heart attacks not withstanding) that weren't a total joke (like pistol caliber tear gas rounds).

'''2010s''': Development of more robust weapons (such as the POF P416 and HK 416), modularity (FB MSBS, similar to the ACR with the variation count of a Lasgun), practical telescopic and caseless ammo (LSAT project), and ship cannon sized railguns (The Naval Research Laboratory currently working with a practical version, i.e. can reload at the same rates as an Abrams 120mm loader). Apparently, it can fires rounds with 32 megajoules of energy, or 23,601,988 foot-pounds.) So apparently even in 2017, we outpace the Imperium in development, makes you wonder what the Dark Age of Technology holds. Few of these have progressed far enough to get fielded and may just be dead ends. The main innovation at this time comes from optics, where even cheap sights makes the professional equipment of old look like crap. Also cheap rifle parts and market (at least for Americans) due to advances in manufacturing. No seriously, you can get a basic AR for $500 or even just make it yourself from parts for less than $400 (Firearms are taxed 10-11%, parts are not. Thus there is significant savings by only buying a small block of aluminum as a "firearm".), and that's if you aren't diving into sub-milspec stuff. New designer rounds to outpace rounds such as the 5.56 and .308 in performance are also coming out, such 6.5 Grendel, 6.5 MPC, .224 Valkyrie, .300 Winchester Magnum, and so on. These only see widespread uses among snipers however, as the cost of replacing existing guns and ammo for what is a marginal increase in performance is of questionable budget use.

[[File:LSAT telescopic ammo.png|200px|thumb|right| An example of humanity developing practical telescopic ammo. Designed to be light weight while not compromising muzzle energy, it'll bring much benefit to anyone needing to bearing the ammunition (assuming the kinks are worked out).]]

Many countries around the world are now looking for new ways to either improve or adapt combustion-based firearms as a whole, and are looking for ways to make what were once sci-fi-only ammo and weaponry, such as [[lasgun|laser]], [[plasma]], direct energy overall (involving the last two), [[gauss]], telescopic/caseless ammo, and more, a reality. While met with some degree of success, nobody (pardoning America, 'cause you gotta do something with that large budget) has found a way yet for these weapons to be man-portable (or cost-effective in the case of telescopic and caseless ammo) that a single soldier could carry these into combat or be affordable/reliable to an extent that it would be more feasible to make these instead of the traditional ballistic weaponry. There is also the problem that if you get a hard projectile (think tungsten and steel) going fast enough, it will just over-penetrate and go through a target, doing little actual damage as compared to our modern bullets that hit, create a temporary cavity the size of a dinner plate, then tumble going through the target sideways (which means that against unarmored targets your average 5.56 round would likely do comparable damage to a bolt round). Rounds that fragment and inbuilt post-penetration destabilization fix this, however the main point here is that there is little reason to equip your soldiers with some [[Bolter|fancy dandy overly complex and costing a half-million dollar gun and ammo]] when a [[Lasgun|good ol' service rifle and some traditional ammo costing a few hundred bucks]] will allow them to do their job just fine. Leading off from the previous statement, even if such projects were successful, there is a strong point to be made that, as least as far as infantry weapons are concerned, chemical-based firearms will remain both cost effective and lethal enough to last at least another century or two, if not longer. While elite units will certainly benefit from new developments, the ordinary grunt will have to wait until they become cheap enough to mass produce. Most modern work is either completely experimental, or fine tuning already present technologies with developments from other areas.

== GUN SAFETY ==
Should be self-evident, but to be frank it isn't. Between the movies having actors brandishing guns everywhere, the video games and toys like airsoft that make them look more harmless than they are and plain human ignorance and negligence; people forget that they're holding something that could easily scatter someone's brains or outright remove their skull.

That said, there are four main rules to gun safety.
*Muzzle sweep: Avoid this. Muzzle sweep is one when points or sweeps a gun in a direction onto people or objects that could get harmed. To avoid this, one should keep the gun's barrel pointed away from anything that you don't intend to destroy or value. This means one must be conscious of where they are pointing it. Or in other words, '''never point the gun at something you don't want to shoot!'''

*'''Treat every firearm as if they were loaded at all times.''' Even if you fully know the gun is empty after removing the magazine and checking the chamber, still treat it as if it wasn't. This creates a force of habit so that if you are ever in a rush/interrupted while handling your gun/given a weapon by someone else/whatever... you will avoid any mishaps and tragedies that could arise because you think the gun is empty where it actually isn't.

*'''Know the target, what's in front of the target, and what's behind the target.''' Remember, bullets are designed to punch holes in things. Even if you've got pinpoint accuracy, the bullet might go right through the target and kill some guy who's just minding his own business. This is why any self-respecting firing range has a thick wall or a pile of packed-down dirt behind the targets. Bullets that don't punch through the target and don't shatter (like frangible rounds made of sintered metal) can ricochet back at the shooter or others around them. For this reason, shooting at metal targets is usually done with the targets angled down.

*Trigger discipline: '''Never put your finger on the trigger unless you want to kill/destroy whatever you're pointing your gun at.''' Also pretty much self-explanatory.

Easy, right? Well... apparently not. Ask any gun enthusiast and they'll gladly tell you all sorts of horror stories that happened because [[That Guy|somebody]] failed to follow these simple rules.

And for the love of the God-Emperor, don't be a fucking tool and mix alcohol/drugs and firearms together. Doing so, very, very unsurprisingly results in the breaking of one or more of the aforementioned rules.

==Types of firearms==
Having been around for well over 1500 years there have been many types of firearms over the course of time. Humans are, if anything, very inventive when it comes to coming up with new and interesting ways to kill each other. A rough list are:

===Ye Olde Gonnes===
*Firelance: Oldest of the Oldschool guns, simple bamboo tubes stuffed with gunpowder and pebbles used in the Ten Kingdoms period and the Song Dynasty. One inaccurate spray of flaming fuck-off in close quarters, often tied to a spear.

*Handgonne: A catch-all term for a primitive gun without a lock that need their powder charges. Majority of these guns were handcannons, as in literal man-portable artillery pieces that had a 50/50 chance of either working or malfunctioning, the worst of which would be the gun exploding in the shooter's face.

*Arquebus - A basic matchlock Firearm. A note of clarification: 'Arquebus' and 'musket' are both used to describe firearms from this time and they are often used interchangeably. But if you want to be ''really'' technical in this period an Arquebus is a regular two handed matchlock firearm while a musket is a larger heavier gun firing a larger projectile, sometimes up to an inch in diameter. Latter (about 1700 onward) musket would refer to any muzzleloading long barreled handheld firearm used for mainly shooting solid shots. This is not too much of a big deal and is nothing to get mad about, but it is worth noting.

*Musket - Today, the musket is a catch-all term for all early smoothbore, shoulder-fired, muzzle-loaded firearms. Technically this isn't the case, the musket was an improved Arquebus, one of the earliest muzzle-loaded guns. However because of romanticism and literature; people who aren't acquainted with firearms will commonly refer to any muzzle-loaded long weapon as a musket (about the same reason why most people today refer to any automatic weapon as a machine gun). Muskets were inaccurate as people have yet to put serious research into firearm ballistics, generated a lot of smoke due to primitive gunpowder mixtures, and were temperamental to environmental conditions (rain will pretty much render a musket into an wet stick of wood), but still enjoyed a lot of popularity due to their lethality and ease of use compared to other man-portable ranged weapons at the time. Muskets were quickly phased out once rifles became a feasible thing, who did what a musket could do, but better. Muskets were categorized by what firing mechanism was used in the lock:
:*The earliest versions used matchlocks, which fired by poking a slow-burning fuse into the firing chamber. These were fairly unreliable and somewhat hazardous since you had a smouldering fuse close to the flashpan when you were reloading.
:* Flintlocks replaced matchlocks, which ignited by generating sparks when it struck the iron frizzen, igniting the powder in the flashpan. The flint would periodically break and need replacing, but it was still safer than a matchlock.
:* With the invention of the percussion cap came the Caplock, or Cap & Ball. This was the final evolution before breachloading became widespread. The cap would be fitted onto a tube to the firing chamber after the musket was loaded. Caplock firearms did not generate sparks in and of themselves; rather, they used a simple hammer to strike the cap, which would in turn ignite the powder in the firing chamber. Far more contained than flintlock, until the fully self-contained cartridge superseded it entirely.

*Multi-barreled gun - In the olden days, people wanted more dakka launched at enemies, but things like magazines and self-loading weapons were still an alien idea during its time. So as an alternative people took a breach/muzzle-loaded firearm, slapped one or more barrels onto it, and reworked the trigger so they can fire more shots before needing to reload. This resulted in some particularly wacky times for guns. To this day, the only multi-barrel weapon still commonly used (disregarding military rifles with underslung grenade launchers, door breaching shotguns, or rotating barrel Gatling-style guns) is the double-barreled hunting shotgun. Some notable guns were volley guns called ribauldequin, which were a line of infantry dudes without most of the dudes. The problem was that this took very long to load, because you have 2 or two people ramming shit rather than 20 dudes each loading. So, that was a colossal fail in a long term artillery exchange, but quite effective for countering a charge when all you need is one volley to make mincemeat out of that cavalry coming at you.

===Modern Firearms===
*Handgun - Also called "pistols", handguns are small-sized firearms that can be comfortably fired in one hand (hence the name). Handguns are mainly used for close defense and as a sidearm, making them akin to daggers. Modern pistol calibers are commonly between 8mm and 11mm, although popular magnum rounds like the .50 GI and .50AE are also exist for handguns (albeit they tend to be large, heavy, and likely to fuck up your wrist from the recoil).
:*Machine pistol - A machine pistol is a handgun that can fire in either bursts or in full-auto. While they're commonly thrown into that category, machine pistols are not submachine guns due to their size and use. Machine-pistols are not in widespread use with traditional military forces as SMGs and PDWs do better damage and have a longer range, but they remain popular with personnel like bodyguards, who require a highly portable but powerful sidearm.
:*Derringer - Another case of the concept being named after its inventor, "derringer" refers to tiny pistols, often used as concealed or backup sidearms, that could fit into the palm of your hand. These things have been around since the 19th century and were single-shot, though could have multiple barrels to fire off more shots before reloading, which were fired in a sequence. Due to their size and intended use (i.e: shooting someone while literally next to them); derringers typically used small rounds like .22 and below. But if you ''really'' wanted someone dead (and your wrists obliterated); some packed larger shots like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COP_.357_Derringer .357 magnum rounds].
:*Pocket Pistol - Modern versions of the derringer, those are really small handguns or revolvers that sacrifice range and ammo count in order to be as small and easily concealed as possible. Also called "subcompacts".

*Revolver - A revolving gun is any weapon that uses a revolving cylinder to load new rounds after every shot. While its commonly now relegated to pistols (a revolver typically meant a revolver pistol these days) the style is still used for some shotguns (like the Armsel Striker) and grenade launchers (like the MM1-Hawk). Revolvers are still in use for a few reasons: they're simple and cheap to make, can easily be used by left and right-handed shooters (since spent casings aren't automatically ejected like in the case of modern firearms) and is still pretty robust compared to today's modern weapons as fewer mechanisms means fewer points of failure. Downside is that they have very limited ammunition space (because the gun was made around the cylinder you can't expand it like how you can with detachable magazines, so you either had a gun with 5-8 rounds or a bulky gun with a 12-round cylinder) and reload time (revolvers in all generations were a pain in the ass to reload. If you had an old revolver with a loading gate; you had to eject each round by hand, ''then'' load new rounds. If you had a newer one; you had to empty the cylinder, load the rounds, then cock the hammer. This is in contrast to modern guns where you just had to eject the magazine, load a new one, and charge the weapon). Thanks to the American old west era and subsequent movies about it, revolver-styled handguns have achieved a kind of rustic yet sleek appeal to them. Revolvers come in generally the same calibers as handguns, from the modest .22 Long Rifle used for practicing and target shooting to the behemoth .500 S&W Magnum which can put down a bear. "Snubnose" revolvers refer to revolvers with shortened barrels in an attempt to make them more compact.
:* Top Break - A revolver with a hinged frame that opens to expose the cylinder. Top breaks were originally designed for cavalry, as they are very easy to load. However, the two piece frame is a weakness that limits the power of cartridge that can be used.
:* Swing Arm - By far the most common type of revolver, the swing arm mounts the cylinder on a moving arm known as a crane, which allows the cylinder to be exposed for loading. The chief limitation of the swing arm design is that the crane can bend over time and due to rough handling.
:* Gate Loading - Named for their loading gate, these revolvers can only expose one cylinder for reloading a a time, with the spent casing being pushed out through the gate by a long ejector rod. Gate loading revolvers are the earliest style for cartridge revolvers, dating back to conversions of percussion cap revolvers. Gate loading revolvers are now rare except for reproductions and revolvers designed to big cartridges. The fixed cylinder is the strongest possible configuration of revolver and thus the most tolerant of high power ammunition.

*Submachine gun - A submachine gun (abbreviated to SMG) is a fully automatic weapon that fires pistol cartridges instead of the larger rifle cartridges. One of the first true fully automatic infantry weapons outside of the machine gun, hence the name. The weapon fulfills a similar role of the carbine, striking a balance between firepower, recoil, and bulk. They also make good stealth weapons, as most pistol rounds are subsonic with heavier bullets and thus much quieter when suppressed.

:*Personal Defense Weapon - A PDW is a bit of a mix of a carbine and an SMG, firing specialized cartridges with rifle-like characteristics (usually in the 4-5mm range, shorter than a rifle cartridge but longer than a pistol cartridge) at the cost of additional weight. Its original role is as its name implies; a personal defense weapon for nonfrontline infantry, like artillery spotters, scouts, vehicle crews, commandos, etc. Back in the day PDWs weren't necessarily automatic; a pistol with a longer barrel and mounted stock could be classified as a PDW (This was done with the German C96 and Luger P07), today however these would qualify as "pistol carbines". These days PDWs are commonly lumped into the same category as SMGs, as they now fulfill similar roles.

*[[Shotgun]] - Shotguns are smoothbore weapons (as in the barrel is not rifled) designed to fire either shot (multiple steel or lead pellets) or slugs (a single, heavy projectile), although modern times have included other types of ammunition. The ability to fire multiple types of ammunition without modification is one of the main advantages to using a shotgun; converting an anti-infantry weapon into a door-breaching tool, a mini-flamethrower, or a less-lethal weapon with but a switch of the munitions. The vast majority of shotguns are pump-action or breech-loading, though as of 1905 shotguns can come in semi-automatic or fully-automatic configurations, but sheer variety of shell loads makes their reliability highly ammo dependant. For more information see the [[shotgun]] page. The most common bore size for shotguns is 12 gauge (about 18.5mm). Confusingly, higher gauges are lower in size because its based on weight of spheres of lead rather than diameter; a 20 gauge is about 15.6mm, while a 10 gauge is 19.7mm (.410 bore exists outside this and is .410 inch/10.4 mm/67 bore).

*Rifle - Rifles were originally shoulder-fired weapons that had their barrels "rifled" to increase precision, by putting spiral grooves into the barrel in order to have the bullet spin before leaving the barrel; reducing it's wind resistance (otherwise known as drag) and giving it more momentum as it leaves that muzzle. In ye olden days, these were specialist weapons given to marksmen while the common soldier carried a musket. However, because all modern non-shotgun non-explosive firearms now use rifling to improve ballistics, the term is usually reserved for a shoulder-fired long weapon, designed for accurate fire.
:*Assault Rifle - Assault rifles are a term given to any rifle that can be fired on full-auto and shoot intermediate-caliber rounds, typically in the 5mm range (or a shortened 7mm round if you're from the Eastern bloc). This is usually the standard weapon of a non-specialized front-line infantryman. The STG44 is considered to be the earliest one fielded in industrial quantity, though the idea has been around since at least the first World War.
:*Battle Rifle - Basically the assault rifle's big brother; battle rifles are bigger automatic rifles designed to fire high-caliber rounds, typically in the 7mm range. These were the mainstay for armies in the 1950s, but the US eventually found out that giving infantry rifles with smaller rounds is better since its lighter and can allow infantry to be more accurately engage enemies better due to lower recoil (albeit at the cost of power), so battle rifles were replaced by assault rifles for front-line use and battle rifles were relegated to specialists like marksmen or support gunners (who's job permits for a slower-firing but more powerful weapon). The M1918 BAR may count as one, though the first occurred no latter than 1942's FG42.
:*Carbine - A carbine is a compact rifle, primarily designed to be used in close quarters. In most cases, carbines are based from a parent rifle, and are scaled down by using lighter/smaller parts and shortening the barrel (such as in the case of the American M16 vs M4) or is its own weapon (like the Korean K1A). These are typically given to units who need to engage the enemy at close range and need a rifle for the job, like commandos, assault teams, or other specialist units, or given to units who are not expected to fight on the front but need a compact but decent weapon to defend themselves if the need arises, like pilots or vehicle crews. Carbine may also refer to pistol-caliber semi-automatic weapons that are longer than a pistol, but this is typically only used in the civilian market. The concept of a carbine predates modern firearms, though they existed primarily for cavalry.
:*Micro Assault Rifle - Even smaller than carbines; these are ultracompact rifles designed when someone needs a highly portable but powerful weapon. A MAR is basically a PDW that shoots actual rifle rounds. Much like carbines; a MAR can either be based on a parent rifle and scaled down or made as its own weapon. These tend to have low effectiveness for standard calibers, since those were designed for full length barrels, but the logistics of supply are superior.
:*Sniper Rifle - A sniper rifle is a special precision rifle, specifically designed to engage targets at extreme range with lethal efficiency. Many sniper rifles use standard 7.62mm rounds, but high-performance rifles will use more potent rounds up to 12.7mm rounds for extra range and stopping power. Preferably, sniper rifles should use match-grade ammunition to provide consistency and accuracy at high extended ranges. The vast majority are bolt-action for simplicity and power (much more reliable and because all the gasses are diverted into the barrel, rather than some being diverted to work the action; the gun can launch the bullet farther and faster), but there are also a decent number of semi-automatic ones. Sniper rifles are given to special marksmen called "snipers", who are capable of engaging the enemy from extreme distances, usually well away from the scrap.
:*Designated Marksman Rifle - A sort of compromise between battle rifles and sniper rifles, DMRs are precision weapons meant to be used by frontline infantry to accurately engage distant targets that regular infantry weapons cannot. Due to its role, it's generally more accurate than a rifleman's gun, but usually not as effective as an actual sniper's gun (DMRs are usually only effective within 1 kilometer, while SRs are typically effective beyond 1 kilometer). Generally speaking, DMRs avoid using the more high-performance rounds that snipers may use, as it may be detrimental for an infantryman's role.
:*Recoiless - Not a conventional gun in most senses; a recoilless gun (models with rifling are called "Recoiless rifles" though people often miss this distinction) is as the title suggest, a rifled weapon without (or at least reduced) recoil. It does this by basically being a cannon with the back taken off. When loaded the cartridge sits in an open back tube, there is no breach. When fired, the explosion propels the shell out the tube, but an equal amount of gas comes out the other side canceling out the recoil. This means that total muzzle velocity is lower than a cannon with a breech on it, but they make up for it by shooting bigger shells, and with HEAT shells (thanks to the nature of the Munroe effect) the wider the diameter of the shell the more effective it is, meaning even a large slow moving projectile can do a great amount of damage to tanks.
:*Anti-Tank/Materiel Rifle - Essentially modern elephant guns; these rifles are geared towards destroying tanks and hard objects, although they are very much still capable of demolishing infantry (albeit overkill since rifles of this type tend to outright cause body parts to explode by the sheer amount of force they carry.). Anti-tank rifles were the norm for years (From the 1910s to the late 1970s) as they were a cheap yet effective way of getting rid of tanks, but advancements in vehicle armor has largely rendered AT rifles obsolete (atlest for anti-tank roles, these things can still royally murder lightly-armored vehicles and urban housing, thus why they can be seen in use today). Anti-materiel rifles however, are a bit of an offshoot of AT rifles, and are still in use today. They are often used to take out lighter vehicles, to detonate ordnance at a safe distance or fuck up anything valuable to the other side like radars, communication devices, heavy weapons, etc... They have been successfully used against light boats and even to down the occasional helicopter. Likewise, they have been used by both professional and paramilitary forces due in thanks to their ability to annihilate cover (and hopefully what's behind it) where most conventional small arms won't.
:*Elephant Gun - A rifle that fires a ludicrously heavy bullet, usually as a single shot but rarely as a bolt action. As the name implies, these were developed to bring down big game like elephants, but eventually became the precursors to anti-material rifles. Unlike the later, range or penetration aren't big concerns so much as delivering a massive amount of energy to a soft-skinned target. While hunting elephants may be illegal today, a large caliber weapon is still useful for defense against large predators like bears or lions, who would shrug off a smaller 5.56mm or 7.62mm to the body. Firing such a heavy weapon while standing or even sitting isn't a pleasant experience; without the right stance, it'll go flying once you pull the trigger.
:*Everything else - Except sniper rifles and most Designated Marksman Rifles, all of the above rifles are generally "military-grade" and thus are generally not available to the public (unless you are in '''The Great United States Of America'''*, *NFA restrictions apply). Any other type of rifle will typically be called a "sporting rifle" or "hunting rifle", etc and are either bolt-action or semi-automatic. Technically speaking, most "military-grade" firearms can be modified to become semi-automatic to allow for use within the public.

*Machine Gun - Colloquially a machine gun is a large automatic weapon (though technically anything fully-automatic, ranging from a machine pistol all the way up to auto-cannons), typically fed from a magazine or a belt (or both, as is the case with the M249) and meant to either be man-portable or fired from an emplacement or mount like a tripod or turret. The main difference between MGs and the rest of the automatic weapon family is that an MG is a gun meant to fire with longer continuous bursts as a support weapon; meaning that the machine gunner applies continuous suppression fire at the enemy to keep them down (and occasionally kill those stupid enough to not get the message), while the rest of the squad maneuver. Machine guns are generally heavier, not only because of the volume of ammo they carry; but their parts (such as the barrel) are made of heavier materials so that the gun can withstand the punishing amounts of bullets it puts downrange (firing hundreds of rounds without pause can cause guns to overheat and malfunction, even catch fire or explode in the worst of scenarios, unless they're built for such a task.) Even then, barrel changes occur frequently to change warped and damaged barrels.
:*Light Machine Gun - an LMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same intermediate rounds as assault rifles. They are intended to be almost as portable as a rifle (as in, they can be shouldered, but get better performance with a bipod) and allow machine gunners to provide suppressing fire at the squad level. Some LMGs are magazine-fed rifles with heavier barrels and modified bolts (such as the RPK), or else scaled-down MMGs (such as the M249 SAW).
:*Medium Machine Gun - an MMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same full-power rounds as battle rifles. These tend to push the limit of what's practical for a man-portable weapon, and when deployed are usually fired from a stationary position either on a bipod or tripod due to the recoil they generate. These weapons usually overlap with General Purpose Machine Guns and tend to be deployed at the company level or as a vehicle weapon.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (classic) - The definition of an HMG has changed a bit over the last 100 years so the catagory has been split up into two category's. The classical heavy machine gun is exclusively meant to be fired from emplacements and mounts like a tripod due to their large size and weight and was designed to be fired from a fixed position: constantly, just spitting out bullets for days. Often done with the aid of a water jacket which further increased the weight of the weapon. These are the guns that created the quagmire of the great war. Their heavy weight made them impossible for an infantryman to fire on the move (regardless of what you hear; even Hollywood couldn't make these monsters man-portable in their movies, and those fire low-powered blank rounds and is being held by the like of [[Sly Marbo|Sylvester Stallone]]). But that weight also greatly limited their maneuverability and forced them to stay in a static defensive position. Usage outside of vehicle mounts died off when artillery became more precise and could easily wipe out immobile emplacements. Unlike modern heavy machine guns, classical ones used a standard sized rifle cartridge, the vickers for example used the .303 bullet same as the standard rifle of the day, what made them 'heavy' was the focus on sustained shooting to throw back waves of attacking infantry. Examples include the Maxim gun, Hotchkiss Mle 1914 and the Vickers.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (Modern): a modern heavy machine gun is not designed to fire constantly, but to fire a big bullet. Only slightly too small to qualify for the definition of 'cannon' are weapons like the M2 browning .50 caliber, or 12.7 mm machine gun. Modern HMG's are powerful enough to penetrate light armor and damage fragile equipment on heavy armor (like scopes), making them formidable weapons. Examples of modern HMG's are the Russian DHSK and the American M2 Browning.
:*General Purpose Machine Gun - Essentially a machine gun that can perform multiple roles of the previous stated. Examples of this are the German MG34 (arguably the first of this concept) and MG42/MG3, or (from an American prospective) the American M60 and M240, which can reliably serve both infantry-level support weapon and mounted gun roles by fitting them with the appropriate parts. The first ones used the general rifle cartridge, while modern examples are in 7.62x51 NATO or its equivalents.
::*Squad Automatic Weapon - An attempt to make a GPMG that use the intermediate cartridges everyone else in the squad used. Despite the weaknesses of intermediate cartridges (limited range, low barrier penetration/destruction), they is still commonly used by virtue of their reduced logistical requirements and lighter weight compared to other man-portable LMG variants. The RPD, RPK and M249/SAW/MINIMI family are the main entries here, though it seems every modern assault rifle has tried to make a SAW variant with varying degrees of success.
:::*Infantry Automatic Rifle - A more recent concept that seeks to combine the continuous firing properties of a machine gun with an assault rifle's accuracy and ease of use. So far only attempted seriously by the US Marine Corp with the M27; while the higher-ups are pleased with it so far, there is considerable debate about whether its lower rate of fire compared to the M249 will make it less effective at providing suppressing fire.
:*Rotary Machine Gun - Originally known as the "Gatling gun", man's first known attempt to have enough [[dakka]]; a rotary machine gun is an automatic weapon that uses revolving barrels that interchange every time the gun fires off a round. The kicker to this is that it allows the gun to shoot with little threat of the barrels wearing out as they interchange between shots; giving them a small window to cool off before firing again. The end result is a gun capable of firing over 3,000 rounds per minute without fail, or in a smaller scope; 50 rounds per second. Modern rotary guns are electrically powered to allow them to reach such insane speeds, and are given ammo drums that contain thousands of rounds to be able to sustain that amount of bullets being fired; so they're confined to static emplacements and vehicles (unlike what the media constantly portrays; these things are not even close to being man-portable without assistance from powered armor.) These types of guns are used almost exclusively on aircraft or anti-aircraft emplacements, as they're the only non-missile weapon that can reliably hit fast-moving aircraft. But a rotary gun that fires 30mm rounds is powerful enough to tear tanks in two, as well (metaphorically, they only have to penetrate top armor and rate of fire helps). Unlike what the movies would tell you a rotary machine gun does not need a long spinup time to get to full speed: when the trigger is pulled the gun starts to spin and fire immediately.
:*Chain gun - A chain gun is a machine gun that is fed using an electric motor. Instead of relying on the gasses from the bullet to work the action to cycle a new round; a machine automatically ejects and loads a new round in after firing a shot. Chain guns have the benefit of never jamming due to feeding failures, as even if the round is not discharged; the machine pops it out and loads a new one regardless. However, it is also not man-portable as it requires an electric motor to function, so it is only found on fixed emplacements or vehicles. Can easily fuck up any poor shmucks day by perforating the boat or car they are in. People sometimes use the words "chain gun" and "rotary machine gun" interchangably, but chain guns are typically single-barreled, as they don't need the high rate of fire that rotary guns do outside of anti-air guns.

===Actions===
"Action" refers to how ammunition is loaded into the weapon.

*Single-shot: The first and oldest of all; a single-shot weapon is when users manually load rounds into the chamber. This can be anything from loading a new round, cocking the weapon every shot, or pumping the action.
**Muzzle-loaded: The earliest form of how weapons were loaded. This meant you had to load a new round directly into the muzzle, which is where the bullets come out. In its earliest form; muzzle-loaded guns were complicated to arm; you had to fuck around with a wad, powder, and slug. In the heat of battle, you had to ram these down the barrel of your gun in the correct order, light the wick, then aim before the gun goes off. And you had to do all this while standing in the open within firing range of your enemy.
**Breach-loaded; An upgrade over muzzle-loading and developed shortly after cartridges were invented; breach loaders are where the bottom of the barrel can be unhinged so that you can load a new round into it. It is still a popular setup for multi-barreled shotguns. Certain revolvers are breach-loaded as well, but given the size and design of the revolver, this gives them a notable weak point at the top of the weapon where the parts connect together.
**Bolt-action: This type of action is where you pull the charging handle of a weapon, every time you shoot so that the mechanism would chamber a new round. These were pretty popular in WW1 and continues to be used today for precision rifles.
**Lever-action: The cool kid of the single-action club; lever-action weapons are those where you have to use a lever to chamber a new round, which was usually mounted near the trigger. This type was made popular by Winchester during the frontier age of the Wild West and even more by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he used a lever-action shotgun during Terminator 2.
**Pump-action: A pump action is where you had to pull the "pump" of the weapon to cycle a new round. This is the most common action used by shotguns. A few rifles used this setup as well, and there is one instance of a bunch of madmen creating a pump-action 3+1 (three in the tube, one in the chamber) 40mm grenade launcher.

*Automatic action: Unlike single-shot weapons, it uses gasses expelled by the cartridge or recoil to power a mechanism that automatically chambers a new round after each shot. Generally speaking, the semi-automatic to fully-automatic action is determined by the trigger sear, which may either inhibit the hammer from hitting against until the trigger is let go (semi-automatic), stops firing after a certain number of rounds have been fired (burst-fire), or continuously fires until ammo is expended (fully automatic).
**Semi-automatic: A semi-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire after every trigger pull, with the user only needing to work the action after reloading a completely empty gun. Most handguns and many rifles are semi-automatic.
**Burst-Fire: A setting sometimes included on automatic weapons, each trigger pull fires three (or sometimes two) rounds in rapid succession. This is used as a way to allow automatic capability without wasting bullets, as keeping the trigger held too long on anything other than a mounted weapon tends to cause it to lose accuracy very quickly.
**Fully-automatic: A fully-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire automatically, so long as the trigger is depressed, rather than pulled each time like how semi-autos work. Automatic weapons tend to be banned for civilian use and are only available to military.

===Ammo Storage and Feeding===
This refers to how ammunition is given to the weapon. Also the topic of a /k/ommando's greatest sources of rage; the clip vs magazine misconception. This section will give a short explanation for both.

*Pepperbox - basically the bastard child of a break-action long gun and a revolver; a pepperbox gun has 3 or more barrels loaded and ready to fire, with the gun rotating between the loaded barrels to fire in relatively quick sucession. As this was one of the only ways to get more than a single shot in less than a minute without resorting to carrying multiple guns; the design was wacky but popular during the olden ages (and still today to a limited extent for some pocket pistols). The Empire's Outriders are armed with these weapons if you want a visual of what they looked like. Most pepperboxes where smoothbore since they were made on the cheap and never intended for more than point blank fire.

*Volleygun - A variant of the olden multi-barrel family, the volleygun foregoes single, accurate shots in favor of alpha-striking to saturate the area in lead, having anywhere between 2 to 20 barrels (and you can go well beyond this if your contraption can handle it) and the size ranging anywhere from a pistol to a full-sized artillery piece. As the name describes; it fires all of it's payload in a single volley, basically making it a one-man firing line. This style of weaponry gradually fell out of disuse as more modern firearms were developed (mainly self-loading weapons, which were more reliable and accurate), but is notably still used for the "Metal Storm", a prototype weapon with truly absurd number of gun barrels that go off simultaneously to shred the ever-living fuck out of it's target. The only types still in use today are double barreled shotguns and derringers.

*Superposed load - the disadvantage to using a multi-barreled firearm is that it adds a lot of weight to the firearm. One alternative was to simply stack multiple bullets and charges into the same barrel, and then have the firearm set them off sequentially. The early version of this mechanism was prone to failures, as the bullets were not self-contained and a poor gas seal could result in multiple charges going off, destroying the gun (and the user if unlucky enough) if it was not designed to handle the stress. However, this setup was revived with the invention of caseless bullets and electronic triggers used most prominently in Metal Storm weapons. If combined with multiple barrels, a metal storm weapon can have a bewildering rate of fire. So far the technology is mostly used in multi-shot grenade launchers.

*Bullpup - A bullpup is any weapon where its action is located in the behind the trigger, instead of in front. Bullpups have the advantage of being more compact, compared to the traditional setup, as most of the gun's mechanism is located in the stock area. but has the disadvantage of not being ambidextrous (being that the shell ejection port is directly beside the shooter's face, left-handed shooters are forced to shoot from the right to not get their faces burned off) unless specifically designed to be so. This is usually resolved by cutting out ejection ports on both sides and swapping parts over, or else ejecting bullets downward or forward. And typically suffer from poor triggers due to the distance from trigger to action, though there are aftermarket kits for many that can mitigate it a good deal. Modern pistols and many SMGs that feed from inside the grip are ''technically'' bullpups, since their magazine and action are behind the trigger and connected by a transfer bar, but they generally aren't counted as such.

*Clip - A clip is a device, used for bundling bullets together for immediate use. Guns cannot use clips by themselves, they have to be loaded into a magazine first to be used by a gun. The most common version were "stripper clips": each clip held about five bullets, and to load the rifle you placed the clip on top of the magazine, then squeezed the bullets off the clip into the magazine. Another type, en bloc, was used by the M1 Garand and held eight bullets in a 2x4 configuration. The entire clip was put in the magazine, with the clip being ejected after being emptied. The last kind is the moon (or half-moon) clip, used specifically for revolvers, which holds bullets in a circular formation for loading the chamber up in one go. Clips are still used today, but exclusively to speed up loading external magazines. Filling external magazines generally requires a small disposable tool, which is included in any ammo lot packaged on stripper clips.

*Speedloader - A speedloader is essentially a clip that has moving parts, usually to aid with holding and/or loading ammunition. Two common types exist. The first is similar to a moon clip in that it holds bullets so that they can all be loaded into a revolver simultaneously, but use a locking mechanism to secure the bullets while they are being carried, then release them once they are loaded into the cylinder. While not as fast as a moon clip, it still makes loading revolvers considerably faster. Another type of speedloader is the magazine loader, which is designed to reduce the spring pressure in a magazine, making it faster and easier to load.

*Magazine - The magazine is part of the weapon that houses and feeds actual ammo into the weapon. In the olden days, many guns had magazines that were built into the weapon itself and were fed using clips of ammo that were loaded after the gun ran out of ammo. Built-in magazines, however, severely limited the potential ammunition capacity of guns as they cannot be expanded without significantly making the gun larger and was a pain in the ass to reload (such as in the case of revolvers). To counter this; people designed guns whose magazines were detachable from the gun itself. This allowed people to easily expand the ammo cap of a gun, as they only needed to ensure that the extended magazine will fit into their gun and cycle properly, they no longer needed to re-work the entire structure of the gun to enlarge a built-in magazine. It also greatly increased a person's reload speed, as instead of fumbling around with several clips to ram down the gun: they just had to detach a magazine, pull one out of their vest/bag, load it in (charge the gun if needed), and they're good to go. High-capacity magazines tend to take on weird shapes rather than the standard flat box; the most common variant is the drum magazine, but there are also double drums, caskets, and helicals. Typically the weakest part of any firearm. A large part of the misconceptions of the M16 were related to the fucktarded idea that it should be issued with DISPOSABLE MAGAZINES! They were initially not intended for repeated use, empty the mag. Drop it, crush it under your boot, reload a brand new never used mag. Worked well till some bureaucrat ordered reusing them which alongside some other bureaucrats skipping the chrome lining for the barrel and issuing really shitty ammo made with spare parts caused regular failures. Newer iterations of the magazine have since addressed these issues.

*Belts - The belt is what it is; a long belt filled with bullets, which can either take the form of a cloth belt or linked by metallic chains. Belts are the common loading method of most machine guns, who typically have ammunition capacities well beyond 100 rounds. The reason for this is that it simplifies the operation of the gun (since belts do not require them to be fed to the gun with a mechanism like in traditional magazines) and makes them less prone to malfunctions (with a gun designed to shoot continuously; you wanna make sure that there's less critical moving parts to fuck up as it's firing it's 300th round at the enemy). Belts are also much easier to transport, as the belt can be folded several times to make it more compact, versus a solid magazine. This is mostly because until H&K put out their steel high reliability 5.56 nato mag, most magazines couldn't keep up with the fire rate and were too flimsy(The Soviet counterparts that used magazines, used AK pattern magazines which you can open a beer with and then load into the gun). Pretty much every man issued a M249 with the magwell adapter, will attest to how dire you must be for bullets in the air to use it.

==Ammunition themselves==
To call a round or cartridge "a bullet" would be the equivalent of calling of calling a magazine a clip. Bullets are the projectiles that are or to be launched, while the "round" is the entire thing. To do otherwise would summon the wrath of the /k/ommando.

===Composition of the modern round/cartridge===

*Casing - The metal jacket that houses the propellant, primer, and to an extent the bullet (pardoning telescopic munitions which house the bullet completely.) Usually made from brass, they can be made from steel or plastics (at the detriment of the gun itself, unless designed for such).

*Propellant - Powder that is used to propel the bullet/slug/projectile. In the good ol' days, it used black powder, but those clouded the air and weren't powerful. Most modern rounds use a double base powder (generally gun cotton or nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, may include a variety of stabilizers (to improve shelf life of the round) and deterrents (to prevent the cartridge from being too "hot". For artillery, they make good use of triple base propellants, which is smokey as hell but burn well.

*Primer - What activates the powder in the rounds themselves. Generally a firm dent is enough to activate the munitions. Generally use non-corrosive compression sensitive materials.

*Bullets - What people get tripped up on in naming munitions. Being the projectile, anyone loading the munitions has a vast choice of what can be used as a bullet. Generally, lead, steel, and tungsten make the core of the round (thanks to their weight) while the outer coat for the round could be lead (since it is also very malleable), copper, and nickel, though Teflon and certain plastics can also be used. If you're feeling lucky, you can load a variety of other materials into the rounds (or shells for shotguns). Take for example salt, which doesn't kill, but you can mark people and they sting like hell.

===Types of bullets===
As a short note on bullets, its important to know that just because a bullet can easily penetrate armor doesn't mean its a definite upgrade over everything else. If a hard bullet like the FMJ or AP penetrates the human body and exits in the same shot; its gonna hurt like hell but unless that bullet was in the 12.7mm (.50 caliber) category or it hit something important like a lung or the head; the target has a good possibility to survive through a combination of medical aid, hormones (adrenaline in fight or flight), and willpower (with the side possibility of stimulants), and even still continue to fight onwards if they're that dead 'ard. That said, if a 12.7mm round came tearing through your body; it has enough momentum to potentially rupture a good chunk of your insides which is ''very'' lethal, but 12.7mm guns are generally not mainstay (these are guns like the Desert Eagle, M2 Browning, or M82 Barrett), so unless you're a real-life action hero, a turret gunner, or a counter-sniper; its unlikely for you to have access to these behemoths.

Likewise, if a soft bullet like the JHP or SP penetrates the body, then which expands, fragments, and/or tumbles inside; in short internal and external bleeding would be the most urgent of the target's concerns, with ruptured organs and torn muscles leaking like a broken sewage pipe, thus making HP lot more lethal and debilitating. That said, soft bullets fragment easily and body armor proportionate to it's caliber can reliably stop soft round. That said even if armored; the target is still gonna feel the impact of the bullet's force hitting against his body, and that still has the potential of killing someone if the circumstances are right (although its still unreliable).

In the end, a bullet is either specialized where it's only effective against either armored or unarmored targets, or a special combination that renders it effective against both types (although these require an experienced smith to manufacture properly).

*Ball - though if we start talking bullets we need to start with the first bullet: the lead ball, from where we derive the common term for bullets as 'rounds'. It's. . .just a lead ball though, not much to say about it. The balls were hand made, often by soldiers themselves since lead has such a low melting point, with the molds often being unique to each gun. This used largely the same process that was used for [[Sling]] bullets since antiquity. These early bullets would often 'rattle' down the barrel due to ill fitting the barrel of there guns, which combined with a lack of riffling would mean early guns were horribly inaccurate. If one used a smaller bullet that better fitted the gun, would could use rifling, but this required, (see above) hammering the bullet into place to make sure that there were no gaps.

*Minié ball- The first bullet we would know as a 'bullet', and the first truly distinct from a lead ball. A Minié ball is a conical bullet with a concave hole in the base. When fired the base flared out from the pressure of the blast, letting it engage with the rifling of the gun. This meant that it formed a seal with the barrel making it incredibly accurate, while not needing to be tightly hammered down the barrel. The best of both worlds. Combined with it's large size these things were lethal on the battle field maiming and crippling an entire generation of soldiers during the US civil war.

*Full Metal Jacket (FMJ)- Generally a lead or steel bullet encased in a soft metal such as copper. Acts a sort of lube as well as preventing fouling of the barrel. Depending on design, has a potential to fragment post impact, shredding internal organs.
**Synthetic Jacket- FMJ ammo with a plastic jacket, which has the advantage of reducing cleaning requirements and safer when hitting steel at the cost of various things not really relevant in practice ammo. Currently only in handgun calibers and only made as practice/match ammo (though some hollow points and AP rounds do also use polymer jackets).

*Hollow point (HP)- The hollow section in the center makes the bullet expand on impact, creating a bigger hole in its victim at the expense of being less effective against armored targets. That being said, the decreased penetration also makes it safer to use in situations where over-penetration could be dangerous (e.g. on an aircraft). Certain designs have bladed tips on expansion, causing additional cutting and bleeding too. It was banned from military use by the Hague Convention of 1899, so restricted to police, civilians, and, as of 2017, the United States Armed Forces (The US didn't sign that provision, but previously stuck with FMJ even after mass production became feasible for the sake of NATO compatibility).

*Semi jacketed Hollow point (SJHP)- Same as a hollow point, but has a copper jacket to help reduce fouling.

*Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP)- Same as above, but fully covers the bullet down to the tip.

*Wad cutter (WC)- Flat tipped bullet. Not very aerodynamic but it leaves a big hole to help tell you where you hit the target. Generally for closer range paper targets as they lose velocity very quickly due to the drag on them.

*Semi Wad Cutter (SWC)- Like the wad cutter, but more aerodynamic.

*Armor Piercing (AP)- As name implies, intended to penetrate armor, be it person or equipment. However, this ultimately depends on what gun you're shooting from and what armor you're shooting at. A 9x19mm AP steel round coming from a 4" barrel will do diddly to NIJ Level IIIA, where as a 7.62x51 AP flying out of a 24" barrel will punch through it easy as you please. Modern AP rounds are often jacketed in plastic, but this is purely to protect the barrel (turns out sending something meant to destroy steel through a steel barrel results in a wrecked barrel) and adds no armor piercing quality.

*Saboted light armor penetrator (SLAP)/Saboted bullets- Think of the discarding sabots fired from a M1 Abrams or a saboted slug of a shotgun, but redesigned to be fired like a standard rifle round. The sabot is designed to the grip the rifling until it leaves the barrel, then discard after leaving the barrel. This would leave the penetrator or bullet with a high velocity while providing a sufficient spin to the bullet to keep it stabilized in the air. With a higher density and/or thinner bullet, they can potentially penetrate better than potentially even APHE. Likewise for handcrafted bullets, they provide higher velocity for a smaller bullet in a cartridge intended for a larger caliber. G

*High Explosive incendiary (HEI)- Explosive tipped munition. Generally for larger rounds (think 7.62 and beyond), they typically are meant for non-infantry targets such as light vehicles, light aircraft, and barriers, showering those inside with speeding shrapnel. Despite their implication, they might not work as well as one might think against hard target.

*Armor Piercing Incendiary (API)/Armor Piercing High Explosive (APHE), High Explosive Incendiary Armor Penetration (HEIAP)- Designed with the intentions of penetrating hard targets that HE rounds can't do alone and being anti-material in general, API and HEIAP are the answer to those targets. Generally have sufficient power in and behind the bullet (think Raufoss Mk.211), it will penetrate body armor and light vehicles with awe-inspiring ease.

*Soft point or semi jacketed - Like a FMJ, except the tip is exposed. Designed to have the reduced drag of a FMJ, while expanding upon hitting a target similar to a hollow point. Generally designed for hunters in mind.

*Ballistic tip - Similar in performance to the semi-jacketed bullet, but rather than being a solid core of lead it is designed like a hollow point, but with a plastic tip at the end to reduce drag and ensure expansion.

*Ratshot - made for smaller-caliber guns and is basically birdshot for rifled barrels. The tip is a plastic cap that contains a small amount pellets, typically within the 1.5mm range. As the name implies; the gun is primarily designed for shooting pests and small animals like rodents and grass snakes. You can use it to shoot at larger pests like coyotes or humans, but it's woefully underpowdered for the job.

*Tracer - a regular bullet coated in pyrotechnic coating that ignites when fired. These are most commonly used with machineguns (every fifth round in a belt, to be exact) since it's useful for the gunner to accurately see where all his bullets are going, as well as make it clear to any enemies he's suppressing just who he's aiming at. Similarly rifle magazines are often loaded with tracers at certain intervals to provide indication of remaining ammo. Of course, the caveat is "tracer's work both ways" as they can give away your position; this can be mitigated by using "dim" tracers that can only be seen through night vision goggles. Sometimes also used by spotters or commanders to mark a specific target. They can potentially set fire to objects, if the incendiary compound hasn't burned out yet on impact.

*Less-lethals - Commonly known as 'rubber bullets' even though they're made of plastic these days instead. Used in riot control and such, where the shooter isn't allowed to kill. The key word is "less", however. They hurt like a sonovabitch and can still kill in the wrong circumstances, though. Airsoft this ain't.

*Silver - Pure fantasy, but common in there to counter supernatural creatures weak to silver. Silver bullets would suffer from many problems that rarely get mentioned in fiction. Chief among these are the cost, that silver shrinks when cast (so it's really hard to get the right size and shape), and that silver is too soft to engage rifling so even if you get the right size accuracy will be terrible. [[Monster Hunter International|More /k/ aligned works]] solve these issues with solutions like sabots (which helps accuracy but still worse than real bullets), ballistic tips made of silver and frangible bullets filled with powdered silver (instead of the typical competitively cheap metal).

===Types of Rounds===
Apart from the traditional type of rounds, here are some unique ones for reference.

*Blanks - What you commonly see loaded in movies. Blanks are basically that; the round has a primer and powder, but the bullet is just a paper or plastic sheet designed to keep the powder in, so you get the sound of a gun going off, but not the damage. That said, blanks ''can'' still kill people, the gasses used to propel the bullet forward are still there (just not launching any bullets); and its powerful enough to liquefy organs and break bones if you were dumb/desperate enough shoot someone with a blank at close range. Movie armorers make a point of demonstrating this with things like fruit before letting anyone touch blank firing guns. This is why instead of blank-firing guns, actors will use flash paper guns at close range for safety. There's also blank ammo specifically designed to make as much noise as possible for the purpose of disorienting and intimidating people in an area.

*Caseless - An old but futuristic concept, a caseless round has everything required for the bullet to be launched, inside the bullet itself. This removes the need for guns to eject spent shell casings after every shot, reducing weight and ammo costs. While this has been pioneered since WW2 and a few prototype examples for it were already developed (like the G11); caseless rounds are still determined to be unreliable for field combat use in comparison to traditional ammunition, so as of today their use is largely limited (mainly to grenade rounds like the Russian VOG-25 grenade).

*Gyrojet - A unique but largely impractical cartridge in the gun circuit, WH40K's famous [[bolter|boltguns]] run on the same concept as the gyrojet. Basically, the bullets are miniature rockets that build up speed as they travel, capable of exceeding the speed of sound after traveling 60ft. While the idea sounds cool; gyrojets were ''required'' to gain minimum distance to achieve their full effect (if you fired at point-blank for example, they didn't really do much), had a design flaw in their propulsion system that made the rockets prone to corkscrewing off-course, and were highly temperamental to environmental conditions, not to mention the costs. At the end the concept was a bust as it didn't really do a lot that couldn't be achieved with traditional small arms for cheaper. Still GeeDubs thought it was nice and became the basis of how boltguns work, where it's largely the same but with more techno-flubdubbery and "because future".

*Magnum - Unlike what vidya gaems portray, magnums aren't really super-mega handguns of death. A magnum round is basically a parent cartridge that's been enlarged so it does more damage due to a combination of larger mass and more powder used (so it flies faster and hits harder), and this can be anything from the .357 magnum handgun round used by revolvers, to the large caliber .338 Lapua and Winchester magnum rounds used for precision sniper rifles.

*Overpressured - Designated as "+P", overpressured rounds still uses the same cartridge (unlike the magnum), but is loaded with higher-pressure powder that releases more energy when fired. It sounds like a nice way to up your damage, but guns have a level of pressure they can tolerate, and if your gun isn't designed to do such and you use +P rounds; you run the very high risk of destroying your gun (and the rest of your body if you're that unlucky). There are guns that are proofed to fire +P and +P+ ammo but it typically used in SMGs. Certain batches of surplus ammo will blow up guns because they were made to be used in more robust SMGs and not commercial pistols.

===Types of shotgun loads===

*Buckshot - The shell is filled with lead or steel pellets, each of which is typically around 15mm each (it ultimately depends on the bore), that spread out once discharged. Poor at penetrating armor and limited effective range comparison to other firearms as the pellets scatter and the pellets are too small to do serious damage individually (Although do note that unlike what the vidya gaems portray; a decent 12G shotgun loaded with buckshot is effective upto 30-50m, not just in point-blank range); but they do cover a fairly large radius and the force of 8-12 pellets impacting against your body will send you tumbling and rolling on the floor in agony, even if they don't penetrate.

*Birdshot - Similar to buckshot and more pellets, but the pellets are smaller (5mm and less, although still depends on the bore). As their name describes; the ammo is designed to pelt down birds by [[Ork|throwing as many bullets at the target and hoping atleast a few of them hit]]. You can use them against non-avian targets aswell and they'll do something, but they don't pack the punch you'd like and don't expect them to dent body armor too much. Their ineffectiveness against human targets [[Wikipedia:Dick Cheney hunting accident|was demonstrated by a (possibly drunk) Vice President of the United States]] when he shot an old guy in the face with some and the only lasting damage was the voice.

*Slug - Instead of multiple pellets; the gun fires a single, heavy lead projectile, similar to how traditional ammo works. Because shotgun barrels are not rifled; slugs do not have the range nor accuracy rifles do, but because of their weight and the shotgun's fairly large caliber; they're fully capable of crushing their way through armor at close range. Slugs are typically used for hunting large game in areas where rifle ammunition isn't allowed due to the risk of overpenetration.

*Breaching - A specialized variant of the slug round, breaching rounds are designed specifically to destroy door locks at extremely close range. Generally composed of very dense powdered steel held together with wax.

*Less-lethals - Designed for riot control where the shooter isn't allowed to kill; the bullet is either made of rubber, paint, or beanbags designed for minimal penetration, while the powder used in the rounds is less to reduce the projectile's velocity. The end result is a bullet designed to simply cause shock and pain to the target in order to incapacitate them long enough to be arrested and not rejoin the fight in the meantime. That said, you're still talking about launching an object at someone at speeds similar to cars speeding on a highway; so hitting vulnerable parts of the body like the head, neck, or ribs can still result in a fatality. On the flip side, anyone wearing bullet-resistant armor won't be affected too much.

*Chain-shot - Typically reserved for olden cannons, the chain-shot is two cannonballs linked with a chain. The spinning contraption was intended to tear through a ship's mast and sails. Obsolete as fuck, but it is still possible to replicate this with shotgun ammo. Basically you tie two pellets or slugs together so that when they're discharged; they're basically flying garrotes. Awesome, but because of how unpredictable bullets are while in flight, it's highly impractical for combat use.

*Flechette - Buckshot, but instead of pellets; the shell is loaded with small metal darts. They achieved better penetration and range than traditional buckshot; but because shotguns aren't really designed as precision weapons; they were highly impractical for combat applications. They destroyed barrels and tended to deflect off really silly things like raindrops.

*Explosive Rounds - The shell contains an slug that explodes upon impact, capable of using anti-armor or anti-personnel shells, basically turning the shotgun into a portable grenade launcher. Not as powerful as the real thing, but invaluable when you need accurate explosions but not the excessive collateral damage or restrictive weight and mass. Has seen some use in rifle rounds on the eastern front of World War II as well as in .50 BMG (officially for use on objects, not people).

*Dragon's Breath - An odd type of ammo. DB shells are loaded with magnesium pellets. When discharged; they create a short but hot burst of fire that burn at temperatures upto 1,600°C. While not really used much for conventional combat due to its status as an incendiary weapon (which would give a warcrimes committee a field day); blasting a person with this at close range will create about the same results as a giant fire-breathing lizard incinerating an unlucky knight to death, hence their name. Also destroys barrels, as dragon's breath burns hotter than the melting point of steel, and close to the melting point of chromium (two of the most common metals used in gun parts).

*Misc - Shotguns aren't really picky with ammo since they are manually operated and don't depend on a gas seal as much; just about ''anything'' can be used for bullets if worse comes to worse/you're bored. Could be lego pieces, could be old hard candy, solid scrap,frozen meat [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-n4bxxn9gA or even glass]. Hell, it can be a Sly Marbo tabletop figure if you could fit him inside a shell and prevent him from disintegrating from the force while exiting the barrel, the choice is yours. (More likely blow up your gun as Sly refuses to die and gives you the finger for trying.) Incidentally this unfastidious in ammunition also means that in a fantasy setting you can basically load anything you want down the barrel of a shotgun to deal with basically any monster that had a weakness. Wooden stakes for vampires, Cold iron for fae, silver for werewolves, the aforementioned dragon breath for flame vulnerable monsters, salt if that's a thing demons hate in your mythos, freeze holy water into ice and you could still likely shoot it with a sabot. Basically shotguns should be the go to for the modern murder hobo.

==Manufacturing of Firearms==

===Brief Overview===

The production of firearms historically speaking has been an, err, interesting path. The first firearms were little more than metal (or whatever other material one so chose) cylinder with with one hole for the ignition of the powder and one for the projectile to be projected. As time passes on manufacturing techniques got more advanced, leading to triggers which frees up one hand from having to push a hot object into the powder. Most used a sort of striker to ignite the powder, be it flint or rope. Around the early to mid 19th century, self-containing cartridges became a possible reality. As such the firearm had to change too, with an action either simply accepting a round into the barrel or an action that would be worked to put it in. Near the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, auto-loading firearms became possible, but the actions had to become more complex to automatically feed the round by means of either recoil or gas. After that, guns haven't exactly changed too drastically (still major changes) in the current 21st century, pardoning the much higher efficiency of the modern weaponry. The complexity of modern firearms however doesn't interfere with how cheaply they can be produced. As such, there are endless aftermarket gun parts for sale around in places such as the USA.

===DIY===
[[image:.45 ACP ISB SMG.png|thumb|175px|left|.45 ACP ISB SMG designed from a STEN, but has many parts that differ. According to the designer "I like to think of it as a cross between an FG-42, a Welrod and a Sten."]]

First and foremost: guns are not toys, and should never be treated as such.

It comes as no secret that one can manufacture their own guns in one's own home so they chose to ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_copy Just ask the Afghans]). Depending on the skill of the user, the manufacturing tools used, material quality of the parts being used and/or made, design of the gun, and so on, a DIY can range from a explode-in-your-hand zip gun all the way up to high-quality rifles that have a minute of angle (MOA) of 1 or less. All one need is one's [[Ork|imagination]] and a [[Techpriest|firm understanding on how a gun works from the inside out and machining]]. In addition to that, the internet has a broad data base on the knowledge and schematics of guns.

[[image:Homemade_gun_exploding.PNG|thumb|150px|right| Careful you might blow your eye out]]
That said, DIY-guns require a decent understanding of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering to manufacturer at all, so unless you're a [[Mekboy]] with all the know-wotz implanted in your brain; its highly recommended you read up first, lest your firearm's first unwitting victim is you.

[[image:Stormbolter_IRL.jpg|thumb|223px|right|If a modern rifle was a stormbolter.]]

Examples of DIY are:

*Zip gun: Usually a metal tube attached to a piece of wood or object, within it some sort of trigger and striker. One example of this is a slam fire gun. Generally a 12 gauge shotgun shell loaded into a 3/4 inch tube that can be shoved into a 1 inch tube that has cap containing a nail at the end. When shoved in, the cap's nail will be more than enough to set off the shell, making the tubes effectively a shotgun.

*Experimental design: Every line of guns started out as a experiment somewhere. Some catch on, some don't, some just are there because why the heck not? Want to have dual barrels on your gun? Go for it! Add a counterweight to the gas block so that the recoil is next to nothing? Makes shoot a breeze! Add a round cam to your bolt so you can have a smooth action and reduce wear on the gun? No reason not to! The choices are endless if with time, diligence, and a bit of imagination.

*CNC Manufacturing: Avoiding the painstaking effort of machining it by hand [[Machine Spirit|a machine do it for you?]] A Computer numerical control (CNC) machine can easily mill out receivers and whatever other parts you need assuming you have the plans on the computer and the materials to be drilled out. The downsides of that CNC are a bit pricey relative to their hand milling machine counterpart. However some go for as low as $1200, which is roughly the same price as a mid-tier intermediate rifle in the USA.

==Relations here==
Most fantasy writers tend to exclude firearms. There are a variety of reasons for this, such as:
*Most fantasy comes from [[Tolkien]], who, being a naturalist who largely despised industrialization, did not put guns in Middle-earth, although gunpowder does exist, used by the wizards (Gandalf's Fireworks and Saruman's Fires of Orthanc) and by the orcs.
*Most fantasy (whether copy-catting Tolkien or not) is based on medieval Europe. Depending on your definition of "medieval," Europe did ''technically'' have firearms towards the very end (crude and unreliable ones, but firearms nonetheless), but most authors base their fantasy on earlier medieval Europe.
*As in real life, firearms mean that vulgar, dirty, peasant conscripts can take down the author's Mary Sue noblemen [[knight]]s that trained ''so'' hard in the arts of swordsmanship and melee combat, though if the writer had any historical knowledge they would know that armor can be made "proof" against early firearm bullets (which is partly what spurred the development of full-body plate mail to begin with, as a sidenote) or that a crossbow or longbow can just as easily (in fact, MORE easily due to the general shitty performance of old guns) turn an armored man into swiss cheese.

All that being said, most fantasy authors are much more open to cannons, which became viable on the battlefield long before smaller firearms anyway. Some even make room for crude rocket launchers, especially if there is a not-China/not-Korea in their setting. (Laugh, but a big firework rocket will put a sod on fire and ruin his day just fine, doubly so if the morons are in wooden fort.)

Generally speaking, if a world has both the "stock" fantasy races and guns, there will a strict hierarchy of who uses them, from most to least likely:
*[[Dwarves]]: They almost always have the best, most plentiful guns. If only one race gets firearms, it's likely going to be them.
*[[Gnomes]]: As tinkerers, they're frequently on a different tech level from everyone else, including firearms.
*[[Human]]s: Unlike the other races, which are usually an all-or-nothing deal, different human nations have different likelihoods of having guns. Italian and East Asian analogues, as well as the "industrious" or "scientific" nations, are much more likely to have them. Your barbarians, guys keen on knights and chivalry, and the more conservative less so. If the nation is Post Renaissance, expect pike and shot style IRL analogue armies.
*[[Orc]]s: Orcs would probably love guns if they could actually build some. However, they're usually either incapable of building things or have a hard time organizing themselves to the point that large-scale firearm and powder production is possible. Even so, they could still obtain them them by other means such as fighting as mercenaries for guns and stealing them off the corpses of the fallen and similar. They are higher on the list if they are more like Tolkienian orcs, which can be fairly well organized and "delight in explosions" enough to manufacture their own gunpowder, if only for simple bombs. If Orcs are of the more Chaotic Evil variety then they will barely have crossbows, let alone guns. If Orcs are of the Klingon variety, as in the violent tendencies are normal enough that the civilization can function, then they will LOVE big guns.
*[[Elves]]: Being arrogant pricks, they see guns as crude, inaccurate, foul-smelling contraptions that are no substitute for a bow. However, they'll still use them when necessary, even if they don't like it. That said, elves also had a good reason to not use them, namely most firearms in a fantasy settling are arquebus-type single-shot smoothbore weapons, which are outranged by longbows. Longbows are even decent against most kinds of armor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt ask the French]). The main advantage of firearms, even early ones, is ease of use and armor penetration though armor could be made that could stop an early handgun. The main problem with longbows is that it takes years to learn, which is not a problem for long-lived elves. Between a smoothbore handgun and a longbow, the bow is simply a better choice to an elf. The problem of course is that longbows are about as good as bow technology can get while handguns can be improved to rifles, against which bows only have rate of fire as an advantage, then Repeating Rifles, which bows have no advantage at all against. So while Elves may have an advantage to sticking with there longbows well into the age of pike and shot, if they're not careful their Longbows will end up fighting against Springfields and Winchesters and they will end up the worse in that exchange. If tech reaches that point, expect the Archer/Hunter stereotype to turn into Snipers/Mad minute riflemen.
*Wood Elves and other Fey/Nature types: They'd rather die than use a firearm, even if the rest of the world has moved onto biplanes, bolt-action rifles, shell-firing cannons, and tanks. If this happens, this means they either have powerful magic (so the actual weapons used are unimportant), they are ''really really'' good shots with a bow, they have much stronger friends (Think like the amish) or they're about to get colonized. That said: the problem they have are not guns themselves, but making them as mass production always has some environmental costs they can not stand for. If they could get there hands on some way to make guns that did not harm the environment in the process, at least anymore then making a sword does they might go small for small scale fire arm production, but this is rarely explored in fiction.

For how this conservative attitude tends to apply to tech in general for fantasy settings, see [[Medieval Stasis]].

Of course, sci-fi writers almost exclusively use firearms, seeing as how it's THE FUUUUUUTTTTTUUUUURRRREEEE. The exceptions are [[Warhammer 40,000]] and ''[[Dune]]'': although guns are the main combat implement in 40K, close combat is still alive and well, and most armies have at least one elite, close-combat unit wielding weapons that are distinctly not firearms; in ''Dune'', guns are pretty much dead as a weapon of war, as personal-scale force fields stop fast-moving matter (like bullets) from crossing them, but slower matter (like swung knives) can pass through, and if a lasgun blast touches the field, at least one end of the equation comes out "BOOM!!!". Most sci-fi universes do have close combat weapons on the scale we see in modern warfare, though, like in Mass Effect, where, as the Reaper forces (who are basically [[Necron]]s and [[Tyranids]] combined) invade the galaxy, people begin developing their Omnitools to snap-produce a white-hot blade of hard metal above the wearer's hand... And then there's the Krogan, who are too bloodthirsty and too large to properly take cover, so they headbutt things instead of using guns.

== Rules ==

Most fantasy RPGs deal with firearms the way they deal with lots of things that threaten their [[Medieval Stasis]]: terror, suspicion, and shitty rules. If you have the option of using a firearm in most games, it probably has one shot that's weaker than a bow, then takes an entire encounter to reload, and is illegal everywhere in-setting in case you didn't get the hint.

[[D&D#Basic_Dungeons_&_Dragons|BECMI]] Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have rules for firearms, but there were one or two adventure modules that incorporated a crash-landed spaceship, with weapons the players could loot. They were treated as magic wands and staves. A few issues of Dragon magazine offered rules for early cannons and hand cannons.

[[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] mentions guns in a tucked-away subsection on importing TSR's Cowboys & Indians game Boot Hill to AD&D (DMG, pg113). Revolver pistols and Gatling guns would do as much damage as a longsword; shotguns as much damage as a two-handed claymore, a (thrown) stick of dynamite does 4x the damage of a short sword. The rules insist "...when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk, ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it." To reinforce this concept, the ''Manual of the Planes'' included rules for factors of prime material planes, one of which determined if complex (read: setting destroying) chemical compositions like blackpowder would even work in said plane. If you have any knowledge of chemistry, you may cry now. Notably, [[Greyhawk]] had a [[Murlynd|god of firearms]], and his paladins were basically Wild West sheriffs.

[[Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#AD.26D_2nd_Edition|Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition]] included the arquebus in the Players Handbook, where they were depicted as slow, powerful and expensive (500 Gp!). They were also potentially dangerous to the user as the result of a bad roll. It was painfully stressed that the inclusion of firearms in the campaign was the call of the DM. Firearms were a bit more common in the [[Spelljammer]] setting. Moving away from the classic fantasy background, there was the historical campaign sourcebook ''A Mighty Fortress'' that introduced rules for firearms of the 16th and 17th centuries and the ''Masque of the Red Death'' setting for [[Ravenloft]] pushed everything into a gothic horror version of the 1890's.

[[Dungeons_&_Dragons_3rd_Edition|D&D third edition]] has a section on advanced technology (DMG, pp162-164) for Renaissance-era, 20th century, and futuristic weapons. The weapons are more powerful than what can be found among ranged weapons in the Player's Handbook, but also heavier and more expensive. You're better off with magic crossbows.

[[Pathfinder]] greatly over complicates guns: they have shorter range than bows without magical items, take longer to reload, and have at least a 1/20 chance to break or explode every time you fire it, and use up more expensive ammunition. As though this wasn't enough, they have a stiff feat tax needed to make use of them and the fact that there's really only one major gun factory in the land, the Gunworks of the small nation of Alkenstar, and they keep most of their guns to themselves. In return they hit harder, have a ''terrifying'' 4x crit modifier, and ''use touch AC'' in the first range increment, effectively ignoring armor when fired close up. A specialized class, the [[gunslinger]], is centered around the use of firearms. [[Lasgun|Energy weapon]] specialists in Iron Gods have it a bit better, though ammo is limited for most of the adventure.

[[Dragonmech]] has guns, sort of kinda, as well. Only instead of using gunpowder, they use steam to propel the bullet like an airsoft gun. they can only be fired once every other round as the pressure needs to build up. There Treated a bit like crossbows that do more damage and can shoot a little further.

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] includes a section on firearms in the ''Dungeon Master's Guide''. They hark back to 2nd edition in terms of stats, fitting the general tone of the game, but aren't quite as punishing for a player to learn to use and make. And with the increased emphasis on houseruling and homebrewing, modding the Crossbow Expert feat to work for them seems a simple leap of logic. The "race builder" guide in the back even suggests changing around the dwarf weapon proficiencies to include them! Furthermore, if you want to get your [[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks]] on, it includes some futuristic guns as well, like lasers and disintegrators.

[[Warhammer Fantasy]] features firearms based on early real-world equivalents, like flintlock pistols, musket rifles and the blunderbuss. Although deadly and still on the experimental side, they're also considered very unreliable and are prone to misfire and sometimes even to explode. Rpg-wise, firearms were already included in the core rulebook of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition, but were later somewhat expanded in the Old World Armoury supplement. Some variations that function like firearms were also added as weapons to some Skaven classes in the Old World Bestiary supplement. Generally speaking, firearms require more costs in order to be used, as each shot requires a firearm shot (bullet) and additional gunpowder. Except for the obvious disadvantages of becoming useless once getting wet and longer reloading times, firearms deal more damage than bows and crossbows, with more complex models even having a repeater function, but obviously longer reloading times for each barrel to be loaded again.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Kingmaker problem

2019-12-12T05:19:48Z

2601:1C0:5C00:C130:798E:CBB3:E7F2:A1E4:

A common problem in games with more than two players, but don't have a 'team win' condition: You have a player who '''cannot''' win, but who '''can''' choose which of the other players '''will''' win. If he can't be a King, he can at least be the man who makes the King.

Some games compensate by either making everybody play [[Patience|Solitaire]] or hiding who's winning. [[Diplomacy|Some games don't, in order maximize backstabbing]].

Examples include:

* [[Monopoly]] players offering their property for a song in a trade.
* Strategic games (like [[Risk]] or [[Civilization]] if you want to go /v/) players going kamakazi on one player to tie them up in order to aid another.
* [[Diplomacy]], just Diplomacy.

[[Category:Gamer Slang]]

Firearm

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2601:1C0:5C00:C130:798E:CBB3:E7F2:A1E4: /* Relations here */

[[image:Shotgun After Firing.jpg|thumb|450px|right|Nothing like the smell of burnt powder in the morning]]
About twelve hundred years ago in [[China]], some people figured out that certain chemicals mixed together (such as potassium nitrate, carbon, and sulphur) rapidly combusted when brought to spark, which became known as "black powder." After some experimentation, they discovered that a tube sealed off at one end could be used to contain the pressure of said combustion and focus it into an explosion to propel an object at high speeds. After a few centuries of refinement, and invention of the frag grenade, they managed to take that mechanical principle and apply it as a weapon of warfare which changed the game: the arquebus. Comparatively cheap, easy to make, easy to learn to use, and capable of penetrating all but the heaviest armor, this marked a transition away from close quarters to ranged warfare.

In modern times, firearms are the staple weapons of any nation. Speculative fiction showcases weapons that doesn't even fire solid projectiles, like [[lasgun|lasers]].

From an engineering standpoint, firearms had a big difference from previous weapons in that they don't require the user's muscle power to work. Swords, maces, and axes are swung, spears are thrust, and bowstrings need to be drawn. Even crossbows and siege weapons work by storing muscle power via tension until it's released. The energy required to accelerate a firearm's projectile comes from explosive propellants; all the user needs to do is to hold the weapon, aim, brace themselves and set off said explosive charge. The significance of this is illustrated in the American Proverb: "God made man, Sam Colt (the inventor of the first practical revolver) made them equal." Having a reliable repeating gun means that your simple brute physical strength does not mean as much in a fight as it would in a bare knuckle brawl or a swordfight (either defensively or offensively).

The firearm's bigger bro is the [[Cannon]] and its cousin is the [[Rocket]].

==How Traditional Guns Work==
For our non-firearm oriented friends, here's a brief, heavily condensed explanation of how these murdersticks work. These instructions will probably vary depending on the type of gun you're using.

[[image:Teppo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Some Tanegashima matchlocks]]
===Olden Muzzle-Loading Guns===
====The Slow Way====
1. Put your musket in half-cock position. Take your powder flask, and pour a few grains into the flashpan. Pour some more down the barrel (amount can vary wildly; later powder flasks come with built-in measuring tools for ease of use and safety). Ram the powder, bullet, and cloth wad down the barrel of your gun. Ensure you're doing this in correct order because [[Not as Planned|putting the ball first, then powder, for example, can lead to hilarious and/or lethal results]].
 2. If you're using a matchlock gun: light up the fuse, aim and brace yourself, and lastly wait for the fuse to burn out. If you're using a flintlock gun: just cock the mechanism. With percussion caps, replace the explosive cap on the firing nipple after cocking the hammer. In any case, aim once you're done setting it up.
 3. Once the powder burns; the gasses from explosion of the black powder will send the bullet flying out of the barrel like a bat out of hell and penetrate into something or someone, and if you're lucky it might actually hit what you were aiming at. Also, hope you aren't downwind because guns during this time generated ''a lot'' of black smoke.
 4. Take stock of the situation. If you've managed to hit anyone or you're currently still in a shooting war; repeat step 1. If your firing line missed most of their shots and those barbarians are charging up your position; [[Imperial Guard|affix bayonets]].

====The Not-Quite-As-Slow Way====
1. Take your paper cartridge, and bite off the end with the powder in it. Carefully pour a few grains into the flashpan, and the rest down the barrel. Take the remainder of the cartridge, ball and paper, and ram it down the barrel.
 2. Follow steps 2 through 4 as above. Paper cartridges have the advantage of saving you a few seconds of precious time while reloading, which can mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. Another advantage is that they can be made somewhat weatherproof with a grease coating. But if you're just hunting or can't find/afford paper, most people didn't bother with the time-consuming preparations.

===Single-Action Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action (pump the slide, rack the bolt, et cetera) to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger, this will cause the hammer to strike the primer on the chambered round and cause the powder inside the shell casing to ignite and explode; sending high-pressure gases screaming out of the barrel while propelling the solid bullet out at high speed towards whatever you were aiming at. If you're using single-action flintlock guns; see above for the result.
 3. Because the gun lacks a mechanism to re-chamber itself; you now have to work the action again to eject the spent shell (unless its a revolver, in which case you do that while reloading) and load another round into the chamber. How you do this depends on the gun in question.
 4. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

===Auto-Loading Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger and this causes the same effect as stated above.
 3. Because of the mechanism of the gun; it redirects some of the forces used to propel the bullet to work it's action, eject the spent shell (unless its a DA revolver), re-chamber another round, and allow you to shoot again by just pulling the trigger. The forces used depend on the gun in question, some use a gas block to redirect some of the gasses expelled by bullets, while other uses the force of the recoil itself, to work the action and chamber another round. Additionally, it could also re-chamber itself using a mechanical sequence (like revolvers) or is electrically operated.
 4. If you're using an automatic; hold the trigger down and only release it once you want to stop shooting (or are forced to do so due to lack of ammo). If you're using a semi-automatic; pull the trigger again to fire another round.
 5. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

==A Brief History of Firearms==
'''800's:''' Taoist monks attempting to find an elixir of immortality stumbled on the next best thing: a substance that would suddenly and violently make things very dead. They'd discovered potassium nitrate (alternatively called saltpeter), a white crystalline powder that burned with a purple flame. When mixed with powders of charcoal and sulfur the resulting substance would burn instantly and aggressively on exposure to flame. It didn't take long for the Chinese to start inventing ways to use it.

[[image:Firelance.jpg‎|thumb|150px|left|The Firelance, the Chinese invention that started this all]]
'''1000s to 1200s:''' The Chinese realize they can make barbarians shit their pants by shooting hollowed arrows packed with powder and bamboo tubes filled with powder and pebbles at them. Bamboo gradually gives way to cast iron and bronze.

'''1300s:''' Various gunpowder weapons begin to proliferate westward along the Silk Road, aided by the [[Mongols]]. Crude versions of hand cannons, grenades, rockets, and flamethrowers all see use. Despite considerable psychological effect and good armor penetration, most of these weapons are only marginally more likely to kill the target than the user and had a range of only twenty or so meters. As such, their use is not widespread. For the most part, these weapons were used by skirmishers and guards. The fact that they were so dangerous meant they were mostly used by low class soldiers, and in turn this meant that the smiths making them were generally not the most skilled artisans; which did little to improve quality even given the limitations of the day. Even so, the designs and methods of manufacture were gradually refined and improved by various early gunsmiths through trial and error.

'''1400s''': Hand cannons see continued and expanded use. Bit by bit from the crude handgonnes of previous centuries, the first "true" firearms evolve with the gradual development of the matchlock, taking on the basic shape of lock, stock, trigger, and barrel (which is where we get the saying from). By clamping a lighted wick into a flashpan via a trigger, the shooter is able to aim ''and'' fire at the same time, making him markedly less likely to blow his own jimmies off. Despite advances, the matchlock was unwieldy, unreliable, and generally inferior to a good bowman. The issue of course is that only England (in Europe) HAD good bowmen; bowmen were the scum of the army everywhere else. This didn't stop some inventive commanders from seeing their potential, particularly with poorly trained conscript soldiers. [[Weeaboo|Some forces]] made a go of it by carrying two or three guns at a time and just throwing the spent ones away like a really shitty Matrix movie. Note: while we use a "weeaboo" hyperlink up there, it's worth remembering that troops like cuirassiers and even pirates would do the same thing with pistols, carrying a whole brace of them, but they just did not exist yet. By the 1400's having more then one gun was the only way to have any real rate of fire before breechloaders existed.

'''1500s:''' Guns continue to evolve with the invention of spring-loaded firing mechanisms. The wheel-lock spins a steel plate against sulfide rocks to produce sparks (think cigarette lighters), which ignites powder a flash pan. This was revolutionary, allowing soldiers to prime their weapon in a matter of seconds instead of fucking around with a lit wick, and allowed calvary to use guns for the first time while on horseback, giving rise to the cuirassiers. It also means that for the first time, guns weren't completely fucked in the rain, just mostly fucked. They also cost a lot to make and were still not completely reliable, so most people stuck with matchlocks. Powder formulas had improved considerably, including the development of the more powerful, stable, and moisture-resistant corned powder made by wetting raw gunpowder, forming it into cakes, crushing them, and sieving them for size. Japan's Oda Nobunaga was particularly notable in the history of firearms for his heavy transition from blades to guns after discovering the novelty of matchlock guns. In fact, by the end of the 1500s, they had more trained arquebusiers in their armies and produced more matchlocks than any other country to date during that period and had the most guns per capita in the world. Meanwhile, virtually every army figured out how to use a combination of volley fire in dense square formations surrounded by pikemen (called Pike and Shot); making armored cavalry, crossbows, & longbows outdated. Accuracy still sucked but that was what the massed shooting was meant to compensate for.

[[image:FlintlockMechanism.jpg‎|thumb|200px|right|The flintlock mechanism. Now you did not need to light some string and put it into a serpentine before firing]]
'''1600s''' The wheellock is refined into the simpler and more reliable flintlock, though it would take some time to supersede the matchlock. Muzzle loading is simplified with the creation of paper cartridges, essentially the pre-measured cake mix of murder. Some German dudes came up with the idea of cutting spirals into the barrel, which they called "rifling," to spin-stabilize the bullet so that they wouldn't have to walk up right next to their targets to hit them, but this required a barrel tighter than a nun's cunt, a hammer to ram the ball in, and grooved bullets made for the gun so it could fit the rifling of the gun like the cap to a soda bottle. To put all that into perspective: well-trained musketeers could fire three to four shots a minute, while a rifleman could only manage one shot every minute. Not great, however the idea of spin-stabilisation hung around and payed off in later times.

'''1700s''': The French invent the bayonet, allowing their troops to be [[choppa|choppy]] while they were [[dakka|shooty]]. Thus, the Pike and Shot formation became the Bayonet and Shot formation. That and refinement of tactics led to the dense but slow and cumbersome square formations being reformed into thinner but more responsive rectangle formations. This is the point where gun infantry tactics become the dominant (though still not only) form of fighting when guns go from one a few common infantry weapons to the primary weapon used by most infantry. Formations of musketeers go from big square blocks to lines two or three ranks thick to put enough bullets in the enemy's ranks as quickly as possible.
[[image:Chassepot.jpg‎|thumb|200px|left|The mechanism of a French Chassepot, an early bolt action rifle, as well as its paper cartridge]]

'''1800s''': Pretty much everything that makes up a modern firearm is invented here. Some fool came up with an explosive that would go off if you slam a hammer into it, which led to the first explosive primers. So flintlocks transitioned to percussion caps. This basically involves putting explosives in ur explosives to explode your explosives. Eventually, standardized methods of making copper & later brass casing replaced paper cartridges & made gas leakage in breechloading mechanisms a thing of the past. Cartridges that contain a primer, propellant, and slug, similar to modern-day bullets, are developed. With this, not only was loading ammunition simplified with a package that contained everything needed for a gun to fire, it also made it waterproof & easier for conscripts to load. Furthermore, the brass casing’s small expansion when firing served to seal the firing chamber to prevent hot gases from leaking and burning users’ hands. By this time, wars were largely fought using firearms rather than melee weapons, though also by this time firearms were also melee weapons as in the early 1800s the bayonet charge was still both an accepted and useful tactic.

By the late 1800 inventors had finally gotten the technology to contain the force of the gunpowder explosion with a tight seal and do so cheaply. Experiments that had been done earlier like the Puckle gun (1718), Ferguson rifle (1776), and even the bizarre 1780 Girandoni Air Rifle, [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Steampunk which was an air gun with a 20 round magazine], all failed to create breech loading rifles cheaply. See, despite that it was well known that that slotting in bullets from the rear and using a mechanism to load it into the chamber is much simpler than spending about half a minute to ram it down a long barrel, the technology was just not there as without cheap steel (cheap is important for hand guns you are going to mass-produce), getting iron to contain the explosion without deforming and leaking gas, thus weakening the shot, was a nightmare. The Industrial Revolution, among other things, gave birth to the concept of "breech-loading" and later "magazines" and simpler mechanised feeding systems like tubes, slides, cylinders, and bolt-actions. The likes of pump-action shotguns, bolt-action rifles, and lever-action rifles, and revolver and semi-automatic pistols, are developed and/or developed upon, giving a glimpse on how weapons in the future would function. Near the end of the decade, some French guys worked out that they could both improve firepower and keep their guns considerably cleaner by replacing black powder with nitrocellulose, the first of many "smokeless powders."

Just as important as the new designs that came about during this period were the new methods of production. People like Eli Whitney worked out devices such as milling machines, which allowed for the quick production of finely tuned parts which were so close in size that you could take one bit off one gun, stick it on another from the same line, and it would work just as fine. Breech loading and repeating firearms had existed for centuries beforehand, but were not cost effective to mass-produce until the Industrial Revolution.
[[image:Lee-Enfield Rifle.jpg|thumb|200px|right|A British Lee-Enfield Bolt Action Repeating rifle]]
This is also the time where the first "automatic" guns were invented and put into production. The word "automatic" is in quotes because these early machine guns were not self-reciprocating; they did not load and fire themselves and were instead manually powered. The most famous (and successful) of these weapons is the Gatling gun, which saw limited action in the American Civil War, but became much more widely used the world over in subsequent wars. But while it was the most famous, the Gatling was not the only manual machine gun developed; dozens of different types were produced during the US Civil War alone on both sides, but because these guns tended to be mounted on cannon carriages they were treated like cannons instead of the close support weapon machines guns are, so it took some time for them to hit their stride.

'''1900-early 1930s''': The heyday of guns because of the advent of WW1. The idea of bolt-action rifles are popularized, along with semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Bolt-action rifles meant that riflemen no longer had to be confined to shooting one round at a time before needing to reload as they could now load individual clips that contained 5-10 rounds a piece. Machine guns are now becoming more and more popular in the battlefields, drastically changing the way infantry would maneuver the battlefield as a single MG emplacement can effectively cripple platoons with the right positioning. Submachine guns, the first automatic infantry weapon, are developed by the German Empire and issued to their stormtroopers, giving the rest of the world an idea of the wonders of a lightweight fully-automatic weapon that could easily be used by infantrymen, which was previously restricted to crew-served heavy machine guns. Not liking to be one-upped, the Americans came up with the trench gun (a 6 shot, pump-action renforced shotgun with a bayonet that was pure murder in the confines of a trench) that ultimately evolved into the modern combat shotgun.

On the subject of the machine guns, if there was ever a weapon that represented this part of history it would be the heavy machine gun. To go back to an early quote "God made man, Sam Colt made them equal and John Browning (designer of a large number of machine guns including the m2 .50 cal or 12.7mm) made them civilized!". We talked about the hand powered machine guns above, and while good when used correctly, these weapons have their issues. In order to use most of them, you had to be standing up to turn the crank and sustained fire was tiring, but the hand cranked guns had one major advantage: the most successful of the hand-cranked guns, like the Gatling or Gardner, had multiple barrels meaning you can fire them with little or no need to stop to let the barrels cool down. At the dawn of the 20th century, this is what the early machine guns had to be compared to when European generals went window shopping. The solution was water-cooling, which allowed machine guns to fire for countless hours with little or no failures, but at the cost of weight rendering them truly static, though highly effective, weapons. If you could point to two developments that caused the First World War's trench warfare, you can point to water-cooled machine guns and barbed wire.

'''late 1930s-1940s''': At the start of World War II, all of the powers involved, France, England, Germany, and Russia, were armed with bolt action weapons. Over the course of the war, automatic and semi-automatic rifles started to become more common; however, only the Americans completely phased out bolt-action rifles for standard infantry by the time of the war (Marines and Army units in the Pacific Front were stuck with the old stuff for a few months due to the Germany First policy). Submachine guns are now becoming more popular with various armies around the world, making it the staple lightweight automatic weapon for infantry troops, totally redefining urban combat due to the weapon's great effectiveness in close combat. Nazi Germany invents the ''Sturmgewehr 44'', the first widely produced assault rifle (the Fedorov Avtomat was the first to be put into service, introduced in 1915, but production was limited due to costs). This weapon would later become the template for modern assault rifles used by the world over.
[[image:QBZ-95.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A QBZ-95 Assault Rifle, the current service rifle of the People's Republic of China, note bullpup configuration (the magazine feeds behind the trigger), thus saving space]]
'''1950s-1990s''': With World War II over, the armies of the world had a chance to study Germany's assault rifle and built their own. The key invention was selective fire, which allowed a single weapon to serve as a traditional rifle or a somewhat long and unwieldy submachine gun. Burst fire was also developed, intended to fire a grouping of rounds to defeat personal body armor but automatically stop before the recoil of fully automatic fire would have a significant impact on aim. The USSR's entry was the AK-47, which was powerful, easy to mass produce, and legendarily tolerant of mistreatment after briefly flirting with the SKS (a semiautomatic carbine fed by stripper clips). On the other side of the world, the US briefly experimented with an automatic version of the M1 known as the M14, before (mostly) getting their shit together and developing the M16, which was expensive, complicated, and notoriously finicky. One thing not to be underestimated is the standardization introduced by NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Gone were incompatible calibers unique to each nation, and in their place were a single pistol caliber (9x19 for NATO, unless you were an American snowflake, and 9x18 for Pact.), a single intermediate caliber (5.56x45 for NATO, 7.62x39 for Pact, later 5.45x39 in certain Pact countries), a single full power rifle cartridge (7.62x51 for NATO, unless you were a French snowflake, and the venerable 7.62x54 for Pact), and heavy machine gun cartridge (.50 BMG for NATO and 12.7×108mm for Pact) for small arms. Even before NATO standardization was officially a thing, many western countries eagerly armed themselves with American surplus M1 Garands and M1 Carbines, which greatly simplified things.

'''2000s''': With the invention of more advanced materials such as plastics and carbon fiber, along with numerous technological advancements of the modern world, firearms are... basically the same they've been for the last fifty years, just usually lighter and with more options. Serious efforts were made to look at new designs like caseless ammo and fused smart grenade bullets, but most went nowhere. The most significant development in firearm technology was the advent of practical ranged tasers; essentially wired dart launchers with high voltage capacitors, they're the first handguns ostensibly intended for less lethal force (occasional heart attacks not withstanding) that weren't a total joke (like pistol caliber tear gas rounds).

'''2010s''': Development of more robust weapons (such as the POF P416 and HK 416), modularity (FB MSBS, similar to the ACR with the variation count of a Lasgun), practical telescopic and caseless ammo (LSAT project), and ship cannon sized railguns (The Naval Research Laboratory currently working with a practical version, i.e. can reload at the same rates as an Abrams 120mm loader). Apparently, it can fires rounds with 32 megajoules of energy, or 23,601,988 foot-pounds.) So apparently even in 2017, we outpace the Imperium in development, makes you wonder what the Dark Age of Technology holds. Few of these have progressed far enough to get fielded and may just be dead ends. The main innovation at this time comes from optics, where even cheap sights makes the professional equipment of old look like crap. Also cheap rifle parts and market (at least for Americans) due to advances in manufacturing. No seriously, you can get a basic AR for $500 or even just make it yourself from parts for less than $400 (Firearms are taxed 10-11%, parts are not. Thus there is significant savings by only buying a small block of aluminum as a "firearm".), and that's if you aren't diving into sub-milspec stuff. New designer rounds to outpace rounds such as the 5.56 and .308 in performance are also coming out, such 6.5 Grendel, 6.5 MPC, .224 Valkyrie, .300 Winchester Magnum, and so on. These only see widespread uses among snipers however, as the cost of replacing existing guns and ammo for what is a marginal increase in performance is of questionable budget use.

[[File:LSAT telescopic ammo.png|200px|thumb|right| An example of humanity developing practical telescopic ammo. Designed to be light weight while not compromising muzzle energy, it'll bring much benefit to anyone needing to bearing the ammunition (assuming the kinks are worked out).]]

Many countries around the world are now looking for new ways to either improve or adapt combustion-based firearms as a whole, and are looking for ways to make what were once sci-fi-only ammo and weaponry, such as [[lasgun|laser]], [[plasma]], direct energy overall (involving the last two), [[gauss]], telescopic/caseless ammo, and more, a reality. While met with some degree of success, nobody (pardoning America, 'cause you gotta do something with that large budget) has found a way yet for these weapons to be man-portable (or cost-effective in the case of telescopic and caseless ammo) that a single soldier could carry these into combat or be affordable/reliable to an extent that it would be more feasible to make these instead of the traditional ballistic weaponry. There is also the problem that if you get a hard projectile (think tungsten and steel) going fast enough, it will just over-penetrate and go through a target, doing little actual damage as compared to our modern bullets that hit, create a temporary cavity the size of a dinner plate, then tumble going through the target sideways (which means that against unarmored targets your average 5.56 round would likely do comparable damage to a bolt round). Rounds that fragment and inbuilt post-penetration destabilization fix this, however the main point here is that there is little reason to equip your soldiers with some [[Bolter|fancy dandy overly complex and costing a half-million dollar gun and ammo]] when a [[Lasgun|good ol' service rifle and some traditional ammo costing a few hundred bucks]] will allow them to do their job just fine. Leading off from the previous statement, even if such projects were successful, there is a strong point to be made that, as least as far as infantry weapons are concerned, chemical-based firearms will remain both cost effective and lethal enough to last at least another century or two, if not longer. While elite units will certainly benefit from new developments, the ordinary grunt will have to wait until they become cheap enough to mass produce. Most modern work is either completely experimental, or fine tuning already present technologies with developments from other areas.

== GUN SAFETY ==
Should be self-evident, but to be frank it isn't. Between the movies having actors brandishing guns everywhere, the video games and toys like airsoft that make them look more harmless than they are and plain human ignorance and negligence; people forget that they're holding something that could easily scatter someone's brains or outright remove their skull.

That said, there are four main rules to gun safety.
*Muzzle sweep: Avoid this. Muzzle sweep is one when points or sweeps a gun in a direction onto people or objects that could get harmed. To avoid this, one should keep the gun's barrel pointed away from anything that you don't intend to destroy or value. This means one must be conscious of where they are pointing it. Or in other words, '''never point the gun at something you don't want to shoot!'''

*'''Treat every firearm as if they were loaded at all times.''' Even if you fully know the gun is empty after removing the magazine and checking the chamber, still treat it as if it wasn't. This creates a force of habit so that if you are ever in a rush/interrupted while handling your gun/given a weapon by someone else/whatever... you will avoid any mishaps and tragedies that could arise because you think the gun is empty where it actually isn't.

*'''Know the target, what's in front of the target, and what's behind the target.''' Remember, bullets are designed to punch holes in things. Even if you've got pinpoint accuracy, the bullet might go right through the target and kill some guy who's just minding his own business. This is why any self-respecting firing range has a thick wall or a pile of packed-down dirt behind the targets. Bullets that don't punch through the target and don't shatter (like frangible rounds made of sintered metal) can ricochet back at the shooter or others around them. For this reason, shooting at metal targets is usually done with the targets angled down.

*Trigger discipline: '''Never put your finger on the trigger unless you want to kill/destroy whatever you're pointing your gun at.''' Also pretty much self-explanatory.

Easy, right? Well... apparently not. Ask any gun enthusiast and they'll gladly tell you all sorts of horror stories that happened because [[That Guy|somebody]] failed to follow these simple rules.

And for the love of the God-Emperor, don't be a fucking tool and mix alcohol/drugs and firearms together. Doing so, very, very unsurprisingly results in the breaking of one or more of the aforementioned rules.

==Types of firearms==
Having been around for well over 1500 years there have been many types of firearms over the course of time. Humans are, if anything, very inventive when it comes to coming up with new and interesting ways to kill each other. A rough list are:

===Ye Olde Gonnes===
*Firelance: Oldest of the Oldschool guns, simple bamboo tubes stuffed with gunpowder and pebbles used in the Ten Kingdoms period and the Song Dynasty. One inaccurate spray of flaming fuck-off in close quarters, often tied to a spear.

*Handgonne: A catch-all term for a primitive gun without a lock that need their powder charges. Majority of these guns were handcannons, as in literal man-portable artillery pieces that had a 50/50 chance of either working or malfunctioning, the worst of which would be the gun exploding in the shooter's face.

*Arquebus - A basic matchlock Firearm. A note of clarification: 'Arquebus' and 'musket' are both used to describe firearms from this time and they are often used interchangeably. But if you want to be ''really'' technical in this period an Arquebus is a regular two handed matchlock firearm while a musket is a larger heavier gun firing a larger projectile, sometimes up to an inch in diameter. Latter (about 1700 onward) musket would refer to any muzzleloading long barreled handheld firearm used for mainly shooting solid shots. This is not too much of a big deal and is nothing to get mad about, but it is worth noting.

*Musket - Today, the musket is a catch-all term for all early smoothbore, shoulder-fired, muzzle-loaded firearms. Technically this isn't the case, the musket was an improved Arquebus, one of the earliest muzzle-loaded guns. However because of romanticism and literature; people who aren't acquainted with firearms will commonly refer to any muzzle-loaded long weapon as a musket (about the same reason why most people today refer to any automatic weapon as a machine gun). Muskets were inaccurate as people have yet to put serious research into firearm ballistics, generated a lot of smoke due to primitive gunpowder mixtures, and were temperamental to environmental conditions (rain will pretty much render a musket into an wet stick of wood), but still enjoyed a lot of popularity due to their lethality and ease of use compared to other man-portable ranged weapons at the time. Muskets were quickly phased out once rifles became a feasible thing, who did what a musket could do, but better. Muskets were categorized by what firing mechanism was used in the lock:
:*The earliest versions used matchlocks, which fired by poking a slow-burning fuse into the firing chamber. These were fairly unreliable and somewhat hazardous since you had a smouldering fuse close to the flashpan when you were reloading.
:* Flintlocks replaced matchlocks, which ignited by generating sparks when it struck the iron frizzen, igniting the powder in the flashpan. The flint would periodically break and need replacing, but it was still safer than a matchlock.
:* With the invention of the percussion cap came the Caplock, or Cap & Ball. This was the final evolution before breachloading became widespread. The cap would be fitted onto a tube to the firing chamber after the musket was loaded. Caplock firearms did not generate sparks in and of themselves; rather, they used a simple hammer to strike the cap, which would in turn ignite the powder in the firing chamber. Far more contained than flintlock, until the fully self-contained cartridge superseded it entirely.

*Multi-barreled gun - In the olden days, people wanted more dakka launched at enemies, but things like magazines and self-loading weapons were still an alien idea during its time. So as an alternative people took a breach/muzzle-loaded firearm, slapped one or more barrels onto it, and reworked the trigger so they can fire more shots before needing to reload. This resulted in some particularly wacky times for guns. To this day, the only multi-barrel weapon still commonly used (disregarding military rifles with underslung grenade launchers, door breaching shotguns, or rotating barrel Gatling-style guns) is the double-barreled hunting shotgun. Some notable guns were volley guns called ribauldequin, which were a line of infantry dudes without most of the dudes. The problem was that this took very long to load, because you have 2 or two people ramming shit rather than 20 dudes each loading. So, that was a colossal fail in a long term artillery exchange, but quite effective for countering a charge when all you need is one volley to make mincemeat out of that cavalry coming at you.

===Modern Firearms===
*Handgun - Also called "pistols", handguns are small-sized firearms that can be comfortably fired in one hand (hence the name). Handguns are mainly used for close defense and as a sidearm, making them akin to daggers. Modern pistol calibers are commonly between 8mm and 11mm, although popular magnum rounds like the .50 GI and .50AE are also exist for handguns (albeit they tend to be large, heavy, and likely to fuck up your wrist from the recoil).
:*Machine pistol - A machine pistol is a handgun that can fire in either bursts or in full-auto. While they're commonly thrown into that category, machine pistols are not submachine guns due to their size and use. Machine-pistols are not in widespread use with traditional military forces as SMGs and PDWs do better damage and have a longer range, but they remain popular with personnel like bodyguards, who require a highly portable but powerful sidearm.
:*Derringer - Another case of the concept being named after its inventor, "derringer" refers to tiny pistols, often used as concealed or backup sidearms, that could fit into the palm of your hand. These things have been around since the 19th century and were single-shot, though could have multiple barrels to fire off more shots before reloading, which were fired in a sequence. Due to their size and intended use (i.e: shooting someone while literally next to them); derringers typically used small rounds like .22 and below. But if you ''really'' wanted someone dead (and your wrists obliterated); some packed larger shots like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COP_.357_Derringer .357 magnum rounds].
:*Pocket Pistol - Modern versions of the derringer, those are really small handguns or revolvers that sacrifice range and ammo count in order to be as small and easily concealed as possible. Also called "subcompacts".

*Revolver - A revolving gun is any weapon that uses a revolving cylinder to load new rounds after every shot. While its commonly now relegated to pistols (a revolver typically meant a revolver pistol these days) the style is still used for some shotguns (like the Armsel Striker) and grenade launchers (like the MM1-Hawk). Revolvers are still in use for a few reasons: they're simple and cheap to make, can easily be used by left and right-handed shooters (since spent casings aren't automatically ejected like in the case of modern firearms) and is still pretty robust compared to today's modern weapons as fewer mechanisms means fewer points of failure. Downside is that they have very limited ammunition space (because the gun was made around the cylinder you can't expand it like how you can with detachable magazines, so you either had a gun with 5-8 rounds or a bulky gun with a 12-round cylinder) and reload time (revolvers in all generations were a pain in the ass to reload. If you had an old revolver with a loading gate; you had to eject each round by hand, ''then'' load new rounds. If you had a newer one; you had to empty the cylinder, load the rounds, then cock the hammer. This is in contrast to modern guns where you just had to eject the magazine, load a new one, and charge the weapon). Thanks to the American old west era and subsequent movies about it, revolver-styled handguns have achieved a kind of rustic yet sleek appeal to them. Revolvers come in generally the same calibers as handguns, from the modest .22 Long Rifle used for practicing and target shooting to the behemoth .500 S&W Magnum which can put down a bear. "Snubnose" revolvers refer to revolvers with shortened barrels in an attempt to make them more compact.
:* Top Break - A revolver with a hinged frame that opens to expose the cylinder. Top breaks were originally designed for cavalry, as they are very easy to load. However, the two piece frame is a weakness that limits the power of cartridge that can be used.
:* Swing Arm - By far the most common type of revolver, the swing arm mounts the cylinder on a moving arm known as a crane, which allows the cylinder to be exposed for loading. The chief limitation of the swing arm design is that the crane can bend over time and due to rough handling.
:* Gate Loading - Named for their loading gate, these revolvers can only expose one cylinder for reloading a a time, with the spent casing being pushed out through the gate by a long ejector rod. Gate loading revolvers are the earliest style for cartridge revolvers, dating back to conversions of percussion cap revolvers. Gate loading revolvers are now rare except for reproductions and revolvers designed to big cartridges. The fixed cylinder is the strongest possible configuration of revolver and thus the most tolerant of high power ammunition.

*Submachine gun - A submachine gun (abbreviated to SMG) is a fully automatic weapon that fires pistol cartridges instead of the larger rifle cartridges. One of the first true fully automatic infantry weapons outside of the machine gun, hence the name. The weapon fulfills a similar role of the carbine, striking a balance between firepower, recoil, and bulk. They also make good stealth weapons, as most pistol rounds are subsonic with heavier bullets and thus much quieter when suppressed.

:*Personal Defense Weapon - A PDW is a bit of a mix of a carbine and an SMG, firing specialized cartridges with rifle-like characteristics (usually in the 4-5mm range, shorter than a rifle cartridge but longer than a pistol cartridge) at the cost of additional weight. Its original role is as its name implies; a personal defense weapon for nonfrontline infantry, like artillery spotters, scouts, vehicle crews, commandos, etc. Back in the day PDWs weren't necessarily automatic; a pistol with a longer barrel and mounted stock could be classified as a PDW (This was done with the German C96 and Luger P07), today however these would qualify as "pistol carbines". These days PDWs are commonly lumped into the same category as SMGs, as they now fulfill similar roles.

*[[Shotgun]] - Shotguns are smoothbore weapons (as in the barrel is not rifled) designed to fire either shot (multiple steel or lead pellets) or slugs (a single, heavy projectile), although modern times have included other types of ammunition. The ability to fire multiple types of ammunition without modification is one of the main advantages to using a shotgun; converting an anti-infantry weapon into a door-breaching tool, a mini-flamethrower, or a less-lethal weapon with but a switch of the munitions. The vast majority of shotguns are pump-action or breech-loading, though as of 1905 shotguns can come in semi-automatic or fully-automatic configurations, but sheer variety of shell loads makes their reliability highly ammo dependant. For more information see the [[shotgun]] page. The most common bore size for shotguns is 12 gauge (about 18.5mm). Confusingly, higher gauges are lower in size because its based on weight of spheres of lead rather than diameter; a 20 gauge is about 15.6mm, while a 10 gauge is 19.7mm (.410 bore exists outside this and is .410 inch/10.4 mm/67 bore).

*Rifle - Rifles were originally shoulder-fired weapons that had their barrels "rifled" to increase precision, by putting spiral grooves into the barrel in order to have the bullet spin before leaving the barrel; reducing it's wind resistance (otherwise known as drag) and giving it more momentum as it leaves that muzzle. In ye olden days, these were specialist weapons given to marksmen while the common soldier carried a musket. However, because all modern non-shotgun non-explosive firearms now use rifling to improve ballistics, the term is usually reserved for a shoulder-fired long weapon, designed for accurate fire.
:*Assault Rifle - Assault rifles are a term given to any rifle that can be fired on full-auto and shoot intermediate-caliber rounds, typically in the 5mm range (or a shortened 7mm round if you're from the Eastern bloc). This is usually the standard weapon of a non-specialized front-line infantryman. The STG44 is considered to be the earliest one fielded in industrial quantity, though the idea has been around since at least the first World War.
:*Battle Rifle - Basically the assault rifle's big brother; battle rifles are bigger automatic rifles designed to fire high-caliber rounds, typically in the 7mm range. These were the mainstay for armies in the 1950s, but the US eventually found out that giving infantry rifles with smaller rounds is better since its lighter and can allow infantry to be more accurately engage enemies better due to lower recoil (albeit at the cost of power), so battle rifles were replaced by assault rifles for front-line use and battle rifles were relegated to specialists like marksmen or support gunners (who's job permits for a slower-firing but more powerful weapon). The M1918 BAR may count as one, though the first occurred no latter than 1942's FG42.
:*Carbine - A carbine is a compact rifle, primarily designed to be used in close quarters. In most cases, carbines are based from a parent rifle, and are scaled down by using lighter/smaller parts and shortening the barrel (such as in the case of the American M16 vs M4) or is its own weapon (like the Korean K1A). These are typically given to units who need to engage the enemy at close range and need a rifle for the job, like commandos, assault teams, or other specialist units, or given to units who are not expected to fight on the front but need a compact but decent weapon to defend themselves if the need arises, like pilots or vehicle crews. Carbine may also refer to pistol-caliber semi-automatic weapons that are longer than a pistol, but this is typically only used in the civilian market. The concept of a carbine predates modern firearms, though they existed primarily for cavalry.
:*Micro Assault Rifle - Even smaller than carbines; these are ultracompact rifles designed when someone needs a highly portable but powerful weapon. A MAR is basically a PDW that shoots actual rifle rounds. Much like carbines; a MAR can either be based on a parent rifle and scaled down or made as its own weapon. These tend to have low effectiveness for standard calibers, since those were designed for full length barrels, but the logistics of supply are superior.
:*Sniper Rifle - A sniper rifle is a special precision rifle, specifically designed to engage targets at extreme range with lethal efficiency. Many sniper rifles use standard 7.62mm rounds, but high-performance rifles will use more potent rounds up to 12.7mm rounds for extra range and stopping power. Preferably, sniper rifles should use match-grade ammunition to provide consistency and accuracy at high extended ranges. The vast majority are bolt-action for simplicity and power (much more reliable and because all the gasses are diverted into the barrel, rather than some being diverted to work the action; the gun can launch the bullet farther and faster), but there are also a decent number of semi-automatic ones. Sniper rifles are given to special marksmen called "snipers", who are capable of engaging the enemy from extreme distances, usually well away from the scrap.
:*Designated Marksman Rifle - A sort of compromise between battle rifles and sniper rifles, DMRs are precision weapons meant to be used by frontline infantry to accurately engage distant targets that regular infantry weapons cannot. Due to its role, it's generally more accurate than a rifleman's gun, but usually not as effective as an actual sniper's gun (DMRs are usually only effective within 1 kilometer, while SRs are typically effective beyond 1 kilometer). Generally speaking, DMRs avoid using the more high-performance rounds that snipers may use, as it may be detrimental for an infantryman's role.
:*Recoiless - Not a conventional gun in most senses; a recoilless gun (models with rifling are called "Recoiless rifles" though people often miss this distinction) is as the title suggest, a rifled weapon without (or at least reduced) recoil. It does this by basically being a cannon with the back taken off. When loaded the cartridge sits in an open back tube, there is no breach. When fired, the explosion propels the shell out the tube, but an equal amount of gas comes out the other side canceling out the recoil. This means that total muzzle velocity is lower than a cannon with a breech on it, but they make up for it by shooting bigger shells, and with HEAT shells (thanks to the nature of the Munroe effect) the wider the diameter of the shell the more effective it is, meaning even a large slow moving projectile can do a great amount of damage to tanks.
:*Anti-Tank/Materiel Rifle - Essentially modern elephant guns; these rifles are geared towards destroying tanks and hard objects, although they are very much still capable of demolishing infantry (albeit overkill since rifles of this type tend to outright cause body parts to explode by the sheer amount of force they carry.). Anti-tank rifles were the norm for years (From the 1910s to the late 1970s) as they were a cheap yet effective way of getting rid of tanks, but advancements in vehicle armor has largely rendered AT rifles obsolete (atlest for anti-tank roles, these things can still royally murder lightly-armored vehicles and urban housing, thus why they can be seen in use today). Anti-materiel rifles however, are a bit of an offshoot of AT rifles, and are still in use today. They are often used to take out lighter vehicles, to detonate ordnance at a safe distance or fuck up anything valuable to the other side like radars, communication devices, heavy weapons, etc... They have been successfully used against light boats and even to down the occasional helicopter. Likewise, they have been used by both professional and paramilitary forces due in thanks to their ability to annihilate cover (and hopefully what's behind it) where most conventional small arms won't.
:*Elephant Gun - A rifle that fires a ludicrously heavy bullet, usually as a single shot but rarely as a bolt action. As the name implies, these were developed to bring down big game like elephants, but eventually became the precursors to anti-material rifles. Unlike the later, range or penetration aren't big concerns so much as delivering a massive amount of energy to a soft-skinned target. While hunting elephants may be illegal today, a large caliber weapon is still useful for defense against large predators like bears or lions, who would shrug off a smaller 5.56mm or 7.62mm to the body. Firing such a heavy weapon while standing or even sitting isn't a pleasant experience; without the right stance, it'll go flying once you pull the trigger.
:*Everything else - Except sniper rifles and most Designated Marksman Rifles, all of the above rifles are generally "military-grade" and thus are generally not available to the public (unless you are in '''The Great United States Of America'''*, *NFA restrictions apply). Any other type of rifle will typically be called a "sporting rifle" or "hunting rifle", etc and are either bolt-action or semi-automatic. Technically speaking, most "military-grade" firearms can be modified to become semi-automatic to allow for use within the public.

*Machine Gun - Colloquially a machine gun is a large automatic weapon (though technically anything fully-automatic, ranging from a machine pistol all the way up to auto-cannons), typically fed from a magazine or a belt (or both, as is the case with the M249) and meant to either be man-portable or fired from an emplacement or mount like a tripod or turret. The main difference between MGs and the rest of the automatic weapon family is that an MG is a gun meant to fire with longer continuous bursts as a support weapon; meaning that the machine gunner applies continuous suppression fire at the enemy to keep them down (and occasionally kill those stupid enough to not get the message), while the rest of the squad maneuver. Machine guns are generally heavier, not only because of the volume of ammo they carry; but their parts (such as the barrel) are made of heavier materials so that the gun can withstand the punishing amounts of bullets it puts downrange (firing hundreds of rounds without pause can cause guns to overheat and malfunction, even catch fire or explode in the worst of scenarios, unless they're built for such a task.) Even then, barrel changes occur frequently to change warped and damaged barrels.
:*Light Machine Gun - an LMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same intermediate rounds as assault rifles. They are intended to be almost as portable as a rifle (as in, they can be shouldered, but get better performance with a bipod) and allow machine gunners to provide suppressing fire at the squad level. Some LMGs are magazine-fed rifles with heavier barrels and modified bolts (such as the RPK), or else scaled-down MMGs (such as the M249 SAW).
:*Medium Machine Gun - an MMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same full-power rounds as battle rifles. These tend to push the limit of what's practical for a man-portable weapon, and when deployed are usually fired from a stationary position either on a bipod or tripod due to the recoil they generate. These weapons usually overlap with General Purpose Machine Guns and tend to be deployed at the company level or as a vehicle weapon.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (classic) - The definition of an HMG has changed a bit over the last 100 years so the catagory has been split up into two category's. The classical heavy machine gun is exclusively meant to be fired from emplacements and mounts like a tripod due to their large size and weight and was designed to be fired from a fixed position: constantly, just spitting out bullets for days. Often done with the aid of a water jacket which further increased the weight of the weapon. These are the guns that created the quagmire of the great war. Their heavy weight made them impossible for an infantryman to fire on the move (regardless of what you hear; even Hollywood couldn't make these monsters man-portable in their movies, and those fire low-powered blank rounds and is being held by the like of [[Sly Marbo|Sylvester Stallone]]). But that weight also greatly limited their maneuverability and forced them to stay in a static defensive position. Usage outside of vehicle mounts died off when artillery became more precise and could easily wipe out immobile emplacements. Unlike modern heavy machine guns, classical ones used a standard sized rifle cartridge, the vickers for example used the .303 bullet same as the standard rifle of the day, what made them 'heavy' was the focus on sustained shooting to throw back waves of attacking infantry. Examples include the Maxim gun, Hotchkiss Mle 1914 and the Vickers.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (Modern): a modern heavy machine gun is not designed to fire constantly, but to fire a big bullet. Only slightly too small to qualify for the definition of 'cannon' are weapons like the M2 browning .50 caliber, or 12.7 mm machine gun. Modern HMG's are powerful enough to penetrate light armor and damage fragile equipment on heavy armor (like scopes), making them formidable weapons. Examples of modern HMG's are the Russian DHSK and the American M2 Browning.
:*General Purpose Machine Gun - Essentially a machine gun that can perform multiple roles of the previous stated. Examples of this are the German MG34 (arguably the first of this concept) and MG42/MG3, or (from an American prospective) the American M60 and M240, which can reliably serve both infantry-level support weapon and mounted gun roles by fitting them with the appropriate parts. The first ones used the general rifle cartridge, while modern examples are in 7.62x51 NATO or its equivalents.
::*Squad Automatic Weapon - An attempt to make a GPMG that use the intermediate cartridges everyone else in the squad used. Despite the weaknesses of intermediate cartridges (limited range, low barrier penetration/destruction), they is still commonly used by virtue of their reduced logistical requirements and lighter weight compared to other man-portable LMG variants. The RPD, RPK and M249/SAW/MINIMI family are the main entries here, though it seems every modern assault rifle has tried to make a SAW variant with varying degrees of success.
:::*Infantry Automatic Rifle - A more recent concept that seeks to combine the continuous firing properties of a machine gun with an assault rifle's accuracy and ease of use. So far only attempted seriously by the US Marine Corp with the M27; while the higher-ups are pleased with it so far, there is considerable debate about whether its lower rate of fire compared to the M249 will make it less effective at providing suppressing fire.
:*Rotary Machine Gun - Originally known as the "Gatling gun", man's first known attempt to have enough [[dakka]]; a rotary machine gun is an automatic weapon that uses revolving barrels that interchange every time the gun fires off a round. The kicker to this is that it allows the gun to shoot with little threat of the barrels wearing out as they interchange between shots; giving them a small window to cool off before firing again. The end result is a gun capable of firing over 3,000 rounds per minute without fail, or in a smaller scope; 50 rounds per second. Modern rotary guns are electrically powered to allow them to reach such insane speeds, and are given ammo drums that contain thousands of rounds to be able to sustain that amount of bullets being fired; so they're confined to static emplacements and vehicles (unlike what the media constantly portrays; these things are not even close to being man-portable without assistance from powered armor.) These types of guns are used almost exclusively on aircraft or anti-aircraft emplacements, as they're the only non-missile weapon that can reliably hit fast-moving aircraft. But a rotary gun that fires 30mm rounds is powerful enough to tear tanks in two, as well (metaphorically, they only have to penetrate top armor and rate of fire helps). Unlike what the movies would tell you a rotary machine gun does not need a long spinup time to get to full speed: when the trigger is pulled the gun starts to spin and fire immediately.
:*Chain gun - A chain gun is a machine gun that is fed using an electric motor. Instead of relying on the gasses from the bullet to work the action to cycle a new round; a machine automatically ejects and loads a new round in after firing a shot. Chain guns have the benefit of never jamming due to feeding failures, as even if the round is not discharged; the machine pops it out and loads a new one regardless. However, it is also not man-portable as it requires an electric motor to function, so it is only found on fixed emplacements or vehicles. Can easily fuck up any poor shmucks day by perforating the boat or car they are in. People sometimes use the words "chain gun" and "rotary machine gun" interchangably, but chain guns are typically single-barreled, as they don't need the high rate of fire that rotary guns do outside of anti-air guns.

===Actions===
"Action" refers to how ammunition is loaded into the weapon.

*Single-shot: The first and oldest of all; a single-shot weapon is when users manually load rounds into the chamber. This can be anything from loading a new round, cocking the weapon every shot, or pumping the action.
**Muzzle-loaded: The earliest form of how weapons were loaded. This meant you had to load a new round directly into the muzzle, which is where the bullets come out. In its earliest form; muzzle-loaded guns were complicated to arm; you had to fuck around with a wad, powder, and slug. In the heat of battle, you had to ram these down the barrel of your gun in the correct order, light the wick, then aim before the gun goes off. And you had to do all this while standing in the open within firing range of your enemy.
**Breach-loaded; An upgrade over muzzle-loading and developed shortly after cartridges were invented; breach loaders are where the bottom of the barrel can be unhinged so that you can load a new round into it. It is still a popular setup for multi-barreled shotguns. Certain revolvers are breach-loaded as well, but given the size and design of the revolver, this gives them a notable weak point at the top of the weapon where the parts connect together.
**Bolt-action: This type of action is where you pull the charging handle of a weapon, every time you shoot so that the mechanism would chamber a new round. These were pretty popular in WW1 and continues to be used today for precision rifles.
**Lever-action: The cool kid of the single-action club; lever-action weapons are those where you have to use a lever to chamber a new round, which was usually mounted near the trigger. This type was made popular by Winchester during the frontier age of the Wild West and even more by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he used a lever-action shotgun during Terminator 2.
**Pump-action: A pump action is where you had to pull the "pump" of the weapon to cycle a new round. This is the most common action used by shotguns. A few rifles used this setup as well, and there is one instance of a bunch of madmen creating a pump-action 3+1 (three in the tube, one in the chamber) 40mm grenade launcher.

*Automatic action: Unlike single-shot weapons, it uses gasses expelled by the cartridge or recoil to power a mechanism that automatically chambers a new round after each shot. Generally speaking, the semi-automatic to fully-automatic action is determined by the trigger sear, which may either inhibit the hammer from hitting against until the trigger is let go (semi-automatic), stops firing after a certain number of rounds have been fired (burst-fire), or continuously fires until ammo is expended (fully automatic).
**Semi-automatic: A semi-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire after every trigger pull, with the user only needing to work the action after reloading a completely empty gun. Most handguns and many rifles are semi-automatic.
**Burst-Fire: A setting sometimes included on automatic weapons, each trigger pull fires three (or sometimes two) rounds in rapid succession. This is used as a way to allow automatic capability without wasting bullets, as keeping the trigger held too long on anything other than a mounted weapon tends to cause it to lose accuracy very quickly.
**Fully-automatic: A fully-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire automatically, so long as the trigger is depressed, rather than pulled each time like how semi-autos work. Automatic weapons tend to be banned for civilian use and are only available to military.

===Ammo Storage and Feeding===
This refers to how ammunition is given to the weapon. Also the topic of a /k/ommando's greatest sources of rage; the clip vs magazine misconception. This section will give a short explanation for both.

*Pepperbox - basically the bastard child of a break-action long gun and a revolver; a pepperbox gun has 3 or more barrels loaded and ready to fire, with the gun rotating between the loaded barrels to fire in relatively quick sucession. As this was one of the only ways to get more than a single shot in less than a minute without resorting to carrying multiple guns; the design was wacky but popular during the olden ages (and still today to a limited extent for some pocket pistols). The Empire's Outriders are armed with these weapons if you want a visual of what they looked like. Most pepperboxes where smoothbore since they were made on the cheap and never intended for more than point blank fire.

*Volleygun - A variant of the olden multi-barrel family, the volleygun foregoes single, accurate shots in favor of alpha-striking to saturate the area in lead, having anywhere between 2 to 20 barrels (and you can go well beyond this if your contraption can handle it) and the size ranging anywhere from a pistol to a full-sized artillery piece. As the name describes; it fires all of it's payload in a single volley, basically making it a one-man firing line. This style of weaponry gradually fell out of disuse as more modern firearms were developed (mainly self-loading weapons, which were more reliable and accurate), but is notably still used for the "Metal Storm", a prototype weapon with truly absurd number of gun barrels that go off simultaneously to shred the ever-living fuck out of it's target. The only types still in use today are double barreled shotguns and derringers.

*Superposed load - the disadvantage to using a multi-barreled firearm is that it adds a lot of weight to the firearm. One alternative was to simply stack multiple bullets and charges into the same barrel, and then have the firearm set them off sequentially. The early version of this mechanism was prone to failures, as the bullets were not self-contained and a poor gas seal could result in multiple charges going off, destroying the gun (and the user if unlucky enough) if it was not designed to handle the stress. However, this setup was revived with the invention of caseless bullets and electronic triggers used most prominently in Metal Storm weapons. If combined with multiple barrels, a metal storm weapon can have a bewildering rate of fire. So far the technology is mostly used in multi-shot grenade launchers.

*Bullpup - A bullpup is any weapon where its action is located in the behind the trigger, instead of in front. Bullpups have the advantage of being more compact, compared to the traditional setup, as most of the gun's mechanism is located in the stock area. but has the disadvantage of not being ambidextrous (being that the shell ejection port is directly beside the shooter's face, left-handed shooters are forced to shoot from the right to not get their faces burned off) unless specifically designed to be so. This is usually resolved by cutting out ejection ports on both sides and swapping parts over, or else ejecting bullets downward or forward. And typically suffer from poor triggers due to the distance from trigger to action, though there are aftermarket kits for many that can mitigate it a good deal. Modern pistols and many SMGs that feed from inside the grip are ''technically'' bullpups, since their magazine and action are behind the trigger and connected by a transfer bar, but they generally aren't counted as such.

*Clip - A clip is a device, used for bundling bullets together for immediate use. Guns cannot use clips by themselves, they have to be loaded into a magazine first to be used by a gun. The most common version were "stripper clips": each clip held about five bullets, and to load the rifle you placed the clip on top of the magazine, then squeezed the bullets off the clip into the magazine. Another type, en bloc, was used by the M1 Garand and held eight bullets in a 2x4 configuration. The entire clip was put in the magazine, with the clip being ejected after being emptied. The last kind is the moon (or half-moon) clip, used specifically for revolvers, which holds bullets in a circular formation for loading the chamber up in one go. Clips are still used today, but exclusively to speed up loading external magazines. Filling external magazines generally requires a small disposable tool, which is included in any ammo lot packaged on stripper clips.

*Speedloader - A speedloader is essentially a clip that has moving parts, usually to aid with holding and/or loading ammunition. Two common types exist. The first is similar to a moon clip in that it holds bullets so that they can all be loaded into a revolver simultaneously, but use a locking mechanism to secure the bullets while they are being carried, then release them once they are loaded into the cylinder. While not as fast as a moon clip, it still makes loading revolvers considerably faster. Another type of speedloader is the magazine loader, which is designed to reduce the spring pressure in a magazine, making it faster and easier to load.

*Magazine - The magazine is part of the weapon that houses and feeds actual ammo into the weapon. In the olden days, many guns had magazines that were built into the weapon itself and were fed using clips of ammo that were loaded after the gun ran out of ammo. Built-in magazines, however, severely limited the potential ammunition capacity of guns as they cannot be expanded without significantly making the gun larger and was a pain in the ass to reload (such as in the case of revolvers). To counter this; people designed guns whose magazines were detachable from the gun itself. This allowed people to easily expand the ammo cap of a gun, as they only needed to ensure that the extended magazine will fit into their gun and cycle properly, they no longer needed to re-work the entire structure of the gun to enlarge a built-in magazine. It also greatly increased a person's reload speed, as instead of fumbling around with several clips to ram down the gun: they just had to detach a magazine, pull one out of their vest/bag, load it in (charge the gun if needed), and they're good to go. High-capacity magazines tend to take on weird shapes rather than the standard flat box; the most common variant is the drum magazine, but there are also double drums, caskets, and helicals. Typically the weakest part of any firearm. A large part of the misconceptions of the M16 were related to the fucktarded idea that it should be issued with DISPOSABLE MAGAZINES! They were initially not intended for repeated use, empty the mag. Drop it, crush it under your boot, reload a brand new never used mag. Worked well till some bureaucrat ordered reusing them which alongside some other bureaucrats skipping the chrome lining for the barrel and issuing really shitty ammo made with spare parts caused regular failures. Newer iterations of the magazine have since addressed these issues.

*Belts - The belt is what it is; a long belt filled with bullets, which can either take the form of a cloth belt or linked by metallic chains. Belts are the common loading method of most machine guns, who typically have ammunition capacities well beyond 100 rounds. The reason for this is that it simplifies the operation of the gun (since belts do not require them to be fed to the gun with a mechanism like in traditional magazines) and makes them less prone to malfunctions (with a gun designed to shoot continuously; you wanna make sure that there's less critical moving parts to fuck up as it's firing it's 300th round at the enemy). Belts are also much easier to transport, as the belt can be folded several times to make it more compact, versus a solid magazine. This is mostly because until H&K put out their steel high reliability 5.56 nato mag, most magazines couldn't keep up with the fire rate and were too flimsy(The Soviet counterparts that used magazines, used AK pattern magazines which you can open a beer with and then load into the gun). Pretty much every man issued a M249 with the magwell adapter, will attest to how dire you must be for bullets in the air to use it.

==Ammunition themselves==
To call a round or cartridge "a bullet" would be the equivalent of calling of calling a magazine a clip. Bullets are the projectiles that are or to be launched, while the "round" is the entire thing. To do otherwise would summon the wrath of the /k/ommando.

===Composition of the modern round/cartridge===

*Casing - The metal jacket that houses the propellant, primer, and to an extent the bullet (pardoning telescopic munitions which house the bullet completely.) Usually made from brass, they can be made from steel or plastics (at the detriment of the gun itself, unless designed for such).

*Propellant - Powder that is used to propel the bullet/slug/projectile. In the good ol' days, it used black powder, but those clouded the air and weren't powerful. Most modern rounds use a double base powder (generally gun cotton or nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, may include a variety of stabilizers (to improve shelf life of the round) and deterrents (to prevent the cartridge from being too "hot". For artillery, they make good use of triple base propellants, which is smokey as hell but burn well.

*Primer - What activates the powder in the rounds themselves. Generally a firm dent is enough to activate the munitions. Generally use non-corrosive compression sensitive materials.

*Bullets - What people get tripped up on in naming munitions. Being the projectile, anyone loading the munitions has a vast choice of what can be used as a bullet. Generally, lead, steel, and tungsten make the core of the round (thanks to their weight) while the outer coat for the round could be lead (since it is also very malleable), copper, and nickel, though Teflon and certain plastics can also be used. If you're feeling lucky, you can load a variety of other materials into the rounds (or shells for shotguns). Take for example salt, which doesn't kill, but you can mark people and they sting like hell.

===Types of bullets===
As a short note on bullets, its important to know that just because a bullet can easily penetrate armor doesn't mean its a definite upgrade over everything else. If a hard bullet like the FMJ or AP penetrates the human body and exits in the same shot; its gonna hurt like hell but unless that bullet was in the 12.7mm (.50 caliber) category or it hit something important like a lung or the head; the target has a good possibility to survive through a combination of medical aid, hormones (adrenaline in fight or flight), and willpower (with the side possibility of stimulants), and even still continue to fight onwards if they're that dead 'ard. That said, if a 12.7mm round came tearing through your body; it has enough momentum to potentially rupture a good chunk of your insides which is ''very'' lethal, but 12.7mm guns are generally not mainstay (these are guns like the Desert Eagle, M2 Browning, or M82 Barrett), so unless you're a real-life action hero, a turret gunner, or a counter-sniper; its unlikely for you to have access to these behemoths.

Likewise, if a soft bullet like the JHP or SP penetrates the body, then which expands, fragments, and/or tumbles inside; in short internal and external bleeding would be the most urgent of the target's concerns, with ruptured organs and torn muscles leaking like a broken sewage pipe, thus making HP lot more lethal and debilitating. That said, soft bullets fragment easily and body armor proportionate to it's caliber can reliably stop soft round. That said even if armored; the target is still gonna feel the impact of the bullet's force hitting against his body, and that still has the potential of killing someone if the circumstances are right (although its still unreliable).

In the end, a bullet is either specialized where it's only effective against either armored or unarmored targets, or a special combination that renders it effective against both types (although these require an experienced smith to manufacture properly).

*Ball - though if we start talking bullets we need to start with the first bullet: the lead ball, from where we derive the common term for bullets as 'rounds'. It's. . .just a lead ball though, not much to say about it. The balls were hand made, often by soldiers themselves since lead has such a low melting point, with the molds often being unique to each gun. This used largely the same process that was used for [[Sling]] bullets since antiquity. These early bullets would often 'rattle' down the barrel due to ill fitting the barrel of there guns, which combined with a lack of riffling would mean early guns were horribly inaccurate. If one used a smaller bullet that better fitted the gun, would could use rifling, but this required, (see above) hammering the bullet into place to make sure that there were no gaps.

*Minié ball- The first bullet we would know as a 'bullet', and the first truly distinct from a lead ball. A Minié ball is a conical bullet with a concave hole in the base. When fired the base flared out from the pressure of the blast, letting it engage with the rifling of the gun. This meant that it formed a seal with the barrel making it incredibly accurate, while not needing to be tightly hammered down the barrel. The best of both worlds. Combined with it's large size these things were lethal on the battle field maiming and crippling an entire generation of soldiers during the US civil war.

*Full Metal Jacket (FMJ)- Generally a lead or steel bullet encased in a soft metal such as copper. Acts a sort of lube as well as preventing fouling of the barrel. Depending on design, has a potential to fragment post impact, shredding internal organs.
**Synthetic Jacket- FMJ ammo with a plastic jacket, which has the advantage of reducing cleaning requirements and safer when hitting steel at the cost of various things not really relevant in practice ammo. Currently only in handgun calibers and only made as practice/match ammo (though some hollow points and AP rounds do also use polymer jackets).

*Hollow point (HP)- The hollow section in the center makes the bullet expand on impact, creating a bigger hole in its victim at the expense of being less effective against armored targets. That being said, the decreased penetration also makes it safer to use in situations where over-penetration could be dangerous (e.g. on an aircraft). Certain designs have bladed tips on expansion, causing additional cutting and bleeding too. It was banned from military use by the Hague Convention of 1899, so restricted to police, civilians, and, as of 2017, the United States Armed Forces (The US didn't sign that provision, but previously stuck with FMJ even after mass production became feasible for the sake of NATO compatibility).

*Semi jacketed Hollow point (SJHP)- Same as a hollow point, but has a copper jacket to help reduce fouling.

*Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP)- Same as above, but fully covers the bullet down to the tip.

*Wad cutter (WC)- Flat tipped bullet. Not very aerodynamic but it leaves a big hole to help tell you where you hit the target. Generally for closer range paper targets as they lose velocity very quickly due to the drag on them.

*Semi Wad Cutter (SWC)- Like the wad cutter, but more aerodynamic.

*Armor Piercing (AP)- As name implies, intended to penetrate armor, be it person or equipment. However, this ultimately depends on what gun you're shooting from and what armor you're shooting at. A 9x19mm AP steel round coming from a 4" barrel will do diddly to NIJ Level IIIA, where as a 7.62x51 AP flying out of a 24" barrel will punch through it easy as you please. Modern AP rounds are often jacketed in plastic, but this is purely to protect the barrel (turns out sending something meant to destroy steel through a steel barrel results in a wrecked barrel) and adds no armor piercing quality.

*Saboted light armor penetrator (SLAP)/Saboted bullets- Think of the discarding sabots fired from a M1 Abrams or a saboted slug of a shotgun, but redesigned to be fired like a standard rifle round. The sabot is designed to the grip the rifling until it leaves the barrel, then discard after leaving the barrel. This would leave the penetrator or bullet with a high velocity while providing a sufficient spin to the bullet to keep it stabilized in the air. With a higher density and/or thinner bullet, they can potentially penetrate better than potentially even APHE. Likewise for handcrafted bullets, they provide higher velocity for a smaller bullet in a cartridge intended for a larger caliber. G

*High Explosive incendiary (HEI)- Explosive tipped munition. Generally for larger rounds (think 7.62 and beyond), they typically are meant for non-infantry targets such as light vehicles, light aircraft, and barriers, showering those inside with speeding shrapnel. Despite their implication, they might not work as well as one might think against hard target.

*Armor Piercing Incendiary (API)/Armor Piercing High Explosive (APHE), High Explosive Incendiary Armor Penetration (HEIAP)- Designed with the intentions of penetrating hard targets that HE rounds can't do alone and being anti-material in general, API and HEIAP are the answer to those targets. Generally have sufficient power in and behind the bullet (think Raufoss Mk.211), it will penetrate body armor and light vehicles with awe-inspiring ease.

*Soft point or semi jacketed - Like a FMJ, except the tip is exposed. Designed to have the reduced drag of a FMJ, while expanding upon hitting a target similar to a hollow point. Generally designed for hunters in mind.

*Ballistic tip - Similar in performance to the semi-jacketed bullet, but rather than being a solid core of lead it is designed like a hollow point, but with a plastic tip at the end to reduce drag and ensure expansion.

*Ratshot - made for smaller-caliber guns and is basically birdshot for rifled barrels. The tip is a plastic cap that contains a small amount pellets, typically within the 1.5mm range. As the name implies; the gun is primarily designed for shooting pests and small animals like rodents and grass snakes. You can use it to shoot at larger pests like coyotes or humans, but it's woefully underpowdered for the job.

*Tracer - a regular bullet coated in pyrotechnic coating that ignites when fired. These are most commonly used with machineguns (every fifth round in a belt, to be exact) since it's useful for the gunner to accurately see where all his bullets are going, as well as make it clear to any enemies he's suppressing just who he's aiming at. Similarly rifle magazines are often loaded with tracers at certain intervals to provide indication of remaining ammo. Of course, the caveat is "tracer's work both ways" as they can give away your position; this can be mitigated by using "dim" tracers that can only be seen through night vision goggles. Sometimes also used by spotters or commanders to mark a specific target. They can potentially set fire to objects, if the incendiary compound hasn't burned out yet on impact.

*Less-lethals - Commonly known as 'rubber bullets' even though they're made of plastic these days instead. Used in riot control and such, where the shooter isn't allowed to kill. The key word is "less", however. They hurt like a sonovabitch and can still kill in the wrong circumstances, though. Airsoft this ain't.

*Silver - Pure fantasy, but common in there to counter supernatural creatures weak to silver. Silver bullets would suffer from many problems that rarely get mentioned in fiction. Chief among these are the cost, that silver shrinks when cast (so it's really hard to get the right size and shape), and that silver is too soft to engage rifling so even if you get the right size accuracy will be terrible. [[Monster Hunter International|More /k/ aligned works]] solve these issues with solutions like sabots (which helps accuracy but still worse than real bullets), ballistic tips made of silver and frangible bullets filled with powdered silver (instead of the typical competitively cheap metal).

===Types of Rounds===
Apart from the traditional type of rounds, here are some unique ones for reference.

*Blanks - What you commonly see loaded in movies. Blanks are basically that; the round has a primer and powder, but the bullet is just a paper or plastic sheet designed to keep the powder in, so you get the sound of a gun going off, but not the damage. That said, blanks ''can'' still kill people, the gasses used to propel the bullet forward are still there (just not launching any bullets); and its powerful enough to liquefy organs and break bones if you were dumb/desperate enough shoot someone with a blank at close range. Movie armorers make a point of demonstrating this with things like fruit before letting anyone touch blank firing guns. This is why instead of blank-firing guns, actors will use flash paper guns at close range for safety. There's also blank ammo specifically designed to make as much noise as possible for the purpose of disorienting and intimidating people in an area.

*Caseless - An old but futuristic concept, a caseless round has everything required for the bullet to be launched, inside the bullet itself. This removes the need for guns to eject spent shell casings after every shot, reducing weight and ammo costs. While this has been pioneered since WW2 and a few prototype examples for it were already developed (like the G11); caseless rounds are still determined to be unreliable for field combat use in comparison to traditional ammunition, so as of today their use is largely limited (mainly to grenade rounds like the Russian VOG-25 grenade).

*Gyrojet - A unique but largely impractical cartridge in the gun circuit, WH40K's famous [[bolter|boltguns]] run on the same concept as the gyrojet. Basically, the bullets are miniature rockets that build up speed as they travel, capable of exceeding the speed of sound after traveling 60ft. While the idea sounds cool; gyrojets were ''required'' to gain minimum distance to achieve their full effect (if you fired at point-blank for example, they didn't really do much), had a design flaw in their propulsion system that made the rockets prone to corkscrewing off-course, and were highly temperamental to environmental conditions, not to mention the costs. At the end the concept was a bust as it didn't really do a lot that couldn't be achieved with traditional small arms for cheaper. Still GeeDubs thought it was nice and became the basis of how boltguns work, where it's largely the same but with more techno-flubdubbery and "because future".

*Magnum - Unlike what vidya gaems portray, magnums aren't really super-mega handguns of death. A magnum round is basically a parent cartridge that's been enlarged so it does more damage due to a combination of larger mass and more powder used (so it flies faster and hits harder), and this can be anything from the .357 magnum handgun round used by revolvers, to the large caliber .338 Lapua and Winchester magnum rounds used for precision sniper rifles.

*Overpressured - Designated as "+P", overpressured rounds still uses the same cartridge (unlike the magnum), but is loaded with higher-pressure powder that releases more energy when fired. It sounds like a nice way to up your damage, but guns have a level of pressure they can tolerate, and if your gun isn't designed to do such and you use +P rounds; you run the very high risk of destroying your gun (and the rest of your body if you're that unlucky). There are guns that are proofed to fire +P and +P+ ammo but it typically used in SMGs. Certain batches of surplus ammo will blow up guns because they were made to be used in more robust SMGs and not commercial pistols.

===Types of shotgun loads===

*Buckshot - The shell is filled with lead or steel pellets, each of which is typically around 15mm each (it ultimately depends on the bore), that spread out once discharged. Poor at penetrating armor and limited effective range comparison to other firearms as the pellets scatter and the pellets are too small to do serious damage individually (Although do note that unlike what the vidya gaems portray; a decent 12G shotgun loaded with buckshot is effective upto 30-50m, not just in point-blank range); but they do cover a fairly large radius and the force of 8-12 pellets impacting against your body will send you tumbling and rolling on the floor in agony, even if they don't penetrate.

*Birdshot - Similar to buckshot and more pellets, but the pellets are smaller (5mm and less, although still depends on the bore). As their name describes; the ammo is designed to pelt down birds by [[Ork|throwing as many bullets at the target and hoping atleast a few of them hit]]. You can use them against non-avian targets aswell and they'll do something, but they don't pack the punch you'd like and don't expect them to dent body armor too much. Their ineffectiveness against human targets [[Wikipedia:Dick Cheney hunting accident|was demonstrated by a (possibly drunk) Vice President of the United States]] when he shot an old guy in the face with some and the only lasting damage was the voice.

*Slug - Instead of multiple pellets; the gun fires a single, heavy lead projectile, similar to how traditional ammo works. Because shotgun barrels are not rifled; slugs do not have the range nor accuracy rifles do, but because of their weight and the shotgun's fairly large caliber; they're fully capable of crushing their way through armor at close range. Slugs are typically used for hunting large game in areas where rifle ammunition isn't allowed due to the risk of overpenetration.

*Breaching - A specialized variant of the slug round, breaching rounds are designed specifically to destroy door locks at extremely close range. Generally composed of very dense powdered steel held together with wax.

*Less-lethals - Designed for riot control where the shooter isn't allowed to kill; the bullet is either made of rubber, paint, or beanbags designed for minimal penetration, while the powder used in the rounds is less to reduce the projectile's velocity. The end result is a bullet designed to simply cause shock and pain to the target in order to incapacitate them long enough to be arrested and not rejoin the fight in the meantime. That said, you're still talking about launching an object at someone at speeds similar to cars speeding on a highway; so hitting vulnerable parts of the body like the head, neck, or ribs can still result in a fatality. On the flip side, anyone wearing bullet-resistant armor won't be affected too much.

*Chain-shot - Typically reserved for olden cannons, the chain-shot is two cannonballs linked with a chain. The spinning contraption was intended to tear through a ship's mast and sails. Obsolete as fuck, but it is still possible to replicate this with shotgun ammo. Basically you tie two pellets or slugs together so that when they're discharged; they're basically flying garrotes. Awesome, but because of how unpredictable bullets are while in flight, it's highly impractical for combat use.

*Flechette - Buckshot, but instead of pellets; the shell is loaded with small metal darts. They achieved better penetration and range than traditional buckshot; but because shotguns aren't really designed as precision weapons; they were highly impractical for combat applications. They destroyed barrels and tended to deflect off really silly things like raindrops.

*Explosive Rounds - The shell contains an slug that explodes upon impact, capable of using anti-armor or anti-personnel shells, basically turning the shotgun into a portable grenade launcher. Not as powerful as the real thing, but invaluable when you need accurate explosions but not the excessive collateral damage or restrictive weight and mass. Has seen some use in rifle rounds on the eastern front of World War II as well as in .50 BMG (officially for use on objects, not people).

*Dragon's Breath - An odd type of ammo. DB shells are loaded with magnesium pellets. When discharged; they create a short but hot burst of fire that burn at temperatures upto 1,600°C. While not really used much for conventional combat due to its status as an incendiary weapon (which would give a warcrimes committee a field day); blasting a person with this at close range will create about the same results as a giant fire-breathing lizard incinerating an unlucky knight to death, hence their name. Also destroys barrels, as dragon's breath burns hotter than the melting point of steel, and close to the melting point of chromium (two of the most common metals used in gun parts).

*Misc - Shotguns aren't really picky with ammo since they are manually operated and don't depend on a gas seal as much; just about ''anything'' can be used for bullets if worse comes to worse/you're bored. Could be lego pieces, could be old hard candy, solid scrap,frozen meat [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-n4bxxn9gA or even glass]. Hell, it can be a Sly Marbo tabletop figure if you could fit him inside a shell and prevent him from disintegrating from the force while exiting the barrel, the choice is yours. (More likely blow up your gun as Sly refuses to die and gives you the finger for trying.)

==Manufacturing of Firearms==

===Brief Overview===

The production of firearms historically speaking has been an, err, interesting path. The first firearms were little more than metal (or whatever other material one so chose) cylinder with with one hole for the ignition of the powder and one for the projectile to be projected. As time passes on manufacturing techniques got more advanced, leading to triggers which frees up one hand from having to push a hot object into the powder. Most used a sort of striker to ignite the powder, be it flint or rope. Around the early to mid 19th century, self-containing cartridges became a possible reality. As such the firearm had to change too, with an action either simply accepting a round into the barrel or an action that would be worked to put it in. Near the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, auto-loading firearms became possible, but the actions had to become more complex to automatically feed the round by means of either recoil or gas. After that, guns haven't exactly changed too drastically (still major changes) in the current 21st century, pardoning the much higher efficiency of the modern weaponry. The complexity of modern firearms however doesn't interfere with how cheaply they can be produced. As such, there are endless aftermarket gun parts for sale around in places such as the USA.

===DIY===
[[image:.45 ACP ISB SMG.png|thumb|175px|left|.45 ACP ISB SMG designed from a STEN, but has many parts that differ. According to the designer "I like to think of it as a cross between an FG-42, a Welrod and a Sten."]]

First and foremost: guns are not toys, and should never be treated as such.

It comes as no secret that one can manufacture their own guns in one's own home so they chose to ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_copy Just ask the Afghans]). Depending on the skill of the user, the manufacturing tools used, material quality of the parts being used and/or made, design of the gun, and so on, a DIY can range from a explode-in-your-hand zip gun all the way up to high-quality rifles that have a minute of angle (MOA) of 1 or less. All one need is one's [[Ork|imagination]] and a [[Techpriest|firm understanding on how a gun works from the inside out and machining]]. In addition to that, the internet has a broad data base on the knowledge and schematics of guns.

[[image:Homemade_gun_exploding.PNG|thumb|150px|right| Careful you might blow your eye out]]
That said, DIY-guns require a decent understanding of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering to manufacturer at all, so unless you're a [[Mekboy]] with all the know-wotz implanted in your brain; its highly recommended you read up first, lest your firearm's first unwitting victim is you.

[[image:Stormbolter_IRL.jpg|thumb|223px|right|If a modern rifle was a stormbolter.]]

Examples of DIY are:

*Zip gun: Usually a metal tube attached to a piece of wood or object, within it some sort of trigger and striker. One example of this is a slam fire gun. Generally a 12 gauge shotgun shell loaded into a 3/4 inch tube that can be shoved into a 1 inch tube that has cap containing a nail at the end. When shoved in, the cap's nail will be more than enough to set off the shell, making the tubes effectively a shotgun.

*Experimental design: Every line of guns started out as a experiment somewhere. Some catch on, some don't, some just are there because why the heck not? Want to have dual barrels on your gun? Go for it! Add a counterweight to the gas block so that the recoil is next to nothing? Makes shoot a breeze! Add a round cam to your bolt so you can have a smooth action and reduce wear on the gun? No reason not to! The choices are endless if with time, diligence, and a bit of imagination.

*CNC Manufacturing: Avoiding the painstaking effort of machining it by hand [[Machine Spirit|a machine do it for you?]] A Computer numerical control (CNC) machine can easily mill out receivers and whatever other parts you need assuming you have the plans on the computer and the materials to be drilled out. The downsides of that CNC are a bit pricey relative to their hand milling machine counterpart. However some go for as low as $1200, which is roughly the same price as a mid-tier intermediate rifle in the USA.

==Relations here==
Most fantasy writers tend to exclude firearms. There are a variety of reasons for this, such as:
*Most fantasy comes from [[Tolkien]], who, being a naturalist who largely despised industrialization, did not put guns in Middle-earth, although gunpowder does exist, used by the wizards (Gandalf's Fireworks and Saruman's Fires of Orthanc) and by the orcs.
*Most fantasy (whether copy-catting Tolkien or not) is based on medieval Europe. Depending on your definition of "medieval," Europe did ''technically'' have firearms towards the very end (crude and unreliable ones, but firearms nonetheless), but most authors base their fantasy on earlier medieval Europe.
*As in real life, firearms mean that vulgar, dirty, peasant conscripts can take down the author's Mary Sue noblemen [[knight]]s that trained ''so'' hard in the arts of swordsmanship and melee combat, though if the writer had any historical knowledge they would know that armor can be made "proof" against early firearm bullets (which is partly what spurred the development of full-body plate mail to begin with, as a sidenote) or that a crossbow or longbow can just as easily (in fact, MORE easily due to the general shitty performance of old guns) turn an armored man into swiss cheese.

All that being said, most fantasy authors are much more open to cannons, which became viable on the battlefield long before smaller firearms anyway. Some even make room for crude rocket launchers, especially if there is a not-China/not-Korea in their setting. (Laugh, but a big firework rocket will put a sod on fire and ruin his day just fine, doubly so if the morons are in wooden fort.)

Generally speaking, if a world has both the "stock" fantasy races and guns, there will a strict hierarchy of who uses them, from most to least likely:
*[[Dwarves]]: They almost always have the best, most plentiful guns. If only one race gets firearms, it's likely going to be them.
*[[Gnomes]]: As tinkerers, they're frequently on a different tech level from everyone else, including firearms.
*[[Human]]s: Unlike the other races, which are usually an all-or-nothing deal, different human nations have different likelihoods of having guns. Italian and East Asian analogues, as well as the "industrious" or "scientific" nations, are much more likely to have them. Your barbarians, guys keen on knights and chivalry, and the more conservative less so. If the nation is Post Renaissance, expect pike and shot style IRL analogue armies.
*[[Orc]]s: Orcs would probably love guns if they could actually build some. However, they're usually either incapable of building things or have a hard time organizing themselves to the point that large-scale firearm and powder production is possible. Even so, they could still obtain them them by other means such as fighting as mercenaries for guns and stealing them off the corpses of the fallen and similar. They are higher on the list if they are more like Tolkienian orcs, which can be fairly well organized and "delight in explosions" enough to manufacture their own gunpowder, if only for simple bombs. If Orcs are of the more Chaotic Evil variety then they will barely have crossbows, let alone guns. If Orcs are of the Klingon variety, as in the violent tendencies are normal enough that the civilization can function, then they will LOVE big guns.
*[[Elves]]: Being arrogant pricks, they see guns as crude, inaccurate, foul-smelling contraptions that are no substitute for a bow. However, they'll still use them when necessary, even if they don't like it. That said, elves also had a good reason to not use them, namely most firearms in a fantasy settling are arquebus-type single-shot smoothbore weapons, which are outranged by longbows. Longbows are even decent against most kinds of armor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt ask the French]). The main advantage of firearms, even early ones, is ease of use and armor penetration though armor could be made that could stop an early handgun. The main problem with longbows is that it takes years to learn, which is not a problem for long-lived elves. Between a smoothbore handgun and a longbow, the bow is simply a better choice to an elf. The problem of course is that longbows are about as good as bow technology can get while handguns can be improved to rifles, against which bows only have rate of fire as an advantage, then Repeating Rifles, which bows have no advantage at all against. So while Elves may have an advantage to sticking with there longbows well into the age of pike and shot, if they're not careful their Longbows will end up fighting against Springfields and Winchesters and they will end up the worse in that exchange. If tech reaches that point, expect the Archer/Hunter stereotype to turn into Snipers/Mad minute riflemen.
*Wood Elves and other Fey/Nature types: They'd rather die than use a firearm, even if the rest of the world has moved onto biplanes, bolt-action rifles, shell-firing cannons, and tanks. If this happens, this means they either have powerful magic (so the actual weapons used are unimportant), they are ''really really'' good shots with a bow, they have much stronger friends (Think like the amish) or they're about to get colonized. That said: the problem they have are not guns themselves, but making them as mass production always has some environmental costs they can not stand for. If they could get there hands on some way to make guns that did not harm the environment in the process, at least anymore then making a sword does they might go small for small scale fire arm production, but this is rarely explored in fiction.

For how this conservative attitude tends to apply to tech in general for fantasy settings, see [[Medieval Stasis]].

Of course, sci-fi writers almost exclusively use firearms, seeing as how it's THE FUUUUUUTTTTTUUUUURRRREEEE. The exceptions are [[Warhammer 40,000]] and ''[[Dune]]'': although guns are the main combat implement in 40K, close combat is still alive and well, and most armies have at least one elite, close-combat unit wielding weapons that are distinctly not firearms; in ''Dune'', guns are pretty much dead as a weapon of war, as personal-scale force fields stop fast-moving matter (like bullets) from crossing them, but slower matter (like swung knives) can pass through, and if a lasgun blast touches the field, at least one end of the equation comes out "BOOM!!!". Most sci-fi universes do have close combat weapons on the scale we see in modern warfare, though, like in Mass Effect, where, as the Reaper forces (who are basically [[Necron]]s and [[Tyranids]] combined) invade the galaxy, people begin developing their Omnitools to snap-produce a white-hot blade of hard metal above the wearer's hand... And then there's the Krogan, who are too bloodthirsty and too large to properly take cover, so they headbutt things instead of using guns.

== Rules ==

Most fantasy RPGs deal with firearms the way they deal with lots of things that threaten their [[Medieval Stasis]]: terror, suspicion, and shitty rules. If you have the option of using a firearm in most games, it probably has one shot that's weaker than a bow, then takes an entire encounter to reload, and is illegal everywhere in-setting in case you didn't get the hint.

[[D&D#Basic_Dungeons_&_Dragons|BECMI]] Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have rules for firearms, but there were one or two adventure modules that incorporated a crash-landed spaceship, with weapons the players could loot. They were treated as magic wands and staves. A few issues of Dragon magazine offered rules for early cannons and hand cannons.

[[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] mentions guns in a tucked-away subsection on importing TSR's Cowboys & Indians game Boot Hill to AD&D (DMG, pg113). Revolver pistols and Gatling guns would do as much damage as a longsword; shotguns as much damage as a two-handed claymore, a (thrown) stick of dynamite does 4x the damage of a short sword. The rules insist "...when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk, ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it." To reinforce this concept, the ''Manual of the Planes'' included rules for factors of prime material planes, one of which determined if complex (read: setting destroying) chemical compositions like blackpowder would even work in said plane. If you have any knowledge of chemistry, you may cry now. Notably, [[Greyhawk]] had a [[Murlynd|god of firearms]], and his paladins were basically Wild West sheriffs.

[[Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#AD.26D_2nd_Edition|Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition]] included the arquebus in the Players Handbook, where they were depicted as slow, powerful and expensive (500 Gp!). They were also potentially dangerous to the user as the result of a bad roll. It was painfully stressed that the inclusion of firearms in the campaign was the call of the DM. Firearms were a bit more common in the [[Spelljammer]] setting. Moving away from the classic fantasy background, there was the historical campaign sourcebook ''A Mighty Fortress'' that introduced rules for firearms of the 16th and 17th centuries and the ''Masque of the Red Death'' setting for [[Ravenloft]] pushed everything into a gothic horror version of the 1890's.

[[Dungeons_&_Dragons_3rd_Edition|D&D third edition]] has a section on advanced technology (DMG, pp162-164) for Renaissance-era, 20th century, and futuristic weapons. The weapons are more powerful than what can be found among ranged weapons in the Player's Handbook, but also heavier and more expensive. You're better off with magic crossbows.

[[Pathfinder]] greatly over complicates guns: they have shorter range than bows without magical items, take longer to reload, and have at least a 1/20 chance to break or explode every time you fire it, and use up more expensive ammunition. As though this wasn't enough, they have a stiff feat tax needed to make use of them and the fact that there's really only one major gun factory in the land, the Gunworks of the small nation of Alkenstar, and they keep most of their guns to themselves. In return they hit harder, have a ''terrifying'' 4x crit modifier, and ''use touch AC'' in the first range increment, effectively ignoring armor when fired close up. A specialized class, the [[gunslinger]], is centered around the use of firearms. [[Lasgun|Energy weapon]] specialists in Iron Gods have it a bit better, though ammo is limited for most of the adventure.

[[Dragonmech]] has guns, sort of kinda, as well. Only instead of using gunpowder, they use steam to propel the bullet like an airsoft gun. they can only be fired once every other round as the pressure needs to build up. There Treated a bit like crossbows that do more damage and can shoot a little further.

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] includes a section on firearms in the ''Dungeon Master's Guide''. They hark back to 2nd edition in terms of stats, fitting the general tone of the game, but aren't quite as punishing for a player to learn to use and make. And with the increased emphasis on houseruling and homebrewing, modding the Crossbow Expert feat to work for them seems a simple leap of logic. The "race builder" guide in the back even suggests changing around the dwarf weapon proficiencies to include them! Furthermore, if you want to get your [[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks]] on, it includes some futuristic guns as well, like lasers and disintegrators.

[[Warhammer Fantasy]] features firearms based on early real-world equivalents, like flintlock pistols, musket rifles and the blunderbuss. Although deadly and still on the experimental side, they're also considered very unreliable and are prone to misfire and sometimes even to explode. Rpg-wise, firearms were already included in the core rulebook of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition, but were later somewhat expanded in the Old World Armoury supplement. Some variations that function like firearms were also added as weapons to some Skaven classes in the Old World Bestiary supplement. Generally speaking, firearms require more costs in order to be used, as each shot requires a firearm shot (bullet) and additional gunpowder. Except for the obvious disadvantages of becoming useless once getting wet and longer reloading times, firearms deal more damage than bows and crossbows, with more complex models even having a repeater function, but obviously longer reloading times for each barrel to be loaded again.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Firearm

2019-12-12T04:03:09Z

2601:1C0:5C00:C130:798E:CBB3:E7F2:A1E4: /* The Not-Quite-As-Slow Way */

[[image:Shotgun After Firing.jpg|thumb|450px|right|Nothing like the smell of burnt powder in the morning]]
About twelve hundred years ago in [[China]], some people figured out that certain chemicals mixed together (such as potassium nitrate, carbon, and sulphur) rapidly combusted when brought to spark, which became known as "black powder." After some experimentation, they discovered that a tube sealed off at one end could be used to contain the pressure of said combustion and focus it into an explosion to propel an object at high speeds. After a few centuries of refinement, and invention of the frag grenade, they managed to take that mechanical principle and apply it as a weapon of warfare which changed the game: the arquebus. Comparatively cheap, easy to make, easy to learn to use, and capable of penetrating all but the heaviest armor, this marked a transition away from close quarters to ranged warfare.

In modern times, firearms are the staple weapons of any nation. Speculative fiction showcases weapons that doesn't even fire solid projectiles, like [[lasgun|lasers]].

From an engineering standpoint, firearms had a big difference from previous weapons in that they don't require the user's muscle power to work. Swords, maces, and axes are swung, spears are thrust, and bowstrings need to be drawn. Even crossbows and siege weapons work by storing muscle power via tension until it's released. The energy required to accelerate a firearm's projectile comes from explosive propellants; all the user needs to do is to hold the weapon, aim, brace themselves and set off said explosive charge. The significance of this is illustrated in the American Proverb: "God made man, Sam Colt (the inventor of the first practical revolver) made them equal." Having a reliable repeating gun means that your simple brute physical strength does not mean as much in a fight as it would in a bare knuckle brawl or a swordfight (either defensively or offensively).

The firearm's bigger bro is the [[Cannon]] and its cousin is the [[Rocket]].

==How Traditional Guns Work==
For our non-firearm oriented friends, here's a brief, heavily condensed explanation of how these murdersticks work. These instructions will probably vary depending on the type of gun you're using.

[[image:Teppo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Some Tanegashima matchlocks]]
===Olden Muzzle-Loading Guns===
====The Slow Way====
1. Put your musket in half-cock position. Take your powder flask, and pour a few grains into the flashpan. Pour some more down the barrel (amount can vary wildly; later powder flasks come with built-in measuring tools for ease of use and safety). Ram the powder, bullet, and cloth wad down the barrel of your gun. Ensure you're doing this in correct order because [[Not as Planned|putting the ball first, then powder, for example, can lead to hilarious and/or lethal results]].
 2. If you're using a matchlock gun: light up the fuse, aim and brace yourself, and lastly wait for the fuse to burn out. If you're using a flintlock gun: just cock the mechanism. With percussion caps, replace the explosive cap on the firing nipple after cocking the hammer. In any case, aim once you're done setting it up.
 3. Once the powder burns; the gasses from explosion of the black powder will send the bullet flying out of the barrel like a bat out of hell and penetrate into something or someone, and if you're lucky it might actually hit what you were aiming at. Also, hope you aren't downwind because guns during this time generated ''a lot'' of black smoke.
 4. Take stock of the situation. If you've managed to hit anyone or you're currently still in a shooting war; repeat step 1. If your firing line missed most of their shots and those barbarians are charging up your position; [[Imperial Guard|affix bayonets]].

====The Not-Quite-As-Slow Way====
1. Take your paper cartridge, and bite off the end with the powder in it. Carefully pour a few grains into the flashpan, and the rest down the barrel. Take the remainder of the cartridge, ball and paper, and ram it down the barrel.
 2. Follow steps 2 through 4 as above. Paper cartridges have the advantage of saving you a few seconds of precious time while reloading, which can mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. Another advantage is that they can be made somewhat weatherproof with a grease coating. But if you're just hunting or can't find/afford paper, most people didn't bother with the time-consuming preparations.

===Single-Action Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action (pump the slide, rack the bolt, et cetera) to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger, this will cause the hammer to strike the primer on the chambered round and cause the powder inside the shell casing to ignite and explode; sending high-pressure gases screaming out of the barrel while propelling the solid bullet out at high speed towards whatever you were aiming at. If you're using single-action flintlock guns; see above for the result.
 3. Because the gun lacks a mechanism to re-chamber itself; you now have to work the action again to eject the spent shell (unless its a revolver, in which case you do that while reloading) and load another round into the chamber. How you do this depends on the gun in question.
 4. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

===Auto-Loading Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger and this causes the same effect as stated above.
 3. Because of the mechanism of the gun; it redirects some of the forces used to propel the bullet to work it's action, eject the spent shell (unless its a DA revolver), re-chamber another round, and allow you to shoot again by just pulling the trigger. The forces used depend on the gun in question, some use a gas block to redirect some of the gasses expelled by bullets, while other uses the force of the recoil itself, to work the action and chamber another round. Additionally, it could also re-chamber itself using a mechanical sequence (like revolvers) or is electrically operated.
 4. If you're using an automatic; hold the trigger down and only release it once you want to stop shooting (or are forced to do so due to lack of ammo). If you're using a semi-automatic; pull the trigger again to fire another round.
 5. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

==A Brief History of Firearms==
'''800's:''' Taoist monks attempting to find an elixir of immortality stumbled on the next best thing: a substance that would suddenly and violently make things very dead. They'd discovered potassium nitrate (alternatively called saltpeter), a white crystalline powder that burned with a purple flame. When mixed with powders of charcoal and sulfur the resulting substance would burn instantly and aggressively on exposure to flame. It didn't take long for the Chinese to start inventing ways to use it.

[[image:Firelance.jpg‎|thumb|150px|left|The Firelance, the Chinese invention that started this all]]
'''1000s to 1200s:''' The Chinese realize they can make barbarians shit their pants by shooting hollowed arrows packed with powder and bamboo tubes filled with powder and pebbles at them. Bamboo gradually gives way to cast iron and bronze.

'''1300s:''' Various gunpowder weapons begin to proliferate westward along the Silk Road, aided by the [[Mongols]]. Crude versions of hand cannons, grenades, rockets, and flamethrowers all see use. Despite considerable psychological effect and good armor penetration, most of these weapons are only marginally more likely to kill the target than the user and had a range of only twenty or so meters. As such, their use is not widespread. For the most part, these weapons were used by skirmishers and guards. The fact that they were so dangerous meant they were mostly used by low class soldiers, and in turn this meant that the smiths making them were generally not the most skilled artisans; which did little to improve quality even given the limitations of the day. Even so, the designs and methods of manufacture were gradually refined and improved by various early gunsmiths through trial and error.

'''1400s''': Hand cannons see continued and expanded use. Bit by bit from the crude handgonnes of previous centuries, the first "true" firearms evolve with the gradual development of the matchlock, taking on the basic shape of lock, stock, trigger, and barrel (which is where we get the saying from). By clamping a lighted wick into a flashpan via a trigger, the shooter is able to aim ''and'' fire at the same time, making him markedly less likely to blow his own jimmies off. Despite advances, the matchlock was unwieldy, unreliable, and generally inferior to a good bowman. The issue of course is that only England (in Europe) HAD good bowmen; bowmen were the scum of the army everywhere else. This didn't stop some inventive commanders from seeing their potential, particularly with poorly trained conscript soldiers. [[Weeaboo|Some forces]] made a go of it by carrying two or three guns at a time and just throwing the spent ones away like a really shitty Matrix movie. Note: while we use a "weeaboo" hyperlink up there, it's worth remembering that troops like cuirassiers and even pirates would do the same thing with pistols, carrying a whole brace of them, but they just did not exist yet. By the 1400's having more then one gun was the only way to have any real rate of fire before breechloaders existed.

'''1500s:''' Guns continue to evolve with the invention of spring-loaded firing mechanisms. The wheel-lock spins a steel plate against sulfide rocks to produce sparks (think cigarette lighters), which ignites powder a flash pan. This was revolutionary, allowing soldiers to prime their weapon in a matter of seconds instead of fucking around with a lit wick, and allowed calvary to use guns for the first time while on horseback, giving rise to the cuirassiers. It also means that for the first time, guns weren't completely fucked in the rain, just mostly fucked. They also cost a lot to make and were still not completely reliable, so most people stuck with matchlocks. Powder formulas had improved considerably, including the development of the more powerful, stable, and moisture-resistant corned powder made by wetting raw gunpowder, forming it into cakes, crushing them, and sieving them for size. Japan's Oda Nobunaga was particularly notable in the history of firearms for his heavy transition from blades to guns after discovering the novelty of matchlock guns. In fact, by the end of the 1500s, they had more trained arquebusiers in their armies and produced more matchlocks than any other country to date during that period and had the most guns per capita in the world. Meanwhile, virtually every army figured out how to use a combination of volley fire in dense square formations surrounded by pikemen (called Pike and Shot); making armored cavalry, crossbows, & longbows outdated. Accuracy still sucked but that was what the massed shooting was meant to compensate for.

[[image:FlintlockMechanism.jpg‎|thumb|200px|right|The flintlock mechanism. Now you did not need to light some string and put it into a serpentine before firing]]
'''1600s''' The wheellock is refined into the simpler and more reliable flintlock, though it would take some time to supersede the matchlock. Muzzle loading is simplified with the creation of paper cartridges, essentially the pre-measured cake mix of murder. Some German dudes came up with the idea of cutting spirals into the barrel, which they called "rifling," to spin-stabilize the bullet so that they wouldn't have to walk up right next to their targets to hit them, but this required a barrel tighter than a nun's cunt, a hammer to ram the ball in, and grooved bullets made for the gun so it could fit the rifling of the gun like the cap to a soda bottle. To put all that into perspective: well-trained musketeers could fire three to four shots a minute, while a rifleman could only manage one shot every minute. Not great, however the idea of spin-stabilisation hung around and payed off in later times.

'''1700s''': The French invent the bayonet, allowing their troops to be [[choppa|choppy]] while they were [[dakka|shooty]]. Thus, the Pike and Shot formation became the Bayonet and Shot formation. That and refinement of tactics led to the dense but slow and cumbersome square formations being reformed into thinner but more responsive rectangle formations. This is the point where gun infantry tactics become the dominant (though still not only) form of fighting when guns go from one a few common infantry weapons to the primary weapon used by most infantry. Formations of musketeers go from big square blocks to lines two or three ranks thick to put enough bullets in the enemy's ranks as quickly as possible.
[[image:Chassepot.jpg‎|thumb|200px|left|The mechanism of a French Chassepot, an early bolt action rifle, as well as its paper cartridge]]

'''1800s''': Pretty much everything that makes up a modern firearm is invented here. Some fool came up with an explosive that would go off if you slam a hammer into it, which led to the first explosive primers. So flintlocks transitioned to percussion caps. This basically involves putting explosives in ur explosives to explode your explosives. Eventually, standardized methods of making copper & later brass casing replaced paper cartridges & made gas leakage in breechloading mechanisms a thing of the past. Cartridges that contain a primer, propellant, and slug, similar to modern-day bullets, are developed. With this, not only was loading ammunition simplified with a package that contained everything needed for a gun to fire, it also made it waterproof & easier for conscripts to load. Furthermore, the brass casing’s small expansion when firing served to seal the firing chamber to prevent hot gases from leaking and burning users’ hands. By this time, wars were largely fought using firearms rather than melee weapons, though also by this time firearms were also melee weapons as in the early 1800s the bayonet charge was still both an accepted and useful tactic.

By the late 1800 inventors had finally gotten the technology to contain the force of the gunpowder explosion with a tight seal and do so cheaply. Experiments that had been done earlier like the Puckle gun (1718), Ferguson rifle (1776), and even the bizarre 1780 Girandoni Air Rifle, [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Steampunk which was an air gun with a 20 round magazine], all failed to create breech loading rifles cheaply. See, despite that it was well known that that slotting in bullets from the rear and using a mechanism to load it into the chamber is much simpler than spending about half a minute to ram it down a long barrel, the technology was just not there as without cheap steel (cheap is important for hand guns you are going to mass-produce), getting iron to contain the explosion without deforming and leaking gas, thus weakening the shot, was a nightmare. The Industrial Revolution, among other things, gave birth to the concept of "breech-loading" and later "magazines" and simpler mechanised feeding systems like tubes, slides, cylinders, and bolt-actions. The likes of pump-action shotguns, bolt-action rifles, and lever-action rifles, and revolver and semi-automatic pistols, are developed and/or developed upon, giving a glimpse on how weapons in the future would function. Near the end of the decade, some French guys worked out that they could both improve firepower and keep their guns considerably cleaner by replacing black powder with nitrocellulose, the first of many "smokeless powders."

Just as important as the new designs that came about during this period were the new methods of production. People like Eli Whitney worked out devices such as milling machines, which allowed for the quick production of finely tuned parts which were so close in size that you could take one bit off one gun, stick it on another from the same line, and it would work just as fine. Breech loading and repeating firearms had existed for centuries beforehand, but were not cost effective to mass-produce until the Industrial Revolution.
[[image:Lee-Enfield Rifle.jpg|thumb|200px|right|A British Lee-Enfield Bolt Action Repeating rifle]]
This is also the time where the first "automatic" guns were invented and put into production. The word "automatic" is in quotes because these early machine guns were not self-reciprocating; they did not load and fire themselves and were instead manually powered. The most famous (and successful) of these weapons is the Gatling gun, which saw limited action in the American Civil War, but became much more widely used the world over in subsequent wars. But while it was the most famous, the Gatling was not the only manual machine gun developed; dozens of different types were produced during the US Civil War alone on both sides, but because these guns tended to be mounted on cannon carriages they were treated like cannons instead of the close support weapon machines guns are, so it took some time for them to hit their stride.

'''1900-early 1930s''': The heyday of guns because of the advent of WW1. The idea of bolt-action rifles are popularized, along with semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Bolt-action rifles meant that riflemen no longer had to be confined to shooting one round at a time before needing to reload as they could now load individual clips that contained 5-10 rounds a piece. Machine guns are now becoming more and more popular in the battlefields, drastically changing the way infantry would maneuver the battlefield as a single MG emplacement can effectively cripple platoons with the right positioning. Submachine guns, the first automatic infantry weapon, are developed by the German Empire and issued to their stormtroopers, giving the rest of the world an idea of the wonders of a lightweight fully-automatic weapon that could easily be used by infantrymen, which was previously restricted to crew-served heavy machine guns. Not liking to be one-upped, the Americans came up with the trench gun (a 6 shot, pump-action renforced shotgun with a bayonet that was pure murder in the confines of a trench) that ultimately evolved into the modern combat shotgun.

On the subject of the machine guns, if there was ever a weapon that represented this part of history it would be the heavy machine gun. To go back to an early quote "God made man, Sam Colt made them equal and John Browning (designer of a large number of machine guns including the m2 .50 cal or 12.7mm) made them civilized!". We talked about the hand powered machine guns above, and while good when used correctly, these weapons have their issues. In order to use most of them, you had to be standing up to turn the crank and sustained fire was tiring, but the hand cranked guns had one major advantage: the most successful of the hand-cranked guns, like the Gatling or Gardner, had multiple barrels meaning you can fire them with little or no need to stop to let the barrels cool down. At the dawn of the 20th century, this is what the early machine guns had to be compared to when European generals went window shopping. The solution was water-cooling, which allowed machine guns to fire for countless hours with little or no failures, but at the cost of weight rendering them truly static, though highly effective, weapons. If you could point to two developments that caused the First World War's trench warfare, you can point to water-cooled machine guns and barbed wire.

'''late 1930s-1940s''': At the start of World War II, all of the powers involved, France, England, Germany, and Russia, were armed with bolt action weapons. Over the course of the war, automatic and semi-automatic rifles started to become more common; however, only the Americans completely phased out bolt-action rifles for standard infantry by the time of the war (Marines and Army units in the Pacific Front were stuck with the old stuff for a few months due to the Germany First policy). Submachine guns are now becoming more popular with various armies around the world, making it the staple lightweight automatic weapon for infantry troops, totally redefining urban combat due to the weapon's great effectiveness in close combat. Nazi Germany invents the ''Sturmgewehr 44'', the first widely produced assault rifle (the Fedorov Avtomat was the first to be put into service, introduced in 1915, but production was limited due to costs). This weapon would later become the template for modern assault rifles used by the world over.
[[image:QBZ-95.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A QBZ-95 Assault Rifle, the current service rifle of the People's Republic of China, note bullpup configuration (the magazine feeds behind the trigger), thus saving space]]
'''1950s-1990s''': With World War II over, the armies of the world had a chance to study Germany's assault rifle and built their own. The key invention was selective fire, which allowed a single weapon to serve as a traditional rifle or a somewhat long and unwieldy submachine gun. Burst fire was also developed, intended to fire a grouping of rounds to defeat personal body armor but automatically stop before the recoil of fully automatic fire would have a significant impact on aim. The USSR's entry was the AK-47, which was powerful, easy to mass produce, and legendarily tolerant of mistreatment after briefly flirting with the SKS (a semiautomatic carbine fed by stripper clips). On the other side of the world, the US briefly experimented with an automatic version of the M1 known as the M14, before (mostly) getting their shit together and developing the M16, which was expensive, complicated, and notoriously finicky. One thing not to be underestimated is the standardization introduced by NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Gone were incompatible calibers unique to each nation, and in their place were a single pistol caliber (9x19 for NATO, unless you were an American snowflake, and 9x18 for Pact.), a single intermediate caliber (5.56x45 for NATO, 7.62x39 for Pact, later 5.45x39 in certain Pact countries), a single full power rifle cartridge (7.62x51 for NATO, unless you were a French snowflake, and the venerable 7.62x54 for Pact), and heavy machine gun cartridge (.50 BMG for NATO and 12.7×108mm for Pact) for small arms. Even before NATO standardization was officially a thing, many western countries eagerly armed themselves with American surplus M1 Garands and M1 Carbines, which greatly simplified things.

'''2000s''': With the invention of more advanced materials such as plastics and carbon fiber, along with numerous technological advancements of the modern world, firearms are... basically the same they've been for the last fifty years, just usually lighter and with more options. Serious efforts were made to look at new designs like caseless ammo and fused smart grenade bullets, but most went nowhere. The most significant development in firearm technology was the advent of practical ranged tasers; essentially wired dart launchers with high voltage capacitors, they're the first handguns ostensibly intended for less lethal force (occasional heart attacks not withstanding) that weren't a total joke (like pistol caliber tear gas rounds).

'''2010s''': Development of more robust weapons (such as the POF P416 and HK 416), modularity (FB MSBS, similar to the ACR with the variation count of a Lasgun), practical telescopic and caseless ammo (LSAT project), and ship cannon sized railguns (The Naval Research Laboratory currently working with a practical version, i.e. can reload at the same rates as an Abrams 120mm loader). Apparently, it can fires rounds with 32 megajoules of energy, or 23,601,988 foot-pounds.) So apparently even in 2017, we outpace the Imperium in development, makes you wonder what the Dark Age of Technology holds. Few of these have progressed far enough to get fielded and may just be dead ends. The main innovation at this time comes from optics, where even cheap sights makes the professional equipment of old look like crap. Also cheap rifle parts and market (at least for Americans) due to advances in manufacturing. No seriously, you can get a basic AR for $500 or even just make it yourself from parts for less than $400 (Firearms are taxed 10-11%, parts are not. Thus there is significant savings by only buying a small block of aluminum as a "firearm".), and that's if you aren't diving into sub-milspec stuff. New designer rounds to outpace rounds such as the 5.56 and .308 in performance are also coming out, such 6.5 Grendel, 6.5 MPC, .224 Valkyrie, .300 Winchester Magnum, and so on. These only see widespread uses among snipers however, as the cost of replacing existing guns and ammo for what is a marginal increase in performance is of questionable budget use.

[[File:LSAT telescopic ammo.png|200px|thumb|right| An example of humanity developing practical telescopic ammo. Designed to be light weight while not compromising muzzle energy, it'll bring much benefit to anyone needing to bearing the ammunition (assuming the kinks are worked out).]]

Many countries around the world are now looking for new ways to either improve or adapt combustion-based firearms as a whole, and are looking for ways to make what were once sci-fi-only ammo and weaponry, such as [[lasgun|laser]], [[plasma]], direct energy overall (involving the last two), [[gauss]], telescopic/caseless ammo, and more, a reality. While met with some degree of success, nobody (pardoning America, 'cause you gotta do something with that large budget) has found a way yet for these weapons to be man-portable (or cost-effective in the case of telescopic and caseless ammo) that a single soldier could carry these into combat or be affordable/reliable to an extent that it would be more feasible to make these instead of the traditional ballistic weaponry. There is also the problem that if you get a hard projectile (think tungsten and steel) going fast enough, it will just over-penetrate and go through a target, doing little actual damage as compared to our modern bullets that hit, create a temporary cavity the size of a dinner plate, then tumble going through the target sideways (which means that against unarmored targets your average 5.56 round would likely do comparable damage to a bolt round). Rounds that fragment and inbuilt post-penetration destabilization fix this, however the main point here is that there is little reason to equip your soldiers with some [[Bolter|fancy dandy overly complex and costing a half-million dollar gun and ammo]] when a [[Lasgun|good ol' service rifle and some traditional ammo costing a few hundred bucks]] will allow them to do their job just fine. Leading off from the previous statement, even if such projects were successful, there is a strong point to be made that, as least as far as infantry weapons are concerned, chemical-based firearms will remain both cost effective and lethal enough to last at least another century or two, if not longer. While elite units will certainly benefit from new developments, the ordinary grunt will have to wait until they become cheap enough to mass produce. Most modern work is either completely experimental, or fine tuning already present technologies with developments from other areas.

== GUN SAFETY ==
Should be self-evident, but to be frank it isn't. Between the movies having actors brandishing guns everywhere, the video games and toys like airsoft that make them look more harmless than they are and plain human ignorance and negligence; people forget that they're holding something that could easily scatter someone's brains or outright remove their skull.

That said, there are four main rules to gun safety.
*Muzzle sweep: Avoid this. Muzzle sweep is one when points or sweeps a gun in a direction onto people or objects that could get harmed. To avoid this, one should keep the gun's barrel pointed away from anything that you don't intend to destroy or value. This means one must be conscious of where they are pointing it. Or in other words, '''never point the gun at something you don't want to shoot!'''

*'''Treat every firearm as if they were loaded at all times.''' Even if you fully know the gun is empty after removing the magazine and checking the chamber, still treat it as if it wasn't. This creates a force of habit so that if you are ever in a rush/interrupted while handling your gun/given a weapon by someone else/whatever... you will avoid any mishaps and tragedies that could arise because you think the gun is empty where it actually isn't.

*'''Know the target, what's in front of the target, and what's behind the target.''' Remember, bullets are designed to punch holes in things. Even if you've got pinpoint accuracy, the bullet might go right through the target and kill some guy who's just minding his own business. This is why any self-respecting firing range has a thick wall or a pile of packed-down dirt behind the targets. Bullets that don't punch through the target and don't shatter (like frangible rounds made of sintered metal) can ricochet back at the shooter or others around them. For this reason, shooting at metal targets is usually done with the targets angled down.

*Trigger discipline: '''Never put your finger on the trigger unless you want to kill/destroy whatever you're pointing your gun at.''' Also pretty much self-explanatory.

Easy, right? Well... apparently not. Ask any gun enthusiast and they'll gladly tell you all sorts of horror stories that happened because [[That Guy|somebody]] failed to follow these simple rules.

And for the love of the God-Emperor, don't be a fucking tool and mix alcohol/drugs and firearms together. Doing so, very, very unsurprisingly results in the breaking of one or more of the aforementioned rules.

==Types of firearms==
Having been around for well over 1500 years there have been many types of firearms over the course of time. Humans are, if anything, very inventive when it comes to coming up with new and interesting ways to kill each other. A rough list are:

===Ye Olde Gonnes===
*Firelance: Oldest of the Oldschool guns, simple bamboo tubes stuffed with gunpowder and pebbles used in the Ten Kingdoms period and the Song Dynasty. One inaccurate spray of flaming fuck-off in close quarters, often tied to a spear.

*Handgonne: A catch-all term for a primitive gun without a lock that need their powder charges. Majority of these guns were handcannons, as in literal man-portable artillery pieces that had a 50/50 chance of either working or malfunctioning, the worst of which would be the gun exploding in the shooter's face.

*Arquebus - A basic matchlock Firearm. A note of clarification: 'Arquebus' and 'musket' are both used to describe firearms from this time and they are often used interchangeably. But if you want to be ''really'' technical in this period an Arquebus is a regular two handed matchlock firearm while a musket is a larger heavier gun firing a larger projectile, sometimes up to an inch in diameter. Latter (about 1700 onward) musket would refer to any muzzleloading long barreled handheld firearm used for mainly shooting solid shots. This is not too much of a big deal and is nothing to get mad about, but it is worth noting.

*Musket - Today, the musket is a catch-all term for all early smoothbore, shoulder-fired, muzzle-loaded firearms. Technically this isn't the case, the musket was an improved Arquebus, one of the earliest muzzle-loaded guns. However because of romanticism and literature; people who aren't acquainted with firearms will commonly refer to any muzzle-loaded long weapon as a musket (about the same reason why most people today refer to any automatic weapon as a machine gun). Muskets were inaccurate as people have yet to put serious research into firearm ballistics, generated a lot of smoke due to primitive gunpowder mixtures, and were temperamental to environmental conditions (rain will pretty much render a musket into an wet stick of wood), but still enjoyed a lot of popularity due to their lethality and ease of use compared to other man-portable ranged weapons at the time. Muskets were quickly phased out once rifles became a feasible thing, who did what a musket could do, but better. Muskets were categorized by what firing mechanism was used in the lock:
:*The earliest versions used matchlocks, which fired by poking a slow-burning fuse into the firing chamber. These were fairly unreliable and somewhat hazardous since you had a smouldering fuse close to the flashpan when you were reloading.
:* Flintlocks replaced matchlocks, which ignited by generating sparks when it struck the iron frizzen, igniting the powder in the flashpan. The flint would periodically break and need replacing, but it was still safer than a matchlock.
:* With the invention of the percussion cap came the Caplock, or Cap & Ball. This was the final evolution before breachloading became widespread. The cap would be fitted onto a tube to the firing chamber after the musket was loaded. Caplock firearms did not generate sparks in and of themselves; rather, they used a simple hammer to strike the cap, which would in turn ignite the powder in the firing chamber. Far more contained than flintlock, until the fully self-contained cartridge superseded it entirely.

*Multi-barreled gun - In the olden days, people wanted more dakka launched at enemies, but things like magazines and self-loading weapons were still an alien idea during its time. So as an alternative people took a breach/muzzle-loaded firearm, slapped one or more barrels onto it, and reworked the trigger so they can fire more shots before needing to reload. This resulted in some particularly wacky times for guns. To this day, the only multi-barrel weapon still commonly used (disregarding military rifles with underslung grenade launchers, door breaching shotguns, or rotating barrel Gatling-style guns) is the double-barreled hunting shotgun. Some notable guns were volley guns called ribauldequin, which were a line of infantry dudes without most of the dudes. The problem was that this took very long to load, because you have 2 or two people ramming shit rather than 20 dudes each loading. So, that was a colossal fail in a long term artillery exchange, but quite effective for countering a charge when all you need is one volley to make mincemeat out of that cavalry coming at you.

===Modern Firearms===
*Handgun - Also called "pistols", handguns are small-sized firearms that can be comfortably fired in one hand (hence the name). Handguns are mainly used for close defense and as a sidearm, making them akin to daggers. Modern pistol calibers are commonly between 8mm and 11mm, although popular magnum rounds like the .50 GI and .50AE are also exist for handguns (albeit they tend to be large, heavy, and likely to fuck up your wrist from the recoil).
:*Machine pistol - A machine pistol is a handgun that can fire in either bursts or in full-auto. While they're commonly thrown into that category, machine pistols are not submachine guns due to their size and use. Machine-pistols are not in widespread use with traditional military forces as SMGs and PDWs do better damage and have a longer range, but they remain popular with personnel like bodyguards, who require a highly portable but powerful sidearm.
:*Derringer - Another case of the concept being named after its inventor, "derringer" refers to tiny pistols, often used as concealed or backup sidearms, that could fit into the palm of your hand. These things have been around since the 19th century and were single-shot, though could have multiple barrels to fire off more shots before reloading, which were fired in a sequence. Due to their size and intended use (i.e: shooting someone while literally next to them); derringers typically used small rounds like .22 and below. But if you ''really'' wanted someone dead (and your wrists obliterated); some packed larger shots like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COP_.357_Derringer .357 magnum rounds].
:*Pocket Pistol - Modern versions of the derringer, those are really small handguns or revolvers that sacrifice range and ammo count in order to be as small and easily concealed as possible. Also called "subcompacts".

*Revolver - A revolving gun is any weapon that uses a revolving cylinder to load new rounds after every shot. While its commonly now relegated to pistols (a revolver typically meant a revolver pistol these days) the style is still used for some shotguns (like the Armsel Striker) and grenade launchers (like the MM1-Hawk). Revolvers are still in use for a few reasons: they're simple and cheap to make, can easily be used by left and right-handed shooters (since spent casings aren't automatically ejected like in the case of modern firearms) and is still pretty robust compared to today's modern weapons as fewer mechanisms means fewer points of failure. Downside is that they have very limited ammunition space (because the gun was made around the cylinder you can't expand it like how you can with detachable magazines, so you either had a gun with 5-8 rounds or a bulky gun with a 12-round cylinder) and reload time (revolvers in all generations were a pain in the ass to reload. If you had an old revolver with a loading gate; you had to eject each round by hand, ''then'' load new rounds. If you had a newer one; you had to empty the cylinder, load the rounds, then cock the hammer. This is in contrast to modern guns where you just had to eject the magazine, load a new one, and charge the weapon). Thanks to the American old west era and subsequent movies about it, revolver-styled handguns have achieved a kind of rustic yet sleek appeal to them. Revolvers come in generally the same calibers as handguns, from the modest .22 Long Rifle used for practicing and target shooting to the behemoth .500 S&W Magnum which can put down a bear. "Snubnose" revolvers refer to revolvers with shortened barrels in an attempt to make them more compact.
:* Top Break - A revolver with a hinged frame that opens to expose the cylinder. Top breaks were originally designed for cavalry, as they are very easy to load. However, the two piece frame is a weakness that limits the power of cartridge that can be used.
:* Swing Arm - By far the most common type of revolver, the swing arm mounts the cylinder on a moving arm known as a crane, which allows the cylinder to be exposed for loading. The chief limitation of the swing arm design is that the crane can bend over time and due to rough handling.
:* Gate Loading - Named for their loading gate, these revolvers can only expose one cylinder for reloading a a time, with the spent casing being pushed out through the gate by a long ejector rod. Gate loading revolvers are the earliest style for cartridge revolvers, dating back to conversions of percussion cap revolvers. Gate loading revolvers are now rare except for reproductions and revolvers designed to big cartridges. The fixed cylinder is the strongest possible configuration of revolver and thus the most tolerant of high power ammunition.

*Submachine gun - A submachine gun (abbreviated to SMG) is a fully automatic weapon that fires pistol cartridges instead of the larger rifle cartridges. One of the first true fully automatic infantry weapons outside of the machine gun, hence the name. The weapon fulfills a similar role of the carbine, striking a balance between firepower, recoil, and bulk. They also make good stealth weapons, as most pistol rounds are subsonic with heavier bullets and thus much quieter when suppressed.

:*Personal Defense Weapon - A PDW is a bit of a mix of a carbine and an SMG, firing specialized cartridges with rifle-like characteristics (usually in the 4-5mm range, shorter than a rifle cartridge but longer than a pistol cartridge) at the cost of additional weight. Its original role is as its name implies; a personal defense weapon for nonfrontline infantry, like artillery spotters, scouts, vehicle crews, commandos, etc. Back in the day PDWs weren't necessarily automatic; a pistol with a longer barrel and mounted stock could be classified as a PDW (This was done with the German C96 and Luger P07), today however these would qualify as "pistol carbines". These days PDWs are commonly lumped into the same category as SMGs, as they now fulfill similar roles.

*[[Shotgun]] - Shotguns are smoothbore weapons (as in the barrel is not rifled) designed to fire either shot (multiple steel or lead pellets) or slugs (a single, heavy projectile), although modern times have included other types of ammunition. The ability to fire multiple types of ammunition without modification is one of the main advantages to using a shotgun; converting an anti-infantry weapon into a door-breaching tool, a mini-flamethrower, or a less-lethal weapon with but a switch of the munitions. The vast majority of shotguns are pump-action or breech-loading, though as of 1905 shotguns can come in semi-automatic or fully-automatic configurations, but sheer variety of shell loads makes their reliability highly ammo dependant. For more information see the [[shotgun]] page. The most common bore size for shotguns is 12 gauge (about 18.5mm). Confusingly, higher gauges are lower in size because its based on weight of spheres of lead rather than diameter; a 20 gauge is about 15.6mm, while a 10 gauge is 19.7mm (.410 bore exists outside this and is .410 inch/10.4 mm/67 bore).

*Rifle - Rifles were originally shoulder-fired weapons that had their barrels "rifled" to increase precision, by putting spiral grooves into the barrel in order to have the bullet spin before leaving the barrel; reducing it's wind resistance (otherwise known as drag) and giving it more momentum as it leaves that muzzle. In ye olden days, these were specialist weapons given to marksmen while the common soldier carried a musket. However, because all modern non-shotgun non-explosive firearms now use rifling to improve ballistics, the term is usually reserved for a shoulder-fired long weapon, designed for accurate fire.
:*Assault Rifle - Assault rifles are a term given to any rifle that can be fired on full-auto and shoot intermediate-caliber rounds, typically in the 5mm range (or a shortened 7mm round if you're from the Eastern bloc). This is usually the standard weapon of a non-specialized front-line infantryman. The STG44 is considered to be the earliest one fielded in industrial quantity, though the idea has been around since at least the first World War.
:*Battle Rifle - Basically the assault rifle's big brother; battle rifles are bigger automatic rifles designed to fire high-caliber rounds, typically in the 7mm range. These were the mainstay for armies in the 1950s, but the US eventually found out that giving infantry rifles with smaller rounds is better since its lighter and can allow infantry to be more accurately engage enemies better due to lower recoil (albeit at the cost of power), so battle rifles were replaced by assault rifles for front-line use and battle rifles were relegated to specialists like marksmen or support gunners (who's job permits for a slower-firing but more powerful weapon). The M1918 BAR may count as one, though the first occurred no latter than 1942's FG42.
:*Carbine - A carbine is a compact rifle, primarily designed to be used in close quarters. In most cases, carbines are based from a parent rifle, and are scaled down by using lighter/smaller parts and shortening the barrel (such as in the case of the American M16 vs M4) or is its own weapon (like the Korean K1A). These are typically given to units who need to engage the enemy at close range and need a rifle for the job, like commandos, assault teams, or other specialist units, or given to units who are not expected to fight on the front but need a compact but decent weapon to defend themselves if the need arises, like pilots or vehicle crews. Carbine may also refer to pistol-caliber semi-automatic weapons that are longer than a pistol, but this is typically only used in the civilian market. The concept of a carbine predates modern firearms, though they existed primarily for cavalry.
:*Micro Assault Rifle - Even smaller than carbines; these are ultracompact rifles designed when someone needs a highly portable but powerful weapon. A MAR is basically a PDW that shoots actual rifle rounds. Much like carbines; a MAR can either be based on a parent rifle and scaled down or made as its own weapon. These tend to have low effectiveness for standard calibers, since those were designed for full length barrels, but the logistics of supply are superior.
:*Sniper Rifle - A sniper rifle is a special precision rifle, specifically designed to engage targets at extreme range with lethal efficiency. Many sniper rifles use standard 7.62mm rounds, but high-performance rifles will use more potent rounds up to 12.7mm rounds for extra range and stopping power. Preferably, sniper rifles should use match-grade ammunition to provide consistency and accuracy at high extended ranges. The vast majority are bolt-action for simplicity and power (much more reliable and because all the gasses are diverted into the barrel, rather than some being diverted to work the action; the gun can launch the bullet farther and faster), but there are also a decent number of semi-automatic ones. Sniper rifles are given to special marksmen called "snipers", who are capable of engaging the enemy from extreme distances, usually well away from the scrap.
:*Designated Marksman Rifle - A sort of compromise between battle rifles and sniper rifles, DMRs are precision weapons meant to be used by frontline infantry to accurately engage distant targets that regular infantry weapons cannot. Due to its role, it's generally more accurate than a rifleman's gun, but usually not as effective as an actual sniper's gun (DMRs are usually only effective within 1 kilometer, while SRs are typically effective beyond 1 kilometer). Generally speaking, DMRs avoid using the more high-performance rounds that snipers may use, as it may be detrimental for an infantryman's role.
:*Recoiless - Not a conventional gun in most senses; a recoilless gun (models with rifling are called "Recoiless rifles" though people often miss this distinction) is as the title suggest, a rifled weapon without (or at least reduced) recoil. It does this by basically being a cannon with the back taken off. When loaded the cartridge sits in an open back tube, there is no breach. When fired, the explosion propels the shell out the tube, but an equal amount of gas comes out the other side canceling out the recoil. This means that total muzzle velocity is lower than a cannon with a breech on it, but they make up for it by shooting bigger shells, and with HEAT shells (thanks to the nature of the Munroe effect) the wider the diameter of the shell the more effective it is, meaning even a large slow moving projectile can do a great amount of damage to tanks.
:*Anti-Tank/Materiel Rifle - Essentially modern elephant guns; these rifles are geared towards destroying tanks and hard objects, although they are very much still capable of demolishing infantry (albeit overkill since rifles of this type tend to outright cause body parts to explode by the sheer amount of force they carry.). Anti-tank rifles were the norm for years (From the 1910s to the late 1970s) as they were a cheap yet effective way of getting rid of tanks, but advancements in vehicle armor has largely rendered AT rifles obsolete (atlest for anti-tank roles, these things can still royally murder lightly-armored vehicles and urban housing, thus why they can be seen in use today). Anti-materiel rifles however, are a bit of an offshoot of AT rifles, and are still in use today. They are often used to take out lighter vehicles, to detonate ordnance at a safe distance or fuck up anything valuable to the other side like radars, communication devices, heavy weapons, etc... They have been successfully used against light boats and even to down the occasional helicopter. Likewise, they have been used by both professional and paramilitary forces due in thanks to their ability to annihilate cover (and hopefully what's behind it) where most conventional small arms won't.
:*Elephant Gun - A rifle that fires a ludicrously heavy bullet, usually as a single shot but rarely as a bolt action. As the name implies, these were developed to bring down big game like elephants, but eventually became the precursors to anti-material rifles. Unlike the later, range or penetration aren't big concerns so much as delivering a massive amount of energy to a soft-skinned target. While hunting elephants may be illegal today, a large caliber weapon is still useful for defense against large predators like bears or lions, who would shrug off a smaller 5.56mm or 7.62mm to the body. Firing such a heavy weapon while standing or even sitting isn't a pleasant experience; without the right stance, it'll go flying once you pull the trigger.
:*Everything else - Except sniper rifles and most Designated Marksman Rifles, all of the above rifles are generally "military-grade" and thus are generally not available to the public (unless you are in '''The Great United States Of America'''*, *NFA restrictions apply). Any other type of rifle will typically be called a "sporting rifle" or "hunting rifle", etc and are either bolt-action or semi-automatic. Technically speaking, most "military-grade" firearms can be modified to become semi-automatic to allow for use within the public.

*Machine Gun - Colloquially a machine gun is a large automatic weapon (though technically anything fully-automatic, ranging from a machine pistol all the way up to auto-cannons), typically fed from a magazine or a belt (or both, as is the case with the M249) and meant to either be man-portable or fired from an emplacement or mount like a tripod or turret. The main difference between MGs and the rest of the automatic weapon family is that an MG is a gun meant to fire with longer continuous bursts as a support weapon; meaning that the machine gunner applies continuous suppression fire at the enemy to keep them down (and occasionally kill those stupid enough to not get the message), while the rest of the squad maneuver. Machine guns are generally heavier, not only because of the volume of ammo they carry; but their parts (such as the barrel) are made of heavier materials so that the gun can withstand the punishing amounts of bullets it puts downrange (firing hundreds of rounds without pause can cause guns to overheat and malfunction, even catch fire or explode in the worst of scenarios, unless they're built for such a task.) Even then, barrel changes occur frequently to change warped and damaged barrels.
:*Light Machine Gun - an LMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same intermediate rounds as assault rifles. They are intended to be almost as portable as a rifle (as in, they can be shouldered, but get better performance with a bipod) and allow machine gunners to provide suppressing fire at the squad level. Some LMGs are magazine-fed rifles with heavier barrels and modified bolts (such as the RPK), or else scaled-down MMGs (such as the M249 SAW).
:*Medium Machine Gun - an MMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same full-power rounds as battle rifles. These tend to push the limit of what's practical for a man-portable weapon, and when deployed are usually fired from a stationary position either on a bipod or tripod due to the recoil they generate. These weapons usually overlap with General Purpose Machine Guns and tend to be deployed at the company level or as a vehicle weapon.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (classic) - The definition of an HMG has changed a bit over the last 100 years so the catagory has been split up into two category's. The classical heavy machine gun is exclusively meant to be fired from emplacements and mounts like a tripod due to their large size and weight and was designed to be fired from a fixed position: constantly, just spitting out bullets for days. Often done with the aid of a water jacket which further increased the weight of the weapon. These are the guns that created the quagmire of the great war. Their heavy weight made them impossible for an infantryman to fire on the move (regardless of what you hear; even Hollywood couldn't make these monsters man-portable in their movies, and those fire low-powered blank rounds and is being held by the like of [[Sly Marbo|Sylvester Stallone]]). But that weight also greatly limited their maneuverability and forced them to stay in a static defensive position. Usage outside of vehicle mounts died off when artillery became more precise and could easily wipe out immobile emplacements. Unlike modern heavy machine guns, classical ones used a standard sized rifle cartridge, the vickers for example used the .303 bullet same as the standard rifle of the day, what made them 'heavy' was the focus on sustained shooting to throw back waves of attacking infantry. Examples include the Maxim gun, Hotchkiss Mle 1914 and the Vickers.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (Modern): a modern heavy machine gun is not designed to fire constantly, but to fire a big bullet. Only slightly too small to qualify for the definition of 'cannon' are weapons like the M2 browning .50 caliber, or 12.7 mm machine gun. Modern HMG's are powerful enough to penetrate light armor and damage fragile equipment on heavy armor (like scopes), making them formidable weapons. Examples of modern HMG's are the Russian DHSK and the American M2 Browning.
:*General Purpose Machine Gun - Essentially a machine gun that can perform multiple roles of the previous stated. Examples of this are the German MG34 (arguably the first of this concept) and MG42/MG3, or (from an American prospective) the American M60 and M240, which can reliably serve both infantry-level support weapon and mounted gun roles by fitting them with the appropriate parts. The first ones used the general rifle cartridge, while modern examples are in 7.62x51 NATO or its equivalents.
::*Squad Automatic Weapon - An attempt to make a GPMG that use the intermediate cartridges everyone else in the squad used. Despite the weaknesses of intermediate cartridges (limited range, low barrier penetration/destruction), they is still commonly used by virtue of their reduced logistical requirements and lighter weight compared to other man-portable LMG variants. The RPD, RPK and M249/SAW/MINIMI family are the main entries here, though it seems every modern assault rifle has tried to make a SAW variant with varying degrees of success.
:::*Infantry Automatic Rifle - A more recent concept that seeks to combine the continuous firing properties of a machine gun with an assault rifle's accuracy and ease of use. So far only attempted seriously by the US Marine Corp with the M27; while the higher-ups are pleased with it so far, there is considerable debate about whether its lower rate of fire compared to the M249 will make it less effective at providing suppressing fire.
:*Rotary Machine Gun - Originally known as the "Gatling gun", man's first known attempt to have enough [[dakka]]; a rotary machine gun is an automatic weapon that uses revolving barrels that interchange every time the gun fires off a round. The kicker to this is that it allows the gun to shoot with little threat of the barrels wearing out as they interchange between shots; giving them a small window to cool off before firing again. The end result is a gun capable of firing over 3,000 rounds per minute without fail, or in a smaller scope; 50 rounds per second. Modern rotary guns are electrically powered to allow them to reach such insane speeds, and are given ammo drums that contain thousands of rounds to be able to sustain that amount of bullets being fired; so they're confined to static emplacements and vehicles (unlike what the media constantly portrays; these things are not even close to being man-portable without assistance from powered armor.) These types of guns are used almost exclusively on aircraft or anti-aircraft emplacements, as they're the only non-missile weapon that can reliably hit fast-moving aircraft. But a rotary gun that fires 30mm rounds is powerful enough to tear tanks in two, as well (metaphorically, they only have to penetrate top armor and rate of fire helps). Unlike what the movies would tell you a rotary machine gun does not need a long spinup time to get to full speed: when the trigger is pulled the gun starts to spin and fire immediately.
:*Chain gun - A chain gun is a machine gun that is fed using an electric motor. Instead of relying on the gasses from the bullet to work the action to cycle a new round; a machine automatically ejects and loads a new round in after firing a shot. Chain guns have the benefit of never jamming due to feeding failures, as even if the round is not discharged; the machine pops it out and loads a new one regardless. However, it is also not man-portable as it requires an electric motor to function, so it is only found on fixed emplacements or vehicles. Can easily fuck up any poor shmucks day by perforating the boat or car they are in. People sometimes use the words "chain gun" and "rotary machine gun" interchangably, but chain guns are typically single-barreled, as they don't need the high rate of fire that rotary guns do outside of anti-air guns.

===Actions===
"Action" refers to how ammunition is loaded into the weapon.

*Single-shot: The first and oldest of all; a single-shot weapon is when users manually load rounds into the chamber. This can be anything from loading a new round, cocking the weapon every shot, or pumping the action.
**Muzzle-loaded: The earliest form of how weapons were loaded. This meant you had to load a new round directly into the muzzle, which is where the bullets come out. In its earliest form; muzzle-loaded guns were complicated to arm; you had to fuck around with a wad, powder, and slug. In the heat of battle, you had to ram these down the barrel of your gun in the correct order, light the wick, then aim before the gun goes off. And you had to do all this while standing in the open within firing range of your enemy.
**Breach-loaded; An upgrade over muzzle-loading and developed shortly after cartridges were invented; breach loaders are where the bottom of the barrel can be unhinged so that you can load a new round into it. It is still a popular setup for multi-barreled shotguns. Certain revolvers are breach-loaded as well, but given the size and design of the revolver, this gives them a notable weak point at the top of the weapon where the parts connect together.
**Bolt-action: This type of action is where you pull the charging handle of a weapon, every time you shoot so that the mechanism would chamber a new round. These were pretty popular in WW1 and continues to be used today for precision rifles.
**Lever-action: The cool kid of the single-action club; lever-action weapons are those where you have to use a lever to chamber a new round, which was usually mounted near the trigger. This type was made popular by Winchester during the frontier age of the Wild West and even more by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he used a lever-action shotgun during Terminator 2.
**Pump-action: A pump action is where you had to pull the "pump" of the weapon to cycle a new round. This is the most common action used by shotguns. A few rifles used this setup as well, and there is one instance of a bunch of madmen creating a pump-action 3+1 (three in the tube, one in the chamber) 40mm grenade launcher.

*Automatic action: Unlike single-shot weapons, it uses gasses expelled by the cartridge or recoil to power a mechanism that automatically chambers a new round after each shot. Generally speaking, the semi-automatic to fully-automatic action is determined by the trigger sear, which may either inhibit the hammer from hitting against until the trigger is let go (semi-automatic), stops firing after a certain number of rounds have been fired (burst-fire), or continuously fires until ammo is expended (fully automatic).
**Semi-automatic: A semi-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire after every trigger pull, with the user only needing to work the action after reloading a completely empty gun. Most handguns and many rifles are semi-automatic.
**Burst-Fire: A setting sometimes included on automatic weapons, each trigger pull fires three (or sometimes two) rounds in rapid succession. This is used as a way to allow automatic capability without wasting bullets, as keeping the trigger held too long on anything other than a mounted weapon tends to cause it to lose accuracy very quickly.
**Fully-automatic: A fully-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire automatically, so long as the trigger is depressed, rather than pulled each time like how semi-autos work. Automatic weapons tend to be banned for civilian use and are only available to military.

===Ammo Storage and Feeding===
This refers to how ammunition is given to the weapon. Also the topic of a /k/ommando's greatest sources of rage; the clip vs magazine misconception. This section will give a short explanation for both.

*Pepperbox - basically the bastard child of a break-action long gun and a revolver; a pepperbox gun has 3 or more barrels loaded and ready to fire, with the gun rotating between the loaded barrels to fire in relatively quick sucession. As this was one of the only ways to get more than a single shot in less than a minute without resorting to carrying multiple guns; the design was wacky but popular during the olden ages (and still today to a limited extent for some pocket pistols). The Empire's Outriders are armed with these weapons if you want a visual of what they looked like. Most pepperboxes where smoothbore since they were made on the cheap and never intended for more than point blank fire.

*Volleygun - A variant of the olden multi-barrel family, the volleygun foregoes single, accurate shots in favor of alpha-striking to saturate the area in lead, having anywhere between 2 to 20 barrels (and you can go well beyond this if your contraption can handle it) and the size ranging anywhere from a pistol to a full-sized artillery piece. As the name describes; it fires all of it's payload in a single volley, basically making it a one-man firing line. This style of weaponry gradually fell out of disuse as more modern firearms were developed (mainly self-loading weapons, which were more reliable and accurate), but is notably still used for the "Metal Storm", a prototype weapon with truly absurd number of gun barrels that go off simultaneously to shred the ever-living fuck out of it's target. The only types still in use today are double barreled shotguns and derringers.

*Superposed load - the disadvantage to using a multi-barreled firearm is that it adds a lot of weight to the firearm. One alternative was to simply stack multiple bullets and charges into the same barrel, and then have the firearm set them off sequentially. The early version of this mechanism was prone to failures, as the bullets were not self-contained and a poor gas seal could result in multiple charges going off, destroying the gun (and the user if unlucky enough) if it was not designed to handle the stress. However, this setup was revived with the invention of caseless bullets and electronic triggers used most prominently in Metal Storm weapons. If combined with multiple barrels, a metal storm weapon can have a bewildering rate of fire. So far the technology is mostly used in multi-shot grenade launchers.

*Bullpup - A bullpup is any weapon where its action is located in the behind the trigger, instead of in front. Bullpups have the advantage of being more compact, compared to the traditional setup, as most of the gun's mechanism is located in the stock area. but has the disadvantage of not being ambidextrous (being that the shell ejection port is directly beside the shooter's face, left-handed shooters are forced to shoot from the right to not get their faces burned off) unless specifically designed to be so. This is usually resolved by cutting out ejection ports on both sides and swapping parts over, or else ejecting bullets downward or forward. And typically suffer from poor triggers due to the distance from trigger to action, though there are aftermarket kits for many that can mitigate it a good deal. Modern pistols and many SMGs that feed from inside the grip are ''technically'' bullpups, since their magazine and action are behind the trigger and connected by a transfer bar, but they generally aren't counted as such.

*Clip - A clip is a device, used for bundling bullets together for immediate use. Guns cannot use clips by themselves, they have to be loaded into a magazine first to be used by a gun. The most common version were "stripper clips": each clip held about five bullets, and to load the rifle you placed the clip on top of the magazine, then squeezed the bullets off the clip into the magazine. Another type, en bloc, was used by the M1 Garand and held eight bullets in a 2x4 configuration. The entire clip was put in the magazine, with the clip being ejected after being emptied. The last kind is the moon (or half-moon) clip, used specifically for revolvers, which holds bullets in a circular formation for loading the chamber up in one go. Clips are still used today, but exclusively to speed up loading external magazines. Filling external magazines generally requires a small disposable tool, which is included in any ammo lot packaged on stripper clips.

*Speedloader - A speedloader is essentially a clip that has moving parts, usually to aid with holding and/or loading ammunition. Two common types exist. The first is similar to a moon clip in that it holds bullets so that they can all be loaded into a revolver simultaneously, but use a locking mechanism to secure the bullets while they are being carried, then release them once they are loaded into the cylinder. While not as fast as a moon clip, it still makes loading revolvers considerably faster. Another type of speedloader is the magazine loader, which is designed to reduce the spring pressure in a magazine, making it faster and easier to load.

*Magazine - The magazine is part of the weapon that houses and feeds actual ammo into the weapon. In the olden days, many guns had magazines that were built into the weapon itself and were fed using clips of ammo that were loaded after the gun ran out of ammo. Built-in magazines, however, severely limited the potential ammunition capacity of guns as they cannot be expanded without significantly making the gun larger and was a pain in the ass to reload (such as in the case of revolvers). To counter this; people designed guns whose magazines were detachable from the gun itself. This allowed people to easily expand the ammo cap of a gun, as they only needed to ensure that the extended magazine will fit into their gun and cycle properly, they no longer needed to re-work the entire structure of the gun to enlarge a built-in magazine. It also greatly increased a person's reload speed, as instead of fumbling around with several clips to ram down the gun: they just had to detach a magazine, pull one out of their vest/bag, load it in (charge the gun if needed), and they're good to go. High-capacity magazines tend to take on weird shapes rather than the standard flat box; the most common variant is the drum magazine, but there are also double drums, caskets, and helicals. Typically the weakest part of any firearm. A large part of the misconceptions of the M16 were related to the fucktarded idea that it should be issued with DISPOSABLE MAGAZINES! They were initially not intended for repeated use, empty the mag. Drop it, crush it under your boot, reload a brand new never used mag. Worked well till some bureaucrat ordered reusing them which alongside some other bureaucrats skipping the chrome lining for the barrel and issuing really shitty ammo made with spare parts caused regular failures. Newer iterations of the magazine have since addressed these issues.

*Belts - The belt is what it is; a long belt filled with bullets, which can either take the form of a cloth belt or linked by metallic chains. Belts are the common loading method of most machine guns, who typically have ammunition capacities well beyond 100 rounds. The reason for this is that it simplifies the operation of the gun (since belts do not require them to be fed to the gun with a mechanism like in traditional magazines) and makes them less prone to malfunctions (with a gun designed to shoot continuously; you wanna make sure that there's less critical moving parts to fuck up as it's firing it's 300th round at the enemy). Belts are also much easier to transport, as the belt can be folded several times to make it more compact, versus a solid magazine. This is mostly because until H&K put out their steel high reliability 5.56 nato mag, most magazines couldn't keep up with the fire rate and were too flimsy(The Soviet counterparts that used magazines, used AK pattern magazines which you can open a beer with and then load into the gun). Pretty much every man issued a M249 with the magwell adapter, will attest to how dire you must be for bullets in the air to use it.

==Ammunition themselves==
To call a round or cartridge "a bullet" would be the equivalent of calling of calling a magazine a clip. Bullets are the projectiles that are or to be launched, while the "round" is the entire thing. To do otherwise would summon the wrath of the /k/ommando.

===Composition of the modern round/cartridge===

*Casing - The metal jacket that houses the propellant, primer, and to an extent the bullet (pardoning telescopic munitions which house the bullet completely.) Usually made from brass, they can be made from steel or plastics (at the detriment of the gun itself, unless designed for such).

*Propellant - Powder that is used to propel the bullet/slug/projectile. In the good ol' days, it used black powder, but those clouded the air and weren't powerful. Most modern rounds use a double base powder (generally gun cotton or nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, may include a variety of stabilizers (to improve shelf life of the round) and deterrents (to prevent the cartridge from being too "hot". For artillery, they make good use of triple base propellants, which is smokey as hell but burn well.

*Primer - What activates the powder in the rounds themselves. Generally a firm dent is enough to activate the munitions. Generally use non-corrosive compression sensitive materials.

*Bullets - What people get tripped up on in naming munitions. Being the projectile, anyone loading the munitions has a vast choice of what can be used as a bullet. Generally, lead, steel, and tungsten make the core of the round (thanks to their weight) while the outer coat for the round could be lead (since it is also very malleable), copper, and nickel, though Teflon and certain plastics can also be used. If you're feeling lucky, you can load a variety of other materials into the rounds (or shells for shotguns). Take for example salt, which doesn't kill, but you can mark people and they sting like hell.

===Types of bullets===
As a short note on bullets, its important to know that just because a bullet can easily penetrate armor doesn't mean its a definite upgrade over everything else. If a hard bullet like the FMJ or AP penetrates the human body and exits in the same shot; its gonna hurt like hell but unless that bullet was in the 12.7mm (.50 caliber) category or it hit something important like a lung or the head; the target has a good possibility to survive through a combination of medical aid, hormones (adrenaline in fight or flight), and willpower (with the side possibility of stimulants), and even still continue to fight onwards if they're that dead 'ard. That said, if a 12.7mm round came tearing through your body; it has enough momentum to potentially rupture a good chunk of your insides which is ''very'' lethal, but 12.7mm guns are generally not mainstay (these are guns like the Desert Eagle, M2 Browning, or M82 Barrett), so unless you're a real-life action hero, a turret gunner, or a counter-sniper; its unlikely for you to have access to these behemoths.

Likewise, if a soft bullet like the JHP or SP penetrates the body, then which expands, fragments, and/or tumbles inside; in short internal and external bleeding would be the most urgent of the target's concerns, with ruptured organs and torn muscles leaking like a broken sewage pipe, thus making HP lot more lethal and debilitating. That said, soft bullets fragment easily and body armor proportionate to it's caliber can reliably stop soft round. That said even if armored; the target is still gonna feel the impact of the bullet's force hitting against his body, and that still has the potential of killing someone if the circumstances are right (although its still unreliable).

In the end, a bullet is either specialized where it's only effective against either armored or unarmored targets, or a special combination that renders it effective against both types (although these require an experienced smith to manufacture properly).

*Ball - though if we start talking bullets we need to start with the first bullet: the lead ball, from where we derive the common term for bullets as 'rounds'. It's. . .just a lead ball though, not much to say about it. The balls were hand made, often by soldiers themselves since lead has such a low melting point, with the molds often being unique to each gun. This used largely the same process that was used for [[Sling]] bullets since antiquity. These early bullets would often 'rattle' down the barrel due to ill fitting the barrel of there guns, which combined with a lack of riffling would mean early guns were horribly inaccurate. If one used a smaller bullet that better fitted the gun, would could use rifling, but this required, (see above) hammering the bullet into place to make sure that there were no gaps.

*Minié ball- The first bullet we would know as a 'bullet', and the first truly distinct from a lead ball. A Minié ball is a conical bullet with a concave hole in the base. When fired the base flared out from the pressure of the blast, letting it engage with the rifling of the gun. This meant that it formed a seal with the barrel making it incredibly accurate, while not needing to be tightly hammered down the barrel. The best of both worlds. Combined with it's large size these things were lethal on the battle field maiming and crippling an entire generation of soldiers during the US civil war.

*Full Metal Jacket (FMJ)- Generally a lead or steel bullet encased in a soft metal such as copper. Acts a sort of lube as well as preventing fouling of the barrel. Depending on design, has a potential to fragment post impact, shredding internal organs.
**Synthetic Jacket- FMJ ammo with a plastic jacket, which has the advantage of reducing cleaning requirements and safer when hitting steel at the cost of various things not really relevant in practice ammo. Currently only in handgun calibers and only made as practice/match ammo (though some hollow points and AP rounds do also use polymer jackets).

*Hollow point (HP)- The hollow section in the center makes the bullet expand on impact, creating a bigger hole in its victim at the expense of being less effective against armored targets. That being said, the decreased penetration also makes it safer to use in situations where over-penetration could be dangerous (e.g. on an aircraft). Certain designs have bladed tips on expansion, causing additional cutting and bleeding too. It was banned from military use by the Hague Convention of 1899, so restricted to police, civilians, and, as of 2017, the United States Armed Forces (The US didn't sign that provision, but previously stuck with FMJ even after mass production became feasible for the sake of NATO compatibility).

*Semi jacketed Hollow point (SJHP)- Same as a hollow point, but has a copper jacket to help reduce fouling.

*Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP)- Same as above, but fully covers the bullet down to the tip.

*Wad cutter (WC)- Flat tipped bullet. Not very aerodynamic but it leaves a big hole to help tell you where you hit the target. Generally for closer range paper targets as they lose velocity very quickly due to the drag on them.

*Semi Wad Cutter (SWC)- Like the wad cutter, but more aerodynamic.

*Armor Piercing (AP)- As name implies, intended to penetrate armor, be it person or equipment. However, this ultimately depends on what gun you're shooting from and what armor you're shooting at. A 9x19mm AP steel round coming from a 4" barrel will do diddly to NIJ Level IIIA, where as a 7.62x51 AP flying out of a 24" barrel will punch through it easy as you please. Modern AP rounds are often jacketed in plastic, but this is purely to protect the barrel (turns out sending something meant to destroy steel through a steel barrel results in a wrecked barrel) and adds no armor piercing quality.

*Saboted light armor penetrator (SLAP)/Saboted bullets- Think of the discarding sabots fired from a M1 Abrams or a saboted slug of a shotgun, but redesigned to be fired like a standard rifle round. The sabot is designed to the grip the rifling until it leaves the barrel, then discard after leaving the barrel. This would leave the penetrator or bullet with a high velocity while providing a sufficient spin to the bullet to keep it stabilized in the air. With a higher density and/or thinner bullet, they can potentially penetrate better than potentially even APHE. Likewise for handcrafted bullets, they provide higher velocity for a smaller bullet in a cartridge intended for a larger caliber. G

*High Explosive incendiary (HEI)- Explosive tipped munition. Generally for larger rounds (think 7.62 and beyond), they typically are meant for non-infantry targets such as light vehicles, light aircraft, and barriers, showering those inside with speeding shrapnel. Despite their implication, they might not work as well as one might think against hard target.

*Armor Piercing Incendiary (API)/Armor Piercing High Explosive (APHE), High Explosive Incendiary Armor Penetration (HEIAP)- Designed with the intentions of penetrating hard targets that HE rounds can't do alone and being anti-material in general, API and HEIAP are the answer to those targets. Generally have sufficient power in and behind the bullet (think Raufoss Mk.211), it will penetrate body armor and light vehicles with awe-inspiring ease.

*Soft point or semi jacketed - Like a FMJ, except the tip is exposed. Designed to have the reduced drag of a FMJ, while expanding upon hitting a target similar to a hollow point. Generally designed for hunters in mind.

*Ballistic tip - Similar in performance to the semi-jacketed bullet, but rather than being a solid core of lead it is designed like a hollow point, but with a plastic tip at the end to reduce drag and ensure expansion.

*Ratshot - made for smaller-caliber guns and is basically birdshot for rifled barrels. The tip is a plastic cap that contains a small amount pellets, typically within the 1.5mm range. As the name implies; the gun is primarily designed for shooting pests and small animals like rodents and grass snakes. You can use it to shoot at larger pests like coyotes or humans, but it's woefully underpowdered for the job.

*Tracer - a regular bullet coated in pyrotechnic coating that ignites when fired. These are most commonly used with machineguns (every fifth round in a belt, to be exact) since it's useful for the gunner to accurately see where all his bullets are going, as well as make it clear to any enemies he's suppressing just who he's aiming at. Similarly rifle magazines are often loaded with tracers at certain intervals to provide indication of remaining ammo. Of course, the caveat is "tracer's work both ways" as they can give away your position; this can be mitigated by using "dim" tracers that can only be seen through night vision goggles. Sometimes also used by spotters or commanders to mark a specific target. They can potentially set fire to objects, if the incendiary compound hasn't burned out yet on impact.

*Less-lethals - Commonly known as 'rubber bullets' even though they're made of plastic these days instead. Used in riot control and such, where the shooter isn't allowed to kill. The key word is "less", however. They hurt like a sonovabitch and can still kill in the wrong circumstances, though. Airsoft this ain't.

*Silver - Pure fantasy, but common in there to counter supernatural creatures weak to silver. Silver bullets would suffer from many problems that rarely get mentioned in fiction. Chief among these are the cost, that silver shrinks when cast (so it's really hard to get the right size and shape), and that silver is too soft to engage rifling so even if you get the right size accuracy will be terrible. [[Monster Hunter International|More /k/ aligned works]] solve these issues with solutions like sabots (which helps accuracy but still worse than real bullets), ballistic tips made of silver and frangible bullets filled with powdered silver (instead of the typical competitively cheap metal).

===Types of Rounds===
Apart from the traditional type of rounds, here are some unique ones for reference.

*Blanks - What you commonly see loaded in movies. Blanks are basically that; the round has a primer and powder, but the bullet is just a paper or plastic sheet designed to keep the powder in, so you get the sound of a gun going off, but not the damage. That said, blanks ''can'' still kill people, the gasses used to propel the bullet forward are still there (just not launching any bullets); and its powerful enough to liquefy organs and break bones if you were dumb/desperate enough shoot someone with a blank at close range. Movie armorers make a point of demonstrating this with things like fruit before letting anyone touch blank firing guns. This is why instead of blank-firing guns, actors will use flash paper guns at close range for safety. There's also blank ammo specifically designed to make as much noise as possible for the purpose of disorienting and intimidating people in an area.

*Caseless - An old but futuristic concept, a caseless round has everything required for the bullet to be launched, inside the bullet itself. This removes the need for guns to eject spent shell casings after every shot, reducing weight and ammo costs. While this has been pioneered since WW2 and a few prototype examples for it were already developed (like the G11); caseless rounds are still determined to be unreliable for field combat use in comparison to traditional ammunition, so as of today their use is largely limited (mainly to grenade rounds like the Russian VOG-25 grenade).

*Gyrojet - A unique but largely impractical cartridge in the gun circuit, WH40K's famous [[bolter|boltguns]] run on the same concept as the gyrojet. Basically, the bullets are miniature rockets that build up speed as they travel, capable of exceeding the speed of sound after traveling 60ft. While the idea sounds cool; gyrojets were ''required'' to gain minimum distance to achieve their full effect (if you fired at point-blank for example, they didn't really do much), had a design flaw in their propulsion system that made the rockets prone to corkscrewing off-course, and were highly temperamental to environmental conditions, not to mention the costs. At the end the concept was a bust as it didn't really do a lot that couldn't be achieved with traditional small arms for cheaper. Still GeeDubs thought it was nice and became the basis of how boltguns work, where it's largely the same but with more techno-flubdubbery and "because future".

*Magnum - Unlike what vidya gaems portray, magnums aren't really super-mega handguns of death. A magnum round is basically a parent cartridge that's been enlarged so it does more damage due to a combination of larger mass and more powder used (so it flies faster and hits harder), and this can be anything from the .357 magnum handgun round used by revolvers, to the large caliber .338 Lapua and Winchester magnum rounds used for precision sniper rifles.

*Overpressured - Designated as "+P", overpressured rounds still uses the same cartridge (unlike the magnum), but is loaded with higher-pressure powder that releases more energy when fired. It sounds like a nice way to up your damage, but guns have a level of pressure they can tolerate, and if your gun isn't designed to do such and you use +P rounds; you run the very high risk of destroying your gun (and the rest of your body if you're that unlucky). There are guns that are proofed to fire +P and +P+ ammo but it typically used in SMGs. Certain batches of surplus ammo will blow up guns because they were made to be used in more robust SMGs and not commercial pistols.

===Types of shotgun loads===

*Buckshot - The shell is filled with lead or steel pellets, each of which is typically around 15mm each (it ultimately depends on the bore), that spread out once discharged. Poor at penetrating armor and limited effective range comparison to other firearms as the pellets scatter and the pellets are too small to do serious damage individually (Although do note that unlike what the vidya gaems portray; a decent 12G shotgun loaded with buckshot is effective upto 30-50m, not just in point-blank range); but they do cover a fairly large radius and the force of 8-12 pellets impacting against your body will send you tumbling and rolling on the floor in agony, even if they don't penetrate.

*Birdshot - Similar to buckshot and more pellets, but the pellets are smaller (5mm and less, although still depends on the bore). As their name describes; the ammo is designed to pelt down birds by [[Ork|throwing as many bullets at the target and hoping atleast a few of them hit]]. You can use them against non-avian targets aswell and they'll do something, but they don't pack the punch you'd like and don't expect them to dent body armor too much. Their ineffectiveness against human targets [[Wikipedia:Dick Cheney hunting accident|was demonstrated by a (possibly drunk) Vice President of the United States]] when he shot an old guy in the face with some and the only lasting damage was the voice.

*Slug - Instead of multiple pellets; the gun fires a single, heavy lead projectile, similar to how traditional ammo works. Because shotgun barrels are not rifled; slugs do not have the range nor accuracy rifles do, but because of their weight and the shotgun's fairly large caliber; they're fully capable of crushing their way through armor at close range. Slugs are typically used for hunting large game in areas where rifle ammunition isn't allowed due to the risk of overpenetration.

*Breaching - A specialized variant of the slug round, breaching rounds are designed specifically to destroy door locks at extremely close range. Generally composed of very dense powdered steel held together with wax.

*Less-lethals - Designed for riot control where the shooter isn't allowed to kill; the bullet is either made of rubber, paint, or beanbags designed for minimal penetration, while the powder used in the rounds is less to reduce the projectile's velocity. The end result is a bullet designed to simply cause shock and pain to the target in order to incapacitate them long enough to be arrested and not rejoin the fight in the meantime. That said, you're still talking about launching an object at someone at speeds similar to cars speeding on a highway; so hitting vulnerable parts of the body like the head, neck, or ribs can still result in a fatality. On the flip side, anyone wearing bullet-resistant armor won't be affected too much.

*Chain-shot - Typically reserved for olden cannons, the chain-shot is two cannonballs linked with a chain. The spinning contraption was intended to tear through a ship's mast and sails. Obsolete as fuck, but it is still possible to replicate this with shotgun ammo. Basically you tie two pellets or slugs together so that when they're discharged; they're basically flying garrotes. Awesome, but because of how unpredictable bullets are while in flight, it's highly impractical for combat use.

*Flechette - Buckshot, but instead of pellets; the shell is loaded with small metal darts. They achieved better penetration and range than traditional buckshot; but because shotguns aren't really designed as precision weapons; they were highly impractical for combat applications. They destroyed barrels and tended to deflect off really silly things like raindrops.

*Explosive Rounds - The shell contains an slug that explodes upon impact, capable of using anti-armor or anti-personnel shells, basically turning the shotgun into a portable grenade launcher. Not as powerful as the real thing, but invaluable when you need accurate explosions but not the excessive collateral damage or restrictive weight and mass. Has seen some use in rifle rounds on the eastern front of World War II as well as in .50 BMG (officially for use on objects, not people).

*Dragon's Breath - An odd type of ammo. DB shells are loaded with magnesium pellets. When discharged; they create a short but hot burst of fire that burn at temperatures upto 1,600°C. While not really used much for conventional combat due to its status as an incendiary weapon (which would give a warcrimes committee a field day); blasting a person with this at close range will create about the same results as a giant fire-breathing lizard incinerating an unlucky knight to death, hence their name. Also destroys barrels, as dragon's breath burns hotter than the melting point of steel, and close to the melting point of chromium (two of the most common metals used in gun parts).

*Misc - Shotguns aren't really picky with ammo since they are manually operated and don't depend on a gas seal as much; just about ''anything'' can be used for bullets if worse comes to worse/you're bored. Could be lego pieces, could be old hard candy, solid scrap,frozen meat [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-n4bxxn9gA or even glass]. Hell, it can be a Sly Marbo tabletop figure if you could fit him inside a shell and prevent him from disintegrating from the force while exiting the barrel, the choice is yours. (More likely blow up your gun as Sly refuses to die and gives you the finger for trying.)

==Manufacturing of Firearms==

===Brief Overview===

The production of firearms historically speaking has been an, err, interesting path. The first firearms were little more than metal (or whatever other material one so chose) cylinder with with one hole for the ignition of the powder and one for the projectile to be projected. As time passes on manufacturing techniques got more advanced, leading to triggers which frees up one hand from having to push a hot object into the powder. Most used a sort of striker to ignite the powder, be it flint or rope. Around the early to mid 19th century, self-containing cartridges became a possible reality. As such the firearm had to change too, with an action either simply accepting a round into the barrel or an action that would be worked to put it in. Near the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, auto-loading firearms became possible, but the actions had to become more complex to automatically feed the round by means of either recoil or gas. After that, guns haven't exactly changed too drastically (still major changes) in the current 21st century, pardoning the much higher efficiency of the modern weaponry. The complexity of modern firearms however doesn't interfere with how cheaply they can be produced. As such, there are endless aftermarket gun parts for sale around in places such as the USA.

===DIY===
[[image:.45 ACP ISB SMG.png|thumb|175px|left|.45 ACP ISB SMG designed from a STEN, but has many parts that differ. According to the designer "I like to think of it as a cross between an FG-42, a Welrod and a Sten."]]

First and foremost: guns are not toys, and should never be treated as such.

It comes as no secret that one can manufacture their own guns in one's own home so they chose to ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_copy Just ask the Afghans]). Depending on the skill of the user, the manufacturing tools used, material quality of the parts being used and/or made, design of the gun, and so on, a DIY can range from a explode-in-your-hand zip gun all the way up to high-quality rifles that have a minute of angle (MOA) of 1 or less. All one need is one's [[Ork|imagination]] and a [[Techpriest|firm understanding on how a gun works from the inside out and machining]]. In addition to that, the internet has a broad data base on the knowledge and schematics of guns.

[[image:Homemade_gun_exploding.PNG|thumb|150px|right| Careful you might blow your eye out]]
That said, DIY-guns require a decent understanding of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering to manufacturer at all, so unless you're a [[Mekboy]] with all the know-wotz implanted in your brain; its highly recommended you read up first, lest your firearm's first unwitting victim is you.

[[image:Stormbolter_IRL.jpg|thumb|223px|right|If a modern rifle was a stormbolter.]]

Examples of DIY are:

*Zip gun: Usually a metal tube attached to a piece of wood or object, within it some sort of trigger and striker. One example of this is a slam fire gun. Generally a 12 gauge shotgun shell loaded into a 3/4 inch tube that can be shoved into a 1 inch tube that has cap containing a nail at the end. When shoved in, the cap's nail will be more than enough to set off the shell, making the tubes effectively a shotgun.

*Experimental design: Every line of guns started out as a experiment somewhere. Some catch on, some don't, some just are there because why the heck not? Want to have dual barrels on your gun? Go for it! Add a counterweight to the gas block so that the recoil is next to nothing? Makes shoot a breeze! Add a round cam to your bolt so you can have a smooth action and reduce wear on the gun? No reason not to! The choices are endless if with time, diligence, and a bit of imagination.

*CNC Manufacturing: Avoiding the painstaking effort of machining it by hand [[Machine Spirit|a machine do it for you?]] A Computer numerical control (CNC) machine can easily mill out receivers and whatever other parts you need assuming you have the plans on the computer and the materials to be drilled out. The downsides of that CNC are a bit pricey relative to their hand milling machine counterpart. However some go for as low as $1200, which is roughly the same price as a mid-tier intermediate rifle in the USA.

==Relations here==
Most fantasy writers tend to exclude firearms. There are a variety of reasons for this, such as:
*Most fantasy comes from [[Tolkien]], who, being a naturalist who largely despised industrialization, did not put guns in Middle-earth, although gunpowder does exist, used by the wizards (Gandalf's Fireworks and Saruman's Fires of Orthanc) and by the orcs.
*Most fantasy (whether copy-catting Tolkien or not) is based on medieval Europe. Depending on your definition of "medieval," Europe did ''technically'' have firearms towards the very end (crude and unreliable ones, but firearms nonetheless), but most authors base their fantasy on earlier medieval Europe.
*As in real life, firearms mean that vulgar, dirty, peasant conscripts can take down the author's Mary Sue noblemen [[knight]]s that trained ''so'' hard in the arts of swordsmanship and melee combat, though if the writer had any historical knowledge they would know that armor can be made "proof" against early firearm bullets (which is partly what spurred the development of full-body plate mail to begin with, as a sidenote) or that a crossbow or longbow can just as easily (in fact, MORE easily due to the general shitty performance of old guns) turn an armored man into swiss cheese.

All that being said, most fantasy authors are much more open to cannons, which became viable on the battlefield long before smaller firearms anyway. Some even make room for crude rocket launchers, especially if there is a not-China/not-Korea in their setting. (Laugh, but a big firework rocket will put a sod on fire and ruin his day just fine, doubly so if the morons are in wooden fort.)

Generally speaking, if a world has both the "stock" fantasy races and guns, there will a strict hierarchy of who uses them, from most to least likely:
*[[Dwarves]]: They almost always have the best, most plentiful guns. If only one race gets firearms, it's likely going to be them.
*[[Gnomes]]: As tinkerers, they're frequently on a different tech level from everyone else, including firearms.
*[[Human]]s: Unlike the other races, which are usually an all-or-nothing deal, different human nations have different likelihoods of having guns. Italian and East Asian analogues, as well as the "industrious" or "scientific" nations, are much more likely to have them. Your barbarians, guys keen on knights and chivalry, and the more conservative less so. If the nation is Post Renaissance, expect pike and shot style IRL analogue armies.
*[[Orc]]s: Orcs would probably love guns if they could actually build some. However, they're usually either incapable of building things or have a hard time organizing themselves to the point that large-scale firearm and powder production is possible. Even so, they could still obtain them them by other means such as fighting as mercenaries for guns and stealing them off the corpses of the fallen and similar. They are higher on the list if they are more like Tolkienian orcs, which can be fairly well organized and "delight in explosions" enough to manufacture their own gunpowder, if only for simple bombs. If Orcs are of the more Chaotic Evil variety then they will barely have crossbows, let alone guns. If Orcs are of the Klingon variety, as in the violent tendencies are normal enough that the civilization can function, then they will LOVE big guns.
*[[Elves]]: Being arrogant pricks, they see guns as crude, inaccurate, foul-smelling contraptions that are no substitute for a bow. However, they'll still use them when necessary, even if they don't like it. That said, elves also had a good reason to not use them, namely most firearms in a fantasy settling are arquebus-type single-shot smoothbore weapons, which are outranged by longbows. Longbows are even decent against most kinds of armor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt ask the French]). The main advantage of firearms, even early ones, is ease of use and armor penetration though armor could be made that could stop an early handgun. The main problem with longbows is that it takes years to learn, which is not a problem for long-lived elves. Between a smoothbore handgun and a longbow, the bow is simply a better choice to an elf. The problem of course is that longbows are about as good as bow technology can get while handguns can be improved to rifles, against which bows only have rate of fire as an advantage, then Repeating Rifles, which bows have no advantage at all against. So while Elves may have an advantage to sticking with there longbows well into the age of pike and shot, if they're not careful their Longbows will end up fighting against Springfields and Winchesters and they will end up the worse in that exchange. If tech reaches that point, expect the Archer/Hunter stereotype to turn into Snipers.
*Wood Elves and other Fey/Nature types: They'd rather die than use a firearm, even if the rest of the world has moved onto biplanes, bolt-action rifles, shell-firing cannons, and tanks. If this happens, this means they either have powerful magic (so the actual weapons used are unimportant), they are ''really really'' good shots with a bow, they have much stronger friends (Think like the amish) or they're about to die out. That said: the problem they have are not guns themselves, but making them as mass production always has some environmental costs they can not stand for. If they could get there hands on some way to make guns that did not harm the environment in the process, at least anymore then making a sword does they might go small for small scale fire arm production, but this is rarely explored in fiction.

For how this conservative attitude tends to apply to tech in general for fantasy settings, see [[Medieval Stasis]].

Of course, sci-fi writers almost exclusively use firearms, seeing as how it's THE FUUUUUUTTTTTUUUUURRRREEEE. The exceptions are [[Warhammer 40,000]] and ''[[Dune]]'': although guns are the main combat implement in 40K, close combat is still alive and well, and most armies have at least one elite, close-combat unit wielding weapons that are distinctly not firearms; in ''Dune'', guns are pretty much dead as a weapon of war, as personal-scale force fields stop fast-moving matter (like bullets) from crossing them, but slower matter (like swung knives) can pass through, and if a lasgun blast touches the field, at least one end of the equation comes out "BOOM!!!". Most sci-fi universes do have close combat weapons on the scale we see in modern warfare, though, like in Mass Effect, where, as the Reaper forces (who are basically [[Necron]]s and [[Tyranids]] combined) invade the galaxy, people begin developing their Omnitools to snap-produce a white-hot blade of hard metal above the wearer's hand... And then there's the Krogan, who are too bloodthirsty and too large to properly take cover, so they headbutt things instead of using guns.

== Rules ==

Most fantasy RPGs deal with firearms the way they deal with lots of things that threaten their [[Medieval Stasis]]: terror, suspicion, and shitty rules. If you have the option of using a firearm in most games, it probably has one shot that's weaker than a bow, then takes an entire encounter to reload, and is illegal everywhere in-setting in case you didn't get the hint.

[[D&D#Basic_Dungeons_&_Dragons|BECMI]] Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have rules for firearms, but there were one or two adventure modules that incorporated a crash-landed spaceship, with weapons the players could loot. They were treated as magic wands and staves. A few issues of Dragon magazine offered rules for early cannons and hand cannons.

[[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] mentions guns in a tucked-away subsection on importing TSR's Cowboys & Indians game Boot Hill to AD&D (DMG, pg113). Revolver pistols and Gatling guns would do as much damage as a longsword; shotguns as much damage as a two-handed claymore, a (thrown) stick of dynamite does 4x the damage of a short sword. The rules insist "...when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk, ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it." To reinforce this concept, the ''Manual of the Planes'' included rules for factors of prime material planes, one of which determined if complex (read: setting destroying) chemical compositions like blackpowder would even work in said plane. If you have any knowledge of chemistry, you may cry now. Notably, [[Greyhawk]] had a [[Murlynd|god of firearms]], and his paladins were basically Wild West sheriffs.

[[Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#AD.26D_2nd_Edition|Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition]] included the arquebus in the Players Handbook, where they were depicted as slow, powerful and expensive (500 Gp!). They were also potentially dangerous to the user as the result of a bad roll. It was painfully stressed that the inclusion of firearms in the campaign was the call of the DM. Firearms were a bit more common in the [[Spelljammer]] setting. Moving away from the classic fantasy background, there was the historical campaign sourcebook ''A Mighty Fortress'' that introduced rules for firearms of the 16th and 17th centuries and the ''Masque of the Red Death'' setting for [[Ravenloft]] pushed everything into a gothic horror version of the 1890's.

[[Dungeons_&_Dragons_3rd_Edition|D&D third edition]] has a section on advanced technology (DMG, pp162-164) for Renaissance-era, 20th century, and futuristic weapons. The weapons are more powerful than what can be found among ranged weapons in the Player's Handbook, but also heavier and more expensive. You're better off with magic crossbows.

[[Pathfinder]] greatly over complicates guns: they have shorter range than bows without magical items, take longer to reload, and have at least a 1/20 chance to break or explode every time you fire it, and use up more expensive ammunition. As though this wasn't enough, they have a stiff feat tax needed to make use of them and the fact that there's really only one major gun factory in the land, the Gunworks of the small nation of Alkenstar, and they keep most of their guns to themselves. In return they hit harder, have a ''terrifying'' 4x crit modifier, and ''use touch AC'' in the first range increment, effectively ignoring armor when fired close up. A specialized class, the [[gunslinger]], is centered around the use of firearms. [[Lasgun|Energy weapon]] specialists in Iron Gods have it a bit better, though ammo is limited for most of the adventure.

[[Dragonmech]] has guns, sort of kinda, as well. Only instead of using gunpowder, they use steam to propel the bullet like an airsoft gun. they can only be fired once every other round as the pressure needs to build up. There Treated a bit like crossbows that do more damage and can shoot a little further.

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] includes a section on firearms in the ''Dungeon Master's Guide''. They hark back to 2nd edition in terms of stats, fitting the general tone of the game, but aren't quite as punishing for a player to learn to use and make. And with the increased emphasis on houseruling and homebrewing, modding the Crossbow Expert feat to work for them seems a simple leap of logic. The "race builder" guide in the back even suggests changing around the dwarf weapon proficiencies to include them! Furthermore, if you want to get your [[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks]] on, it includes some futuristic guns as well, like lasers and disintegrators.

[[Warhammer Fantasy]] features firearms based on early real-world equivalents, like flintlock pistols, musket rifles and the blunderbuss. Although deadly and still on the experimental side, they're also considered very unreliable and are prone to misfire and sometimes even to explode. Rpg-wise, firearms were already included in the core rulebook of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition, but were later somewhat expanded in the Old World Armoury supplement. Some variations that function like firearms were also added as weapons to some Skaven classes in the Old World Bestiary supplement. Generally speaking, firearms require more costs in order to be used, as each shot requires a firearm shot (bullet) and additional gunpowder. Except for the obvious disadvantages of becoming useless once getting wet and longer reloading times, firearms deal more damage than bows and crossbows, with more complex models even having a repeater function, but obviously longer reloading times for each barrel to be loaded again.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Firearm

2019-12-12T04:02:44Z

2601:1C0:5C00:C130:798E:CBB3:E7F2:A1E4: /* The Slow Way */

[[image:Shotgun After Firing.jpg|thumb|450px|right|Nothing like the smell of burnt powder in the morning]]
About twelve hundred years ago in [[China]], some people figured out that certain chemicals mixed together (such as potassium nitrate, carbon, and sulphur) rapidly combusted when brought to spark, which became known as "black powder." After some experimentation, they discovered that a tube sealed off at one end could be used to contain the pressure of said combustion and focus it into an explosion to propel an object at high speeds. After a few centuries of refinement, and invention of the frag grenade, they managed to take that mechanical principle and apply it as a weapon of warfare which changed the game: the arquebus. Comparatively cheap, easy to make, easy to learn to use, and capable of penetrating all but the heaviest armor, this marked a transition away from close quarters to ranged warfare.

In modern times, firearms are the staple weapons of any nation. Speculative fiction showcases weapons that doesn't even fire solid projectiles, like [[lasgun|lasers]].

From an engineering standpoint, firearms had a big difference from previous weapons in that they don't require the user's muscle power to work. Swords, maces, and axes are swung, spears are thrust, and bowstrings need to be drawn. Even crossbows and siege weapons work by storing muscle power via tension until it's released. The energy required to accelerate a firearm's projectile comes from explosive propellants; all the user needs to do is to hold the weapon, aim, brace themselves and set off said explosive charge. The significance of this is illustrated in the American Proverb: "God made man, Sam Colt (the inventor of the first practical revolver) made them equal." Having a reliable repeating gun means that your simple brute physical strength does not mean as much in a fight as it would in a bare knuckle brawl or a swordfight (either defensively or offensively).

The firearm's bigger bro is the [[Cannon]] and its cousin is the [[Rocket]].

==How Traditional Guns Work==
For our non-firearm oriented friends, here's a brief, heavily condensed explanation of how these murdersticks work. These instructions will probably vary depending on the type of gun you're using.

[[image:Teppo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Some Tanegashima matchlocks]]
===Olden Muzzle-Loading Guns===
====The Slow Way====
1. Put your musket in half-cock position. Take your powder flask, and pour a few grains into the flashpan. Pour some more down the barrel (amount can vary wildly; later powder flasks come with built-in measuring tools for ease of use and safety). Ram the powder, bullet, and cloth wad down the barrel of your gun. Ensure you're doing this in correct order because [[Not as Planned|putting the ball first, then powder, for example, can lead to hilarious and/or lethal results]].
 2. If you're using a matchlock gun: light up the fuse, aim and brace yourself, and lastly wait for the fuse to burn out. If you're using a flintlock gun: just cock the mechanism. With percussion caps, replace the explosive cap on the firing nipple after cocking the hammer. In any case, aim once you're done setting it up.
 3. Once the powder burns; the gasses from explosion of the black powder will send the bullet flying out of the barrel like a bat out of hell and penetrate into something or someone, and if you're lucky it might actually hit what you were aiming at. Also, hope you aren't downwind because guns during this time generated ''a lot'' of black smoke.
 4. Take stock of the situation. If you've managed to hit anyone or you're currently still in a shooting war; repeat step 1. If your firing line missed most of their shots and those barbarians are charging up your position; [[Imperial Guard|affix bayonets]].

====The Not-Quite-As-Slow Way====
 1. Take your paper cartridge, and bite off the end with the powder in it. Carefully pour a few grains into the flashpan, and the rest down the barrel. Take the remainder of the cartridge, ball and paper, and ram it down the barrel.
 2. Follow steps 2 through 4 as above. Paper cartridges have the advantage of saving you a few seconds of precious time while reloading, which can mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. Another advantage is that they can be made somewhat weatherproof with a grease coating. But if you're just hunting or can't find/afford paper, most people didn't bother with the time-consuming preparations.

===Single-Action Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action (pump the slide, rack the bolt, et cetera) to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger, this will cause the hammer to strike the primer on the chambered round and cause the powder inside the shell casing to ignite and explode; sending high-pressure gases screaming out of the barrel while propelling the solid bullet out at high speed towards whatever you were aiming at. If you're using single-action flintlock guns; see above for the result.
 3. Because the gun lacks a mechanism to re-chamber itself; you now have to work the action again to eject the spent shell (unless its a revolver, in which case you do that while reloading) and load another round into the chamber. How you do this depends on the gun in question.
 4. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

===Auto-Loading Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger and this causes the same effect as stated above.
 3. Because of the mechanism of the gun; it redirects some of the forces used to propel the bullet to work it's action, eject the spent shell (unless its a DA revolver), re-chamber another round, and allow you to shoot again by just pulling the trigger. The forces used depend on the gun in question, some use a gas block to redirect some of the gasses expelled by bullets, while other uses the force of the recoil itself, to work the action and chamber another round. Additionally, it could also re-chamber itself using a mechanical sequence (like revolvers) or is electrically operated.
 4. If you're using an automatic; hold the trigger down and only release it once you want to stop shooting (or are forced to do so due to lack of ammo). If you're using a semi-automatic; pull the trigger again to fire another round.
 5. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

==A Brief History of Firearms==
'''800's:''' Taoist monks attempting to find an elixir of immortality stumbled on the next best thing: a substance that would suddenly and violently make things very dead. They'd discovered potassium nitrate (alternatively called saltpeter), a white crystalline powder that burned with a purple flame. When mixed with powders of charcoal and sulfur the resulting substance would burn instantly and aggressively on exposure to flame. It didn't take long for the Chinese to start inventing ways to use it.

[[image:Firelance.jpg‎|thumb|150px|left|The Firelance, the Chinese invention that started this all]]
'''1000s to 1200s:''' The Chinese realize they can make barbarians shit their pants by shooting hollowed arrows packed with powder and bamboo tubes filled with powder and pebbles at them. Bamboo gradually gives way to cast iron and bronze.

'''1300s:''' Various gunpowder weapons begin to proliferate westward along the Silk Road, aided by the [[Mongols]]. Crude versions of hand cannons, grenades, rockets, and flamethrowers all see use. Despite considerable psychological effect and good armor penetration, most of these weapons are only marginally more likely to kill the target than the user and had a range of only twenty or so meters. As such, their use is not widespread. For the most part, these weapons were used by skirmishers and guards. The fact that they were so dangerous meant they were mostly used by low class soldiers, and in turn this meant that the smiths making them were generally not the most skilled artisans; which did little to improve quality even given the limitations of the day. Even so, the designs and methods of manufacture were gradually refined and improved by various early gunsmiths through trial and error.

'''1400s''': Hand cannons see continued and expanded use. Bit by bit from the crude handgonnes of previous centuries, the first "true" firearms evolve with the gradual development of the matchlock, taking on the basic shape of lock, stock, trigger, and barrel (which is where we get the saying from). By clamping a lighted wick into a flashpan via a trigger, the shooter is able to aim ''and'' fire at the same time, making him markedly less likely to blow his own jimmies off. Despite advances, the matchlock was unwieldy, unreliable, and generally inferior to a good bowman. The issue of course is that only England (in Europe) HAD good bowmen; bowmen were the scum of the army everywhere else. This didn't stop some inventive commanders from seeing their potential, particularly with poorly trained conscript soldiers. [[Weeaboo|Some forces]] made a go of it by carrying two or three guns at a time and just throwing the spent ones away like a really shitty Matrix movie. Note: while we use a "weeaboo" hyperlink up there, it's worth remembering that troops like cuirassiers and even pirates would do the same thing with pistols, carrying a whole brace of them, but they just did not exist yet. By the 1400's having more then one gun was the only way to have any real rate of fire before breechloaders existed.

'''1500s:''' Guns continue to evolve with the invention of spring-loaded firing mechanisms. The wheel-lock spins a steel plate against sulfide rocks to produce sparks (think cigarette lighters), which ignites powder a flash pan. This was revolutionary, allowing soldiers to prime their weapon in a matter of seconds instead of fucking around with a lit wick, and allowed calvary to use guns for the first time while on horseback, giving rise to the cuirassiers. It also means that for the first time, guns weren't completely fucked in the rain, just mostly fucked. They also cost a lot to make and were still not completely reliable, so most people stuck with matchlocks. Powder formulas had improved considerably, including the development of the more powerful, stable, and moisture-resistant corned powder made by wetting raw gunpowder, forming it into cakes, crushing them, and sieving them for size. Japan's Oda Nobunaga was particularly notable in the history of firearms for his heavy transition from blades to guns after discovering the novelty of matchlock guns. In fact, by the end of the 1500s, they had more trained arquebusiers in their armies and produced more matchlocks than any other country to date during that period and had the most guns per capita in the world. Meanwhile, virtually every army figured out how to use a combination of volley fire in dense square formations surrounded by pikemen (called Pike and Shot); making armored cavalry, crossbows, & longbows outdated. Accuracy still sucked but that was what the massed shooting was meant to compensate for.

[[image:FlintlockMechanism.jpg‎|thumb|200px|right|The flintlock mechanism. Now you did not need to light some string and put it into a serpentine before firing]]
'''1600s''' The wheellock is refined into the simpler and more reliable flintlock, though it would take some time to supersede the matchlock. Muzzle loading is simplified with the creation of paper cartridges, essentially the pre-measured cake mix of murder. Some German dudes came up with the idea of cutting spirals into the barrel, which they called "rifling," to spin-stabilize the bullet so that they wouldn't have to walk up right next to their targets to hit them, but this required a barrel tighter than a nun's cunt, a hammer to ram the ball in, and grooved bullets made for the gun so it could fit the rifling of the gun like the cap to a soda bottle. To put all that into perspective: well-trained musketeers could fire three to four shots a minute, while a rifleman could only manage one shot every minute. Not great, however the idea of spin-stabilisation hung around and payed off in later times.

'''1700s''': The French invent the bayonet, allowing their troops to be [[choppa|choppy]] while they were [[dakka|shooty]]. Thus, the Pike and Shot formation became the Bayonet and Shot formation. That and refinement of tactics led to the dense but slow and cumbersome square formations being reformed into thinner but more responsive rectangle formations. This is the point where gun infantry tactics become the dominant (though still not only) form of fighting when guns go from one a few common infantry weapons to the primary weapon used by most infantry. Formations of musketeers go from big square blocks to lines two or three ranks thick to put enough bullets in the enemy's ranks as quickly as possible.
[[image:Chassepot.jpg‎|thumb|200px|left|The mechanism of a French Chassepot, an early bolt action rifle, as well as its paper cartridge]]

'''1800s''': Pretty much everything that makes up a modern firearm is invented here. Some fool came up with an explosive that would go off if you slam a hammer into it, which led to the first explosive primers. So flintlocks transitioned to percussion caps. This basically involves putting explosives in ur explosives to explode your explosives. Eventually, standardized methods of making copper & later brass casing replaced paper cartridges & made gas leakage in breechloading mechanisms a thing of the past. Cartridges that contain a primer, propellant, and slug, similar to modern-day bullets, are developed. With this, not only was loading ammunition simplified with a package that contained everything needed for a gun to fire, it also made it waterproof & easier for conscripts to load. Furthermore, the brass casing’s small expansion when firing served to seal the firing chamber to prevent hot gases from leaking and burning users’ hands. By this time, wars were largely fought using firearms rather than melee weapons, though also by this time firearms were also melee weapons as in the early 1800s the bayonet charge was still both an accepted and useful tactic.

By the late 1800 inventors had finally gotten the technology to contain the force of the gunpowder explosion with a tight seal and do so cheaply. Experiments that had been done earlier like the Puckle gun (1718), Ferguson rifle (1776), and even the bizarre 1780 Girandoni Air Rifle, [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Steampunk which was an air gun with a 20 round magazine], all failed to create breech loading rifles cheaply. See, despite that it was well known that that slotting in bullets from the rear and using a mechanism to load it into the chamber is much simpler than spending about half a minute to ram it down a long barrel, the technology was just not there as without cheap steel (cheap is important for hand guns you are going to mass-produce), getting iron to contain the explosion without deforming and leaking gas, thus weakening the shot, was a nightmare. The Industrial Revolution, among other things, gave birth to the concept of "breech-loading" and later "magazines" and simpler mechanised feeding systems like tubes, slides, cylinders, and bolt-actions. The likes of pump-action shotguns, bolt-action rifles, and lever-action rifles, and revolver and semi-automatic pistols, are developed and/or developed upon, giving a glimpse on how weapons in the future would function. Near the end of the decade, some French guys worked out that they could both improve firepower and keep their guns considerably cleaner by replacing black powder with nitrocellulose, the first of many "smokeless powders."

Just as important as the new designs that came about during this period were the new methods of production. People like Eli Whitney worked out devices such as milling machines, which allowed for the quick production of finely tuned parts which were so close in size that you could take one bit off one gun, stick it on another from the same line, and it would work just as fine. Breech loading and repeating firearms had existed for centuries beforehand, but were not cost effective to mass-produce until the Industrial Revolution.
[[image:Lee-Enfield Rifle.jpg|thumb|200px|right|A British Lee-Enfield Bolt Action Repeating rifle]]
This is also the time where the first "automatic" guns were invented and put into production. The word "automatic" is in quotes because these early machine guns were not self-reciprocating; they did not load and fire themselves and were instead manually powered. The most famous (and successful) of these weapons is the Gatling gun, which saw limited action in the American Civil War, but became much more widely used the world over in subsequent wars. But while it was the most famous, the Gatling was not the only manual machine gun developed; dozens of different types were produced during the US Civil War alone on both sides, but because these guns tended to be mounted on cannon carriages they were treated like cannons instead of the close support weapon machines guns are, so it took some time for them to hit their stride.

'''1900-early 1930s''': The heyday of guns because of the advent of WW1. The idea of bolt-action rifles are popularized, along with semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Bolt-action rifles meant that riflemen no longer had to be confined to shooting one round at a time before needing to reload as they could now load individual clips that contained 5-10 rounds a piece. Machine guns are now becoming more and more popular in the battlefields, drastically changing the way infantry would maneuver the battlefield as a single MG emplacement can effectively cripple platoons with the right positioning. Submachine guns, the first automatic infantry weapon, are developed by the German Empire and issued to their stormtroopers, giving the rest of the world an idea of the wonders of a lightweight fully-automatic weapon that could easily be used by infantrymen, which was previously restricted to crew-served heavy machine guns. Not liking to be one-upped, the Americans came up with the trench gun (a 6 shot, pump-action renforced shotgun with a bayonet that was pure murder in the confines of a trench) that ultimately evolved into the modern combat shotgun.

On the subject of the machine guns, if there was ever a weapon that represented this part of history it would be the heavy machine gun. To go back to an early quote "God made man, Sam Colt made them equal and John Browning (designer of a large number of machine guns including the m2 .50 cal or 12.7mm) made them civilized!". We talked about the hand powered machine guns above, and while good when used correctly, these weapons have their issues. In order to use most of them, you had to be standing up to turn the crank and sustained fire was tiring, but the hand cranked guns had one major advantage: the most successful of the hand-cranked guns, like the Gatling or Gardner, had multiple barrels meaning you can fire them with little or no need to stop to let the barrels cool down. At the dawn of the 20th century, this is what the early machine guns had to be compared to when European generals went window shopping. The solution was water-cooling, which allowed machine guns to fire for countless hours with little or no failures, but at the cost of weight rendering them truly static, though highly effective, weapons. If you could point to two developments that caused the First World War's trench warfare, you can point to water-cooled machine guns and barbed wire.

'''late 1930s-1940s''': At the start of World War II, all of the powers involved, France, England, Germany, and Russia, were armed with bolt action weapons. Over the course of the war, automatic and semi-automatic rifles started to become more common; however, only the Americans completely phased out bolt-action rifles for standard infantry by the time of the war (Marines and Army units in the Pacific Front were stuck with the old stuff for a few months due to the Germany First policy). Submachine guns are now becoming more popular with various armies around the world, making it the staple lightweight automatic weapon for infantry troops, totally redefining urban combat due to the weapon's great effectiveness in close combat. Nazi Germany invents the ''Sturmgewehr 44'', the first widely produced assault rifle (the Fedorov Avtomat was the first to be put into service, introduced in 1915, but production was limited due to costs). This weapon would later become the template for modern assault rifles used by the world over.
[[image:QBZ-95.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A QBZ-95 Assault Rifle, the current service rifle of the People's Republic of China, note bullpup configuration (the magazine feeds behind the trigger), thus saving space]]
'''1950s-1990s''': With World War II over, the armies of the world had a chance to study Germany's assault rifle and built their own. The key invention was selective fire, which allowed a single weapon to serve as a traditional rifle or a somewhat long and unwieldy submachine gun. Burst fire was also developed, intended to fire a grouping of rounds to defeat personal body armor but automatically stop before the recoil of fully automatic fire would have a significant impact on aim. The USSR's entry was the AK-47, which was powerful, easy to mass produce, and legendarily tolerant of mistreatment after briefly flirting with the SKS (a semiautomatic carbine fed by stripper clips). On the other side of the world, the US briefly experimented with an automatic version of the M1 known as the M14, before (mostly) getting their shit together and developing the M16, which was expensive, complicated, and notoriously finicky. One thing not to be underestimated is the standardization introduced by NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Gone were incompatible calibers unique to each nation, and in their place were a single pistol caliber (9x19 for NATO, unless you were an American snowflake, and 9x18 for Pact.), a single intermediate caliber (5.56x45 for NATO, 7.62x39 for Pact, later 5.45x39 in certain Pact countries), a single full power rifle cartridge (7.62x51 for NATO, unless you were a French snowflake, and the venerable 7.62x54 for Pact), and heavy machine gun cartridge (.50 BMG for NATO and 12.7×108mm for Pact) for small arms. Even before NATO standardization was officially a thing, many western countries eagerly armed themselves with American surplus M1 Garands and M1 Carbines, which greatly simplified things.

'''2000s''': With the invention of more advanced materials such as plastics and carbon fiber, along with numerous technological advancements of the modern world, firearms are... basically the same they've been for the last fifty years, just usually lighter and with more options. Serious efforts were made to look at new designs like caseless ammo and fused smart grenade bullets, but most went nowhere. The most significant development in firearm technology was the advent of practical ranged tasers; essentially wired dart launchers with high voltage capacitors, they're the first handguns ostensibly intended for less lethal force (occasional heart attacks not withstanding) that weren't a total joke (like pistol caliber tear gas rounds).

'''2010s''': Development of more robust weapons (such as the POF P416 and HK 416), modularity (FB MSBS, similar to the ACR with the variation count of a Lasgun), practical telescopic and caseless ammo (LSAT project), and ship cannon sized railguns (The Naval Research Laboratory currently working with a practical version, i.e. can reload at the same rates as an Abrams 120mm loader). Apparently, it can fires rounds with 32 megajoules of energy, or 23,601,988 foot-pounds.) So apparently even in 2017, we outpace the Imperium in development, makes you wonder what the Dark Age of Technology holds. Few of these have progressed far enough to get fielded and may just be dead ends. The main innovation at this time comes from optics, where even cheap sights makes the professional equipment of old look like crap. Also cheap rifle parts and market (at least for Americans) due to advances in manufacturing. No seriously, you can get a basic AR for $500 or even just make it yourself from parts for less than $400 (Firearms are taxed 10-11%, parts are not. Thus there is significant savings by only buying a small block of aluminum as a "firearm".), and that's if you aren't diving into sub-milspec stuff. New designer rounds to outpace rounds such as the 5.56 and .308 in performance are also coming out, such 6.5 Grendel, 6.5 MPC, .224 Valkyrie, .300 Winchester Magnum, and so on. These only see widespread uses among snipers however, as the cost of replacing existing guns and ammo for what is a marginal increase in performance is of questionable budget use.

[[File:LSAT telescopic ammo.png|200px|thumb|right| An example of humanity developing practical telescopic ammo. Designed to be light weight while not compromising muzzle energy, it'll bring much benefit to anyone needing to bearing the ammunition (assuming the kinks are worked out).]]

Many countries around the world are now looking for new ways to either improve or adapt combustion-based firearms as a whole, and are looking for ways to make what were once sci-fi-only ammo and weaponry, such as [[lasgun|laser]], [[plasma]], direct energy overall (involving the last two), [[gauss]], telescopic/caseless ammo, and more, a reality. While met with some degree of success, nobody (pardoning America, 'cause you gotta do something with that large budget) has found a way yet for these weapons to be man-portable (or cost-effective in the case of telescopic and caseless ammo) that a single soldier could carry these into combat or be affordable/reliable to an extent that it would be more feasible to make these instead of the traditional ballistic weaponry. There is also the problem that if you get a hard projectile (think tungsten and steel) going fast enough, it will just over-penetrate and go through a target, doing little actual damage as compared to our modern bullets that hit, create a temporary cavity the size of a dinner plate, then tumble going through the target sideways (which means that against unarmored targets your average 5.56 round would likely do comparable damage to a bolt round). Rounds that fragment and inbuilt post-penetration destabilization fix this, however the main point here is that there is little reason to equip your soldiers with some [[Bolter|fancy dandy overly complex and costing a half-million dollar gun and ammo]] when a [[Lasgun|good ol' service rifle and some traditional ammo costing a few hundred bucks]] will allow them to do their job just fine. Leading off from the previous statement, even if such projects were successful, there is a strong point to be made that, as least as far as infantry weapons are concerned, chemical-based firearms will remain both cost effective and lethal enough to last at least another century or two, if not longer. While elite units will certainly benefit from new developments, the ordinary grunt will have to wait until they become cheap enough to mass produce. Most modern work is either completely experimental, or fine tuning already present technologies with developments from other areas.

== GUN SAFETY ==
Should be self-evident, but to be frank it isn't. Between the movies having actors brandishing guns everywhere, the video games and toys like airsoft that make them look more harmless than they are and plain human ignorance and negligence; people forget that they're holding something that could easily scatter someone's brains or outright remove their skull.

That said, there are four main rules to gun safety.
*Muzzle sweep: Avoid this. Muzzle sweep is one when points or sweeps a gun in a direction onto people or objects that could get harmed. To avoid this, one should keep the gun's barrel pointed away from anything that you don't intend to destroy or value. This means one must be conscious of where they are pointing it. Or in other words, '''never point the gun at something you don't want to shoot!'''

*'''Treat every firearm as if they were loaded at all times.''' Even if you fully know the gun is empty after removing the magazine and checking the chamber, still treat it as if it wasn't. This creates a force of habit so that if you are ever in a rush/interrupted while handling your gun/given a weapon by someone else/whatever... you will avoid any mishaps and tragedies that could arise because you think the gun is empty where it actually isn't.

*'''Know the target, what's in front of the target, and what's behind the target.''' Remember, bullets are designed to punch holes in things. Even if you've got pinpoint accuracy, the bullet might go right through the target and kill some guy who's just minding his own business. This is why any self-respecting firing range has a thick wall or a pile of packed-down dirt behind the targets. Bullets that don't punch through the target and don't shatter (like frangible rounds made of sintered metal) can ricochet back at the shooter or others around them. For this reason, shooting at metal targets is usually done with the targets angled down.

*Trigger discipline: '''Never put your finger on the trigger unless you want to kill/destroy whatever you're pointing your gun at.''' Also pretty much self-explanatory.

Easy, right? Well... apparently not. Ask any gun enthusiast and they'll gladly tell you all sorts of horror stories that happened because [[That Guy|somebody]] failed to follow these simple rules.

And for the love of the God-Emperor, don't be a fucking tool and mix alcohol/drugs and firearms together. Doing so, very, very unsurprisingly results in the breaking of one or more of the aforementioned rules.

==Types of firearms==
Having been around for well over 1500 years there have been many types of firearms over the course of time. Humans are, if anything, very inventive when it comes to coming up with new and interesting ways to kill each other. A rough list are:

===Ye Olde Gonnes===
*Firelance: Oldest of the Oldschool guns, simple bamboo tubes stuffed with gunpowder and pebbles used in the Ten Kingdoms period and the Song Dynasty. One inaccurate spray of flaming fuck-off in close quarters, often tied to a spear.

*Handgonne: A catch-all term for a primitive gun without a lock that need their powder charges. Majority of these guns were handcannons, as in literal man-portable artillery pieces that had a 50/50 chance of either working or malfunctioning, the worst of which would be the gun exploding in the shooter's face.

*Arquebus - A basic matchlock Firearm. A note of clarification: 'Arquebus' and 'musket' are both used to describe firearms from this time and they are often used interchangeably. But if you want to be ''really'' technical in this period an Arquebus is a regular two handed matchlock firearm while a musket is a larger heavier gun firing a larger projectile, sometimes up to an inch in diameter. Latter (about 1700 onward) musket would refer to any muzzleloading long barreled handheld firearm used for mainly shooting solid shots. This is not too much of a big deal and is nothing to get mad about, but it is worth noting.

*Musket - Today, the musket is a catch-all term for all early smoothbore, shoulder-fired, muzzle-loaded firearms. Technically this isn't the case, the musket was an improved Arquebus, one of the earliest muzzle-loaded guns. However because of romanticism and literature; people who aren't acquainted with firearms will commonly refer to any muzzle-loaded long weapon as a musket (about the same reason why most people today refer to any automatic weapon as a machine gun). Muskets were inaccurate as people have yet to put serious research into firearm ballistics, generated a lot of smoke due to primitive gunpowder mixtures, and were temperamental to environmental conditions (rain will pretty much render a musket into an wet stick of wood), but still enjoyed a lot of popularity due to their lethality and ease of use compared to other man-portable ranged weapons at the time. Muskets were quickly phased out once rifles became a feasible thing, who did what a musket could do, but better. Muskets were categorized by what firing mechanism was used in the lock:
:*The earliest versions used matchlocks, which fired by poking a slow-burning fuse into the firing chamber. These were fairly unreliable and somewhat hazardous since you had a smouldering fuse close to the flashpan when you were reloading.
:* Flintlocks replaced matchlocks, which ignited by generating sparks when it struck the iron frizzen, igniting the powder in the flashpan. The flint would periodically break and need replacing, but it was still safer than a matchlock.
:* With the invention of the percussion cap came the Caplock, or Cap & Ball. This was the final evolution before breachloading became widespread. The cap would be fitted onto a tube to the firing chamber after the musket was loaded. Caplock firearms did not generate sparks in and of themselves; rather, they used a simple hammer to strike the cap, which would in turn ignite the powder in the firing chamber. Far more contained than flintlock, until the fully self-contained cartridge superseded it entirely.

*Multi-barreled gun - In the olden days, people wanted more dakka launched at enemies, but things like magazines and self-loading weapons were still an alien idea during its time. So as an alternative people took a breach/muzzle-loaded firearm, slapped one or more barrels onto it, and reworked the trigger so they can fire more shots before needing to reload. This resulted in some particularly wacky times for guns. To this day, the only multi-barrel weapon still commonly used (disregarding military rifles with underslung grenade launchers, door breaching shotguns, or rotating barrel Gatling-style guns) is the double-barreled hunting shotgun. Some notable guns were volley guns called ribauldequin, which were a line of infantry dudes without most of the dudes. The problem was that this took very long to load, because you have 2 or two people ramming shit rather than 20 dudes each loading. So, that was a colossal fail in a long term artillery exchange, but quite effective for countering a charge when all you need is one volley to make mincemeat out of that cavalry coming at you.

===Modern Firearms===
*Handgun - Also called "pistols", handguns are small-sized firearms that can be comfortably fired in one hand (hence the name). Handguns are mainly used for close defense and as a sidearm, making them akin to daggers. Modern pistol calibers are commonly between 8mm and 11mm, although popular magnum rounds like the .50 GI and .50AE are also exist for handguns (albeit they tend to be large, heavy, and likely to fuck up your wrist from the recoil).
:*Machine pistol - A machine pistol is a handgun that can fire in either bursts or in full-auto. While they're commonly thrown into that category, machine pistols are not submachine guns due to their size and use. Machine-pistols are not in widespread use with traditional military forces as SMGs and PDWs do better damage and have a longer range, but they remain popular with personnel like bodyguards, who require a highly portable but powerful sidearm.
:*Derringer - Another case of the concept being named after its inventor, "derringer" refers to tiny pistols, often used as concealed or backup sidearms, that could fit into the palm of your hand. These things have been around since the 19th century and were single-shot, though could have multiple barrels to fire off more shots before reloading, which were fired in a sequence. Due to their size and intended use (i.e: shooting someone while literally next to them); derringers typically used small rounds like .22 and below. But if you ''really'' wanted someone dead (and your wrists obliterated); some packed larger shots like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COP_.357_Derringer .357 magnum rounds].
:*Pocket Pistol - Modern versions of the derringer, those are really small handguns or revolvers that sacrifice range and ammo count in order to be as small and easily concealed as possible. Also called "subcompacts".

*Revolver - A revolving gun is any weapon that uses a revolving cylinder to load new rounds after every shot. While its commonly now relegated to pistols (a revolver typically meant a revolver pistol these days) the style is still used for some shotguns (like the Armsel Striker) and grenade launchers (like the MM1-Hawk). Revolvers are still in use for a few reasons: they're simple and cheap to make, can easily be used by left and right-handed shooters (since spent casings aren't automatically ejected like in the case of modern firearms) and is still pretty robust compared to today's modern weapons as fewer mechanisms means fewer points of failure. Downside is that they have very limited ammunition space (because the gun was made around the cylinder you can't expand it like how you can with detachable magazines, so you either had a gun with 5-8 rounds or a bulky gun with a 12-round cylinder) and reload time (revolvers in all generations were a pain in the ass to reload. If you had an old revolver with a loading gate; you had to eject each round by hand, ''then'' load new rounds. If you had a newer one; you had to empty the cylinder, load the rounds, then cock the hammer. This is in contrast to modern guns where you just had to eject the magazine, load a new one, and charge the weapon). Thanks to the American old west era and subsequent movies about it, revolver-styled handguns have achieved a kind of rustic yet sleek appeal to them. Revolvers come in generally the same calibers as handguns, from the modest .22 Long Rifle used for practicing and target shooting to the behemoth .500 S&W Magnum which can put down a bear. "Snubnose" revolvers refer to revolvers with shortened barrels in an attempt to make them more compact.
:* Top Break - A revolver with a hinged frame that opens to expose the cylinder. Top breaks were originally designed for cavalry, as they are very easy to load. However, the two piece frame is a weakness that limits the power of cartridge that can be used.
:* Swing Arm - By far the most common type of revolver, the swing arm mounts the cylinder on a moving arm known as a crane, which allows the cylinder to be exposed for loading. The chief limitation of the swing arm design is that the crane can bend over time and due to rough handling.
:* Gate Loading - Named for their loading gate, these revolvers can only expose one cylinder for reloading a a time, with the spent casing being pushed out through the gate by a long ejector rod. Gate loading revolvers are the earliest style for cartridge revolvers, dating back to conversions of percussion cap revolvers. Gate loading revolvers are now rare except for reproductions and revolvers designed to big cartridges. The fixed cylinder is the strongest possible configuration of revolver and thus the most tolerant of high power ammunition.

*Submachine gun - A submachine gun (abbreviated to SMG) is a fully automatic weapon that fires pistol cartridges instead of the larger rifle cartridges. One of the first true fully automatic infantry weapons outside of the machine gun, hence the name. The weapon fulfills a similar role of the carbine, striking a balance between firepower, recoil, and bulk. They also make good stealth weapons, as most pistol rounds are subsonic with heavier bullets and thus much quieter when suppressed.

:*Personal Defense Weapon - A PDW is a bit of a mix of a carbine and an SMG, firing specialized cartridges with rifle-like characteristics (usually in the 4-5mm range, shorter than a rifle cartridge but longer than a pistol cartridge) at the cost of additional weight. Its original role is as its name implies; a personal defense weapon for nonfrontline infantry, like artillery spotters, scouts, vehicle crews, commandos, etc. Back in the day PDWs weren't necessarily automatic; a pistol with a longer barrel and mounted stock could be classified as a PDW (This was done with the German C96 and Luger P07), today however these would qualify as "pistol carbines". These days PDWs are commonly lumped into the same category as SMGs, as they now fulfill similar roles.

*[[Shotgun]] - Shotguns are smoothbore weapons (as in the barrel is not rifled) designed to fire either shot (multiple steel or lead pellets) or slugs (a single, heavy projectile), although modern times have included other types of ammunition. The ability to fire multiple types of ammunition without modification is one of the main advantages to using a shotgun; converting an anti-infantry weapon into a door-breaching tool, a mini-flamethrower, or a less-lethal weapon with but a switch of the munitions. The vast majority of shotguns are pump-action or breech-loading, though as of 1905 shotguns can come in semi-automatic or fully-automatic configurations, but sheer variety of shell loads makes their reliability highly ammo dependant. For more information see the [[shotgun]] page. The most common bore size for shotguns is 12 gauge (about 18.5mm). Confusingly, higher gauges are lower in size because its based on weight of spheres of lead rather than diameter; a 20 gauge is about 15.6mm, while a 10 gauge is 19.7mm (.410 bore exists outside this and is .410 inch/10.4 mm/67 bore).

*Rifle - Rifles were originally shoulder-fired weapons that had their barrels "rifled" to increase precision, by putting spiral grooves into the barrel in order to have the bullet spin before leaving the barrel; reducing it's wind resistance (otherwise known as drag) and giving it more momentum as it leaves that muzzle. In ye olden days, these were specialist weapons given to marksmen while the common soldier carried a musket. However, because all modern non-shotgun non-explosive firearms now use rifling to improve ballistics, the term is usually reserved for a shoulder-fired long weapon, designed for accurate fire.
:*Assault Rifle - Assault rifles are a term given to any rifle that can be fired on full-auto and shoot intermediate-caliber rounds, typically in the 5mm range (or a shortened 7mm round if you're from the Eastern bloc). This is usually the standard weapon of a non-specialized front-line infantryman. The STG44 is considered to be the earliest one fielded in industrial quantity, though the idea has been around since at least the first World War.
:*Battle Rifle - Basically the assault rifle's big brother; battle rifles are bigger automatic rifles designed to fire high-caliber rounds, typically in the 7mm range. These were the mainstay for armies in the 1950s, but the US eventually found out that giving infantry rifles with smaller rounds is better since its lighter and can allow infantry to be more accurately engage enemies better due to lower recoil (albeit at the cost of power), so battle rifles were replaced by assault rifles for front-line use and battle rifles were relegated to specialists like marksmen or support gunners (who's job permits for a slower-firing but more powerful weapon). The M1918 BAR may count as one, though the first occurred no latter than 1942's FG42.
:*Carbine - A carbine is a compact rifle, primarily designed to be used in close quarters. In most cases, carbines are based from a parent rifle, and are scaled down by using lighter/smaller parts and shortening the barrel (such as in the case of the American M16 vs M4) or is its own weapon (like the Korean K1A). These are typically given to units who need to engage the enemy at close range and need a rifle for the job, like commandos, assault teams, or other specialist units, or given to units who are not expected to fight on the front but need a compact but decent weapon to defend themselves if the need arises, like pilots or vehicle crews. Carbine may also refer to pistol-caliber semi-automatic weapons that are longer than a pistol, but this is typically only used in the civilian market. The concept of a carbine predates modern firearms, though they existed primarily for cavalry.
:*Micro Assault Rifle - Even smaller than carbines; these are ultracompact rifles designed when someone needs a highly portable but powerful weapon. A MAR is basically a PDW that shoots actual rifle rounds. Much like carbines; a MAR can either be based on a parent rifle and scaled down or made as its own weapon. These tend to have low effectiveness for standard calibers, since those were designed for full length barrels, but the logistics of supply are superior.
:*Sniper Rifle - A sniper rifle is a special precision rifle, specifically designed to engage targets at extreme range with lethal efficiency. Many sniper rifles use standard 7.62mm rounds, but high-performance rifles will use more potent rounds up to 12.7mm rounds for extra range and stopping power. Preferably, sniper rifles should use match-grade ammunition to provide consistency and accuracy at high extended ranges. The vast majority are bolt-action for simplicity and power (much more reliable and because all the gasses are diverted into the barrel, rather than some being diverted to work the action; the gun can launch the bullet farther and faster), but there are also a decent number of semi-automatic ones. Sniper rifles are given to special marksmen called "snipers", who are capable of engaging the enemy from extreme distances, usually well away from the scrap.
:*Designated Marksman Rifle - A sort of compromise between battle rifles and sniper rifles, DMRs are precision weapons meant to be used by frontline infantry to accurately engage distant targets that regular infantry weapons cannot. Due to its role, it's generally more accurate than a rifleman's gun, but usually not as effective as an actual sniper's gun (DMRs are usually only effective within 1 kilometer, while SRs are typically effective beyond 1 kilometer). Generally speaking, DMRs avoid using the more high-performance rounds that snipers may use, as it may be detrimental for an infantryman's role.
:*Recoiless - Not a conventional gun in most senses; a recoilless gun (models with rifling are called "Recoiless rifles" though people often miss this distinction) is as the title suggest, a rifled weapon without (or at least reduced) recoil. It does this by basically being a cannon with the back taken off. When loaded the cartridge sits in an open back tube, there is no breach. When fired, the explosion propels the shell out the tube, but an equal amount of gas comes out the other side canceling out the recoil. This means that total muzzle velocity is lower than a cannon with a breech on it, but they make up for it by shooting bigger shells, and with HEAT shells (thanks to the nature of the Munroe effect) the wider the diameter of the shell the more effective it is, meaning even a large slow moving projectile can do a great amount of damage to tanks.
:*Anti-Tank/Materiel Rifle - Essentially modern elephant guns; these rifles are geared towards destroying tanks and hard objects, although they are very much still capable of demolishing infantry (albeit overkill since rifles of this type tend to outright cause body parts to explode by the sheer amount of force they carry.). Anti-tank rifles were the norm for years (From the 1910s to the late 1970s) as they were a cheap yet effective way of getting rid of tanks, but advancements in vehicle armor has largely rendered AT rifles obsolete (atlest for anti-tank roles, these things can still royally murder lightly-armored vehicles and urban housing, thus why they can be seen in use today). Anti-materiel rifles however, are a bit of an offshoot of AT rifles, and are still in use today. They are often used to take out lighter vehicles, to detonate ordnance at a safe distance or fuck up anything valuable to the other side like radars, communication devices, heavy weapons, etc... They have been successfully used against light boats and even to down the occasional helicopter. Likewise, they have been used by both professional and paramilitary forces due in thanks to their ability to annihilate cover (and hopefully what's behind it) where most conventional small arms won't.
:*Elephant Gun - A rifle that fires a ludicrously heavy bullet, usually as a single shot but rarely as a bolt action. As the name implies, these were developed to bring down big game like elephants, but eventually became the precursors to anti-material rifles. Unlike the later, range or penetration aren't big concerns so much as delivering a massive amount of energy to a soft-skinned target. While hunting elephants may be illegal today, a large caliber weapon is still useful for defense against large predators like bears or lions, who would shrug off a smaller 5.56mm or 7.62mm to the body. Firing such a heavy weapon while standing or even sitting isn't a pleasant experience; without the right stance, it'll go flying once you pull the trigger.
:*Everything else - Except sniper rifles and most Designated Marksman Rifles, all of the above rifles are generally "military-grade" and thus are generally not available to the public (unless you are in '''The Great United States Of America'''*, *NFA restrictions apply). Any other type of rifle will typically be called a "sporting rifle" or "hunting rifle", etc and are either bolt-action or semi-automatic. Technically speaking, most "military-grade" firearms can be modified to become semi-automatic to allow for use within the public.

*Machine Gun - Colloquially a machine gun is a large automatic weapon (though technically anything fully-automatic, ranging from a machine pistol all the way up to auto-cannons), typically fed from a magazine or a belt (or both, as is the case with the M249) and meant to either be man-portable or fired from an emplacement or mount like a tripod or turret. The main difference between MGs and the rest of the automatic weapon family is that an MG is a gun meant to fire with longer continuous bursts as a support weapon; meaning that the machine gunner applies continuous suppression fire at the enemy to keep them down (and occasionally kill those stupid enough to not get the message), while the rest of the squad maneuver. Machine guns are generally heavier, not only because of the volume of ammo they carry; but their parts (such as the barrel) are made of heavier materials so that the gun can withstand the punishing amounts of bullets it puts downrange (firing hundreds of rounds without pause can cause guns to overheat and malfunction, even catch fire or explode in the worst of scenarios, unless they're built for such a task.) Even then, barrel changes occur frequently to change warped and damaged barrels.
:*Light Machine Gun - an LMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same intermediate rounds as assault rifles. They are intended to be almost as portable as a rifle (as in, they can be shouldered, but get better performance with a bipod) and allow machine gunners to provide suppressing fire at the squad level. Some LMGs are magazine-fed rifles with heavier barrels and modified bolts (such as the RPK), or else scaled-down MMGs (such as the M249 SAW).
:*Medium Machine Gun - an MMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same full-power rounds as battle rifles. These tend to push the limit of what's practical for a man-portable weapon, and when deployed are usually fired from a stationary position either on a bipod or tripod due to the recoil they generate. These weapons usually overlap with General Purpose Machine Guns and tend to be deployed at the company level or as a vehicle weapon.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (classic) - The definition of an HMG has changed a bit over the last 100 years so the catagory has been split up into two category's. The classical heavy machine gun is exclusively meant to be fired from emplacements and mounts like a tripod due to their large size and weight and was designed to be fired from a fixed position: constantly, just spitting out bullets for days. Often done with the aid of a water jacket which further increased the weight of the weapon. These are the guns that created the quagmire of the great war. Their heavy weight made them impossible for an infantryman to fire on the move (regardless of what you hear; even Hollywood couldn't make these monsters man-portable in their movies, and those fire low-powered blank rounds and is being held by the like of [[Sly Marbo|Sylvester Stallone]]). But that weight also greatly limited their maneuverability and forced them to stay in a static defensive position. Usage outside of vehicle mounts died off when artillery became more precise and could easily wipe out immobile emplacements. Unlike modern heavy machine guns, classical ones used a standard sized rifle cartridge, the vickers for example used the .303 bullet same as the standard rifle of the day, what made them 'heavy' was the focus on sustained shooting to throw back waves of attacking infantry. Examples include the Maxim gun, Hotchkiss Mle 1914 and the Vickers.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (Modern): a modern heavy machine gun is not designed to fire constantly, but to fire a big bullet. Only slightly too small to qualify for the definition of 'cannon' are weapons like the M2 browning .50 caliber, or 12.7 mm machine gun. Modern HMG's are powerful enough to penetrate light armor and damage fragile equipment on heavy armor (like scopes), making them formidable weapons. Examples of modern HMG's are the Russian DHSK and the American M2 Browning.
:*General Purpose Machine Gun - Essentially a machine gun that can perform multiple roles of the previous stated. Examples of this are the German MG34 (arguably the first of this concept) and MG42/MG3, or (from an American prospective) the American M60 and M240, which can reliably serve both infantry-level support weapon and mounted gun roles by fitting them with the appropriate parts. The first ones used the general rifle cartridge, while modern examples are in 7.62x51 NATO or its equivalents.
::*Squad Automatic Weapon - An attempt to make a GPMG that use the intermediate cartridges everyone else in the squad used. Despite the weaknesses of intermediate cartridges (limited range, low barrier penetration/destruction), they is still commonly used by virtue of their reduced logistical requirements and lighter weight compared to other man-portable LMG variants. The RPD, RPK and M249/SAW/MINIMI family are the main entries here, though it seems every modern assault rifle has tried to make a SAW variant with varying degrees of success.
:::*Infantry Automatic Rifle - A more recent concept that seeks to combine the continuous firing properties of a machine gun with an assault rifle's accuracy and ease of use. So far only attempted seriously by the US Marine Corp with the M27; while the higher-ups are pleased with it so far, there is considerable debate about whether its lower rate of fire compared to the M249 will make it less effective at providing suppressing fire.
:*Rotary Machine Gun - Originally known as the "Gatling gun", man's first known attempt to have enough [[dakka]]; a rotary machine gun is an automatic weapon that uses revolving barrels that interchange every time the gun fires off a round. The kicker to this is that it allows the gun to shoot with little threat of the barrels wearing out as they interchange between shots; giving them a small window to cool off before firing again. The end result is a gun capable of firing over 3,000 rounds per minute without fail, or in a smaller scope; 50 rounds per second. Modern rotary guns are electrically powered to allow them to reach such insane speeds, and are given ammo drums that contain thousands of rounds to be able to sustain that amount of bullets being fired; so they're confined to static emplacements and vehicles (unlike what the media constantly portrays; these things are not even close to being man-portable without assistance from powered armor.) These types of guns are used almost exclusively on aircraft or anti-aircraft emplacements, as they're the only non-missile weapon that can reliably hit fast-moving aircraft. But a rotary gun that fires 30mm rounds is powerful enough to tear tanks in two, as well (metaphorically, they only have to penetrate top armor and rate of fire helps). Unlike what the movies would tell you a rotary machine gun does not need a long spinup time to get to full speed: when the trigger is pulled the gun starts to spin and fire immediately.
:*Chain gun - A chain gun is a machine gun that is fed using an electric motor. Instead of relying on the gasses from the bullet to work the action to cycle a new round; a machine automatically ejects and loads a new round in after firing a shot. Chain guns have the benefit of never jamming due to feeding failures, as even if the round is not discharged; the machine pops it out and loads a new one regardless. However, it is also not man-portable as it requires an electric motor to function, so it is only found on fixed emplacements or vehicles. Can easily fuck up any poor shmucks day by perforating the boat or car they are in. People sometimes use the words "chain gun" and "rotary machine gun" interchangably, but chain guns are typically single-barreled, as they don't need the high rate of fire that rotary guns do outside of anti-air guns.

===Actions===
"Action" refers to how ammunition is loaded into the weapon.

*Single-shot: The first and oldest of all; a single-shot weapon is when users manually load rounds into the chamber. This can be anything from loading a new round, cocking the weapon every shot, or pumping the action.
**Muzzle-loaded: The earliest form of how weapons were loaded. This meant you had to load a new round directly into the muzzle, which is where the bullets come out. In its earliest form; muzzle-loaded guns were complicated to arm; you had to fuck around with a wad, powder, and slug. In the heat of battle, you had to ram these down the barrel of your gun in the correct order, light the wick, then aim before the gun goes off. And you had to do all this while standing in the open within firing range of your enemy.
**Breach-loaded; An upgrade over muzzle-loading and developed shortly after cartridges were invented; breach loaders are where the bottom of the barrel can be unhinged so that you can load a new round into it. It is still a popular setup for multi-barreled shotguns. Certain revolvers are breach-loaded as well, but given the size and design of the revolver, this gives them a notable weak point at the top of the weapon where the parts connect together.
**Bolt-action: This type of action is where you pull the charging handle of a weapon, every time you shoot so that the mechanism would chamber a new round. These were pretty popular in WW1 and continues to be used today for precision rifles.
**Lever-action: The cool kid of the single-action club; lever-action weapons are those where you have to use a lever to chamber a new round, which was usually mounted near the trigger. This type was made popular by Winchester during the frontier age of the Wild West and even more by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he used a lever-action shotgun during Terminator 2.
**Pump-action: A pump action is where you had to pull the "pump" of the weapon to cycle a new round. This is the most common action used by shotguns. A few rifles used this setup as well, and there is one instance of a bunch of madmen creating a pump-action 3+1 (three in the tube, one in the chamber) 40mm grenade launcher.

*Automatic action: Unlike single-shot weapons, it uses gasses expelled by the cartridge or recoil to power a mechanism that automatically chambers a new round after each shot. Generally speaking, the semi-automatic to fully-automatic action is determined by the trigger sear, which may either inhibit the hammer from hitting against until the trigger is let go (semi-automatic), stops firing after a certain number of rounds have been fired (burst-fire), or continuously fires until ammo is expended (fully automatic).
**Semi-automatic: A semi-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire after every trigger pull, with the user only needing to work the action after reloading a completely empty gun. Most handguns and many rifles are semi-automatic.
**Burst-Fire: A setting sometimes included on automatic weapons, each trigger pull fires three (or sometimes two) rounds in rapid succession. This is used as a way to allow automatic capability without wasting bullets, as keeping the trigger held too long on anything other than a mounted weapon tends to cause it to lose accuracy very quickly.
**Fully-automatic: A fully-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire automatically, so long as the trigger is depressed, rather than pulled each time like how semi-autos work. Automatic weapons tend to be banned for civilian use and are only available to military.

===Ammo Storage and Feeding===
This refers to how ammunition is given to the weapon. Also the topic of a /k/ommando's greatest sources of rage; the clip vs magazine misconception. This section will give a short explanation for both.

*Pepperbox - basically the bastard child of a break-action long gun and a revolver; a pepperbox gun has 3 or more barrels loaded and ready to fire, with the gun rotating between the loaded barrels to fire in relatively quick sucession. As this was one of the only ways to get more than a single shot in less than a minute without resorting to carrying multiple guns; the design was wacky but popular during the olden ages (and still today to a limited extent for some pocket pistols). The Empire's Outriders are armed with these weapons if you want a visual of what they looked like. Most pepperboxes where smoothbore since they were made on the cheap and never intended for more than point blank fire.

*Volleygun - A variant of the olden multi-barrel family, the volleygun foregoes single, accurate shots in favor of alpha-striking to saturate the area in lead, having anywhere between 2 to 20 barrels (and you can go well beyond this if your contraption can handle it) and the size ranging anywhere from a pistol to a full-sized artillery piece. As the name describes; it fires all of it's payload in a single volley, basically making it a one-man firing line. This style of weaponry gradually fell out of disuse as more modern firearms were developed (mainly self-loading weapons, which were more reliable and accurate), but is notably still used for the "Metal Storm", a prototype weapon with truly absurd number of gun barrels that go off simultaneously to shred the ever-living fuck out of it's target. The only types still in use today are double barreled shotguns and derringers.

*Superposed load - the disadvantage to using a multi-barreled firearm is that it adds a lot of weight to the firearm. One alternative was to simply stack multiple bullets and charges into the same barrel, and then have the firearm set them off sequentially. The early version of this mechanism was prone to failures, as the bullets were not self-contained and a poor gas seal could result in multiple charges going off, destroying the gun (and the user if unlucky enough) if it was not designed to handle the stress. However, this setup was revived with the invention of caseless bullets and electronic triggers used most prominently in Metal Storm weapons. If combined with multiple barrels, a metal storm weapon can have a bewildering rate of fire. So far the technology is mostly used in multi-shot grenade launchers.

*Bullpup - A bullpup is any weapon where its action is located in the behind the trigger, instead of in front. Bullpups have the advantage of being more compact, compared to the traditional setup, as most of the gun's mechanism is located in the stock area. but has the disadvantage of not being ambidextrous (being that the shell ejection port is directly beside the shooter's face, left-handed shooters are forced to shoot from the right to not get their faces burned off) unless specifically designed to be so. This is usually resolved by cutting out ejection ports on both sides and swapping parts over, or else ejecting bullets downward or forward. And typically suffer from poor triggers due to the distance from trigger to action, though there are aftermarket kits for many that can mitigate it a good deal. Modern pistols and many SMGs that feed from inside the grip are ''technically'' bullpups, since their magazine and action are behind the trigger and connected by a transfer bar, but they generally aren't counted as such.

*Clip - A clip is a device, used for bundling bullets together for immediate use. Guns cannot use clips by themselves, they have to be loaded into a magazine first to be used by a gun. The most common version were "stripper clips": each clip held about five bullets, and to load the rifle you placed the clip on top of the magazine, then squeezed the bullets off the clip into the magazine. Another type, en bloc, was used by the M1 Garand and held eight bullets in a 2x4 configuration. The entire clip was put in the magazine, with the clip being ejected after being emptied. The last kind is the moon (or half-moon) clip, used specifically for revolvers, which holds bullets in a circular formation for loading the chamber up in one go. Clips are still used today, but exclusively to speed up loading external magazines. Filling external magazines generally requires a small disposable tool, which is included in any ammo lot packaged on stripper clips.

*Speedloader - A speedloader is essentially a clip that has moving parts, usually to aid with holding and/or loading ammunition. Two common types exist. The first is similar to a moon clip in that it holds bullets so that they can all be loaded into a revolver simultaneously, but use a locking mechanism to secure the bullets while they are being carried, then release them once they are loaded into the cylinder. While not as fast as a moon clip, it still makes loading revolvers considerably faster. Another type of speedloader is the magazine loader, which is designed to reduce the spring pressure in a magazine, making it faster and easier to load.

*Magazine - The magazine is part of the weapon that houses and feeds actual ammo into the weapon. In the olden days, many guns had magazines that were built into the weapon itself and were fed using clips of ammo that were loaded after the gun ran out of ammo. Built-in magazines, however, severely limited the potential ammunition capacity of guns as they cannot be expanded without significantly making the gun larger and was a pain in the ass to reload (such as in the case of revolvers). To counter this; people designed guns whose magazines were detachable from the gun itself. This allowed people to easily expand the ammo cap of a gun, as they only needed to ensure that the extended magazine will fit into their gun and cycle properly, they no longer needed to re-work the entire structure of the gun to enlarge a built-in magazine. It also greatly increased a person's reload speed, as instead of fumbling around with several clips to ram down the gun: they just had to detach a magazine, pull one out of their vest/bag, load it in (charge the gun if needed), and they're good to go. High-capacity magazines tend to take on weird shapes rather than the standard flat box; the most common variant is the drum magazine, but there are also double drums, caskets, and helicals. Typically the weakest part of any firearm. A large part of the misconceptions of the M16 were related to the fucktarded idea that it should be issued with DISPOSABLE MAGAZINES! They were initially not intended for repeated use, empty the mag. Drop it, crush it under your boot, reload a brand new never used mag. Worked well till some bureaucrat ordered reusing them which alongside some other bureaucrats skipping the chrome lining for the barrel and issuing really shitty ammo made with spare parts caused regular failures. Newer iterations of the magazine have since addressed these issues.

*Belts - The belt is what it is; a long belt filled with bullets, which can either take the form of a cloth belt or linked by metallic chains. Belts are the common loading method of most machine guns, who typically have ammunition capacities well beyond 100 rounds. The reason for this is that it simplifies the operation of the gun (since belts do not require them to be fed to the gun with a mechanism like in traditional magazines) and makes them less prone to malfunctions (with a gun designed to shoot continuously; you wanna make sure that there's less critical moving parts to fuck up as it's firing it's 300th round at the enemy). Belts are also much easier to transport, as the belt can be folded several times to make it more compact, versus a solid magazine. This is mostly because until H&K put out their steel high reliability 5.56 nato mag, most magazines couldn't keep up with the fire rate and were too flimsy(The Soviet counterparts that used magazines, used AK pattern magazines which you can open a beer with and then load into the gun). Pretty much every man issued a M249 with the magwell adapter, will attest to how dire you must be for bullets in the air to use it.

==Ammunition themselves==
To call a round or cartridge "a bullet" would be the equivalent of calling of calling a magazine a clip. Bullets are the projectiles that are or to be launched, while the "round" is the entire thing. To do otherwise would summon the wrath of the /k/ommando.

===Composition of the modern round/cartridge===

*Casing - The metal jacket that houses the propellant, primer, and to an extent the bullet (pardoning telescopic munitions which house the bullet completely.) Usually made from brass, they can be made from steel or plastics (at the detriment of the gun itself, unless designed for such).

*Propellant - Powder that is used to propel the bullet/slug/projectile. In the good ol' days, it used black powder, but those clouded the air and weren't powerful. Most modern rounds use a double base powder (generally gun cotton or nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, may include a variety of stabilizers (to improve shelf life of the round) and deterrents (to prevent the cartridge from being too "hot". For artillery, they make good use of triple base propellants, which is smokey as hell but burn well.

*Primer - What activates the powder in the rounds themselves. Generally a firm dent is enough to activate the munitions. Generally use non-corrosive compression sensitive materials.

*Bullets - What people get tripped up on in naming munitions. Being the projectile, anyone loading the munitions has a vast choice of what can be used as a bullet. Generally, lead, steel, and tungsten make the core of the round (thanks to their weight) while the outer coat for the round could be lead (since it is also very malleable), copper, and nickel, though Teflon and certain plastics can also be used. If you're feeling lucky, you can load a variety of other materials into the rounds (or shells for shotguns). Take for example salt, which doesn't kill, but you can mark people and they sting like hell.

===Types of bullets===
As a short note on bullets, its important to know that just because a bullet can easily penetrate armor doesn't mean its a definite upgrade over everything else. If a hard bullet like the FMJ or AP penetrates the human body and exits in the same shot; its gonna hurt like hell but unless that bullet was in the 12.7mm (.50 caliber) category or it hit something important like a lung or the head; the target has a good possibility to survive through a combination of medical aid, hormones (adrenaline in fight or flight), and willpower (with the side possibility of stimulants), and even still continue to fight onwards if they're that dead 'ard. That said, if a 12.7mm round came tearing through your body; it has enough momentum to potentially rupture a good chunk of your insides which is ''very'' lethal, but 12.7mm guns are generally not mainstay (these are guns like the Desert Eagle, M2 Browning, or M82 Barrett), so unless you're a real-life action hero, a turret gunner, or a counter-sniper; its unlikely for you to have access to these behemoths.

Likewise, if a soft bullet like the JHP or SP penetrates the body, then which expands, fragments, and/or tumbles inside; in short internal and external bleeding would be the most urgent of the target's concerns, with ruptured organs and torn muscles leaking like a broken sewage pipe, thus making HP lot more lethal and debilitating. That said, soft bullets fragment easily and body armor proportionate to it's caliber can reliably stop soft round. That said even if armored; the target is still gonna feel the impact of the bullet's force hitting against his body, and that still has the potential of killing someone if the circumstances are right (although its still unreliable).

In the end, a bullet is either specialized where it's only effective against either armored or unarmored targets, or a special combination that renders it effective against both types (although these require an experienced smith to manufacture properly).

*Ball - though if we start talking bullets we need to start with the first bullet: the lead ball, from where we derive the common term for bullets as 'rounds'. It's. . .just a lead ball though, not much to say about it. The balls were hand made, often by soldiers themselves since lead has such a low melting point, with the molds often being unique to each gun. This used largely the same process that was used for [[Sling]] bullets since antiquity. These early bullets would often 'rattle' down the barrel due to ill fitting the barrel of there guns, which combined with a lack of riffling would mean early guns were horribly inaccurate. If one used a smaller bullet that better fitted the gun, would could use rifling, but this required, (see above) hammering the bullet into place to make sure that there were no gaps.

*Minié ball- The first bullet we would know as a 'bullet', and the first truly distinct from a lead ball. A Minié ball is a conical bullet with a concave hole in the base. When fired the base flared out from the pressure of the blast, letting it engage with the rifling of the gun. This meant that it formed a seal with the barrel making it incredibly accurate, while not needing to be tightly hammered down the barrel. The best of both worlds. Combined with it's large size these things were lethal on the battle field maiming and crippling an entire generation of soldiers during the US civil war.

*Full Metal Jacket (FMJ)- Generally a lead or steel bullet encased in a soft metal such as copper. Acts a sort of lube as well as preventing fouling of the barrel. Depending on design, has a potential to fragment post impact, shredding internal organs.
**Synthetic Jacket- FMJ ammo with a plastic jacket, which has the advantage of reducing cleaning requirements and safer when hitting steel at the cost of various things not really relevant in practice ammo. Currently only in handgun calibers and only made as practice/match ammo (though some hollow points and AP rounds do also use polymer jackets).

*Hollow point (HP)- The hollow section in the center makes the bullet expand on impact, creating a bigger hole in its victim at the expense of being less effective against armored targets. That being said, the decreased penetration also makes it safer to use in situations where over-penetration could be dangerous (e.g. on an aircraft). Certain designs have bladed tips on expansion, causing additional cutting and bleeding too. It was banned from military use by the Hague Convention of 1899, so restricted to police, civilians, and, as of 2017, the United States Armed Forces (The US didn't sign that provision, but previously stuck with FMJ even after mass production became feasible for the sake of NATO compatibility).

*Semi jacketed Hollow point (SJHP)- Same as a hollow point, but has a copper jacket to help reduce fouling.

*Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP)- Same as above, but fully covers the bullet down to the tip.

*Wad cutter (WC)- Flat tipped bullet. Not very aerodynamic but it leaves a big hole to help tell you where you hit the target. Generally for closer range paper targets as they lose velocity very quickly due to the drag on them.

*Semi Wad Cutter (SWC)- Like the wad cutter, but more aerodynamic.

*Armor Piercing (AP)- As name implies, intended to penetrate armor, be it person or equipment. However, this ultimately depends on what gun you're shooting from and what armor you're shooting at. A 9x19mm AP steel round coming from a 4" barrel will do diddly to NIJ Level IIIA, where as a 7.62x51 AP flying out of a 24" barrel will punch through it easy as you please. Modern AP rounds are often jacketed in plastic, but this is purely to protect the barrel (turns out sending something meant to destroy steel through a steel barrel results in a wrecked barrel) and adds no armor piercing quality.

*Saboted light armor penetrator (SLAP)/Saboted bullets- Think of the discarding sabots fired from a M1 Abrams or a saboted slug of a shotgun, but redesigned to be fired like a standard rifle round. The sabot is designed to the grip the rifling until it leaves the barrel, then discard after leaving the barrel. This would leave the penetrator or bullet with a high velocity while providing a sufficient spin to the bullet to keep it stabilized in the air. With a higher density and/or thinner bullet, they can potentially penetrate better than potentially even APHE. Likewise for handcrafted bullets, they provide higher velocity for a smaller bullet in a cartridge intended for a larger caliber. G

*High Explosive incendiary (HEI)- Explosive tipped munition. Generally for larger rounds (think 7.62 and beyond), they typically are meant for non-infantry targets such as light vehicles, light aircraft, and barriers, showering those inside with speeding shrapnel. Despite their implication, they might not work as well as one might think against hard target.

*Armor Piercing Incendiary (API)/Armor Piercing High Explosive (APHE), High Explosive Incendiary Armor Penetration (HEIAP)- Designed with the intentions of penetrating hard targets that HE rounds can't do alone and being anti-material in general, API and HEIAP are the answer to those targets. Generally have sufficient power in and behind the bullet (think Raufoss Mk.211), it will penetrate body armor and light vehicles with awe-inspiring ease.

*Soft point or semi jacketed - Like a FMJ, except the tip is exposed. Designed to have the reduced drag of a FMJ, while expanding upon hitting a target similar to a hollow point. Generally designed for hunters in mind.

*Ballistic tip - Similar in performance to the semi-jacketed bullet, but rather than being a solid core of lead it is designed like a hollow point, but with a plastic tip at the end to reduce drag and ensure expansion.

*Ratshot - made for smaller-caliber guns and is basically birdshot for rifled barrels. The tip is a plastic cap that contains a small amount pellets, typically within the 1.5mm range. As the name implies; the gun is primarily designed for shooting pests and small animals like rodents and grass snakes. You can use it to shoot at larger pests like coyotes or humans, but it's woefully underpowdered for the job.

*Tracer - a regular bullet coated in pyrotechnic coating that ignites when fired. These are most commonly used with machineguns (every fifth round in a belt, to be exact) since it's useful for the gunner to accurately see where all his bullets are going, as well as make it clear to any enemies he's suppressing just who he's aiming at. Similarly rifle magazines are often loaded with tracers at certain intervals to provide indication of remaining ammo. Of course, the caveat is "tracer's work both ways" as they can give away your position; this can be mitigated by using "dim" tracers that can only be seen through night vision goggles. Sometimes also used by spotters or commanders to mark a specific target. They can potentially set fire to objects, if the incendiary compound hasn't burned out yet on impact.

*Less-lethals - Commonly known as 'rubber bullets' even though they're made of plastic these days instead. Used in riot control and such, where the shooter isn't allowed to kill. The key word is "less", however. They hurt like a sonovabitch and can still kill in the wrong circumstances, though. Airsoft this ain't.

*Silver - Pure fantasy, but common in there to counter supernatural creatures weak to silver. Silver bullets would suffer from many problems that rarely get mentioned in fiction. Chief among these are the cost, that silver shrinks when cast (so it's really hard to get the right size and shape), and that silver is too soft to engage rifling so even if you get the right size accuracy will be terrible. [[Monster Hunter International|More /k/ aligned works]] solve these issues with solutions like sabots (which helps accuracy but still worse than real bullets), ballistic tips made of silver and frangible bullets filled with powdered silver (instead of the typical competitively cheap metal).

===Types of Rounds===
Apart from the traditional type of rounds, here are some unique ones for reference.

*Blanks - What you commonly see loaded in movies. Blanks are basically that; the round has a primer and powder, but the bullet is just a paper or plastic sheet designed to keep the powder in, so you get the sound of a gun going off, but not the damage. That said, blanks ''can'' still kill people, the gasses used to propel the bullet forward are still there (just not launching any bullets); and its powerful enough to liquefy organs and break bones if you were dumb/desperate enough shoot someone with a blank at close range. Movie armorers make a point of demonstrating this with things like fruit before letting anyone touch blank firing guns. This is why instead of blank-firing guns, actors will use flash paper guns at close range for safety. There's also blank ammo specifically designed to make as much noise as possible for the purpose of disorienting and intimidating people in an area.

*Caseless - An old but futuristic concept, a caseless round has everything required for the bullet to be launched, inside the bullet itself. This removes the need for guns to eject spent shell casings after every shot, reducing weight and ammo costs. While this has been pioneered since WW2 and a few prototype examples for it were already developed (like the G11); caseless rounds are still determined to be unreliable for field combat use in comparison to traditional ammunition, so as of today their use is largely limited (mainly to grenade rounds like the Russian VOG-25 grenade).

*Gyrojet - A unique but largely impractical cartridge in the gun circuit, WH40K's famous [[bolter|boltguns]] run on the same concept as the gyrojet. Basically, the bullets are miniature rockets that build up speed as they travel, capable of exceeding the speed of sound after traveling 60ft. While the idea sounds cool; gyrojets were ''required'' to gain minimum distance to achieve their full effect (if you fired at point-blank for example, they didn't really do much), had a design flaw in their propulsion system that made the rockets prone to corkscrewing off-course, and were highly temperamental to environmental conditions, not to mention the costs. At the end the concept was a bust as it didn't really do a lot that couldn't be achieved with traditional small arms for cheaper. Still GeeDubs thought it was nice and became the basis of how boltguns work, where it's largely the same but with more techno-flubdubbery and "because future".

*Magnum - Unlike what vidya gaems portray, magnums aren't really super-mega handguns of death. A magnum round is basically a parent cartridge that's been enlarged so it does more damage due to a combination of larger mass and more powder used (so it flies faster and hits harder), and this can be anything from the .357 magnum handgun round used by revolvers, to the large caliber .338 Lapua and Winchester magnum rounds used for precision sniper rifles.

*Overpressured - Designated as "+P", overpressured rounds still uses the same cartridge (unlike the magnum), but is loaded with higher-pressure powder that releases more energy when fired. It sounds like a nice way to up your damage, but guns have a level of pressure they can tolerate, and if your gun isn't designed to do such and you use +P rounds; you run the very high risk of destroying your gun (and the rest of your body if you're that unlucky). There are guns that are proofed to fire +P and +P+ ammo but it typically used in SMGs. Certain batches of surplus ammo will blow up guns because they were made to be used in more robust SMGs and not commercial pistols.

===Types of shotgun loads===

*Buckshot - The shell is filled with lead or steel pellets, each of which is typically around 15mm each (it ultimately depends on the bore), that spread out once discharged. Poor at penetrating armor and limited effective range comparison to other firearms as the pellets scatter and the pellets are too small to do serious damage individually (Although do note that unlike what the vidya gaems portray; a decent 12G shotgun loaded with buckshot is effective upto 30-50m, not just in point-blank range); but they do cover a fairly large radius and the force of 8-12 pellets impacting against your body will send you tumbling and rolling on the floor in agony, even if they don't penetrate.

*Birdshot - Similar to buckshot and more pellets, but the pellets are smaller (5mm and less, although still depends on the bore). As their name describes; the ammo is designed to pelt down birds by [[Ork|throwing as many bullets at the target and hoping atleast a few of them hit]]. You can use them against non-avian targets aswell and they'll do something, but they don't pack the punch you'd like and don't expect them to dent body armor too much. Their ineffectiveness against human targets [[Wikipedia:Dick Cheney hunting accident|was demonstrated by a (possibly drunk) Vice President of the United States]] when he shot an old guy in the face with some and the only lasting damage was the voice.

*Slug - Instead of multiple pellets; the gun fires a single, heavy lead projectile, similar to how traditional ammo works. Because shotgun barrels are not rifled; slugs do not have the range nor accuracy rifles do, but because of their weight and the shotgun's fairly large caliber; they're fully capable of crushing their way through armor at close range. Slugs are typically used for hunting large game in areas where rifle ammunition isn't allowed due to the risk of overpenetration.

*Breaching - A specialized variant of the slug round, breaching rounds are designed specifically to destroy door locks at extremely close range. Generally composed of very dense powdered steel held together with wax.

*Less-lethals - Designed for riot control where the shooter isn't allowed to kill; the bullet is either made of rubber, paint, or beanbags designed for minimal penetration, while the powder used in the rounds is less to reduce the projectile's velocity. The end result is a bullet designed to simply cause shock and pain to the target in order to incapacitate them long enough to be arrested and not rejoin the fight in the meantime. That said, you're still talking about launching an object at someone at speeds similar to cars speeding on a highway; so hitting vulnerable parts of the body like the head, neck, or ribs can still result in a fatality. On the flip side, anyone wearing bullet-resistant armor won't be affected too much.

*Chain-shot - Typically reserved for olden cannons, the chain-shot is two cannonballs linked with a chain. The spinning contraption was intended to tear through a ship's mast and sails. Obsolete as fuck, but it is still possible to replicate this with shotgun ammo. Basically you tie two pellets or slugs together so that when they're discharged; they're basically flying garrotes. Awesome, but because of how unpredictable bullets are while in flight, it's highly impractical for combat use.

*Flechette - Buckshot, but instead of pellets; the shell is loaded with small metal darts. They achieved better penetration and range than traditional buckshot; but because shotguns aren't really designed as precision weapons; they were highly impractical for combat applications. They destroyed barrels and tended to deflect off really silly things like raindrops.

*Explosive Rounds - The shell contains an slug that explodes upon impact, capable of using anti-armor or anti-personnel shells, basically turning the shotgun into a portable grenade launcher. Not as powerful as the real thing, but invaluable when you need accurate explosions but not the excessive collateral damage or restrictive weight and mass. Has seen some use in rifle rounds on the eastern front of World War II as well as in .50 BMG (officially for use on objects, not people).

*Dragon's Breath - An odd type of ammo. DB shells are loaded with magnesium pellets. When discharged; they create a short but hot burst of fire that burn at temperatures upto 1,600°C. While not really used much for conventional combat due to its status as an incendiary weapon (which would give a warcrimes committee a field day); blasting a person with this at close range will create about the same results as a giant fire-breathing lizard incinerating an unlucky knight to death, hence their name. Also destroys barrels, as dragon's breath burns hotter than the melting point of steel, and close to the melting point of chromium (two of the most common metals used in gun parts).

*Misc - Shotguns aren't really picky with ammo since they are manually operated and don't depend on a gas seal as much; just about ''anything'' can be used for bullets if worse comes to worse/you're bored. Could be lego pieces, could be old hard candy, solid scrap,frozen meat [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-n4bxxn9gA or even glass]. Hell, it can be a Sly Marbo tabletop figure if you could fit him inside a shell and prevent him from disintegrating from the force while exiting the barrel, the choice is yours. (More likely blow up your gun as Sly refuses to die and gives you the finger for trying.)

==Manufacturing of Firearms==

===Brief Overview===

The production of firearms historically speaking has been an, err, interesting path. The first firearms were little more than metal (or whatever other material one so chose) cylinder with with one hole for the ignition of the powder and one for the projectile to be projected. As time passes on manufacturing techniques got more advanced, leading to triggers which frees up one hand from having to push a hot object into the powder. Most used a sort of striker to ignite the powder, be it flint or rope. Around the early to mid 19th century, self-containing cartridges became a possible reality. As such the firearm had to change too, with an action either simply accepting a round into the barrel or an action that would be worked to put it in. Near the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, auto-loading firearms became possible, but the actions had to become more complex to automatically feed the round by means of either recoil or gas. After that, guns haven't exactly changed too drastically (still major changes) in the current 21st century, pardoning the much higher efficiency of the modern weaponry. The complexity of modern firearms however doesn't interfere with how cheaply they can be produced. As such, there are endless aftermarket gun parts for sale around in places such as the USA.

===DIY===
[[image:.45 ACP ISB SMG.png|thumb|175px|left|.45 ACP ISB SMG designed from a STEN, but has many parts that differ. According to the designer "I like to think of it as a cross between an FG-42, a Welrod and a Sten."]]

First and foremost: guns are not toys, and should never be treated as such.

It comes as no secret that one can manufacture their own guns in one's own home so they chose to ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_copy Just ask the Afghans]). Depending on the skill of the user, the manufacturing tools used, material quality of the parts being used and/or made, design of the gun, and so on, a DIY can range from a explode-in-your-hand zip gun all the way up to high-quality rifles that have a minute of angle (MOA) of 1 or less. All one need is one's [[Ork|imagination]] and a [[Techpriest|firm understanding on how a gun works from the inside out and machining]]. In addition to that, the internet has a broad data base on the knowledge and schematics of guns.

[[image:Homemade_gun_exploding.PNG|thumb|150px|right| Careful you might blow your eye out]]
That said, DIY-guns require a decent understanding of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering to manufacturer at all, so unless you're a [[Mekboy]] with all the know-wotz implanted in your brain; its highly recommended you read up first, lest your firearm's first unwitting victim is you.

[[image:Stormbolter_IRL.jpg|thumb|223px|right|If a modern rifle was a stormbolter.]]

Examples of DIY are:

*Zip gun: Usually a metal tube attached to a piece of wood or object, within it some sort of trigger and striker. One example of this is a slam fire gun. Generally a 12 gauge shotgun shell loaded into a 3/4 inch tube that can be shoved into a 1 inch tube that has cap containing a nail at the end. When shoved in, the cap's nail will be more than enough to set off the shell, making the tubes effectively a shotgun.

*Experimental design: Every line of guns started out as a experiment somewhere. Some catch on, some don't, some just are there because why the heck not? Want to have dual barrels on your gun? Go for it! Add a counterweight to the gas block so that the recoil is next to nothing? Makes shoot a breeze! Add a round cam to your bolt so you can have a smooth action and reduce wear on the gun? No reason not to! The choices are endless if with time, diligence, and a bit of imagination.

*CNC Manufacturing: Avoiding the painstaking effort of machining it by hand [[Machine Spirit|a machine do it for you?]] A Computer numerical control (CNC) machine can easily mill out receivers and whatever other parts you need assuming you have the plans on the computer and the materials to be drilled out. The downsides of that CNC are a bit pricey relative to their hand milling machine counterpart. However some go for as low as $1200, which is roughly the same price as a mid-tier intermediate rifle in the USA.

==Relations here==
Most fantasy writers tend to exclude firearms. There are a variety of reasons for this, such as:
*Most fantasy comes from [[Tolkien]], who, being a naturalist who largely despised industrialization, did not put guns in Middle-earth, although gunpowder does exist, used by the wizards (Gandalf's Fireworks and Saruman's Fires of Orthanc) and by the orcs.
*Most fantasy (whether copy-catting Tolkien or not) is based on medieval Europe. Depending on your definition of "medieval," Europe did ''technically'' have firearms towards the very end (crude and unreliable ones, but firearms nonetheless), but most authors base their fantasy on earlier medieval Europe.
*As in real life, firearms mean that vulgar, dirty, peasant conscripts can take down the author's Mary Sue noblemen [[knight]]s that trained ''so'' hard in the arts of swordsmanship and melee combat, though if the writer had any historical knowledge they would know that armor can be made "proof" against early firearm bullets (which is partly what spurred the development of full-body plate mail to begin with, as a sidenote) or that a crossbow or longbow can just as easily (in fact, MORE easily due to the general shitty performance of old guns) turn an armored man into swiss cheese.

All that being said, most fantasy authors are much more open to cannons, which became viable on the battlefield long before smaller firearms anyway. Some even make room for crude rocket launchers, especially if there is a not-China/not-Korea in their setting. (Laugh, but a big firework rocket will put a sod on fire and ruin his day just fine, doubly so if the morons are in wooden fort.)

Generally speaking, if a world has both the "stock" fantasy races and guns, there will a strict hierarchy of who uses them, from most to least likely:
*[[Dwarves]]: They almost always have the best, most plentiful guns. If only one race gets firearms, it's likely going to be them.
*[[Gnomes]]: As tinkerers, they're frequently on a different tech level from everyone else, including firearms.
*[[Human]]s: Unlike the other races, which are usually an all-or-nothing deal, different human nations have different likelihoods of having guns. Italian and East Asian analogues, as well as the "industrious" or "scientific" nations, are much more likely to have them. Your barbarians, guys keen on knights and chivalry, and the more conservative less so. If the nation is Post Renaissance, expect pike and shot style IRL analogue armies.
*[[Orc]]s: Orcs would probably love guns if they could actually build some. However, they're usually either incapable of building things or have a hard time organizing themselves to the point that large-scale firearm and powder production is possible. Even so, they could still obtain them them by other means such as fighting as mercenaries for guns and stealing them off the corpses of the fallen and similar. They are higher on the list if they are more like Tolkienian orcs, which can be fairly well organized and "delight in explosions" enough to manufacture their own gunpowder, if only for simple bombs. If Orcs are of the more Chaotic Evil variety then they will barely have crossbows, let alone guns. If Orcs are of the Klingon variety, as in the violent tendencies are normal enough that the civilization can function, then they will LOVE big guns.
*[[Elves]]: Being arrogant pricks, they see guns as crude, inaccurate, foul-smelling contraptions that are no substitute for a bow. However, they'll still use them when necessary, even if they don't like it. That said, elves also had a good reason to not use them, namely most firearms in a fantasy settling are arquebus-type single-shot smoothbore weapons, which are outranged by longbows. Longbows are even decent against most kinds of armor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt ask the French]). The main advantage of firearms, even early ones, is ease of use and armor penetration though armor could be made that could stop an early handgun. The main problem with longbows is that it takes years to learn, which is not a problem for long-lived elves. Between a smoothbore handgun and a longbow, the bow is simply a better choice to an elf. The problem of course is that longbows are about as good as bow technology can get while handguns can be improved to rifles, against which bows only have rate of fire as an advantage, then Repeating Rifles, which bows have no advantage at all against. So while Elves may have an advantage to sticking with there longbows well into the age of pike and shot, if they're not careful their Longbows will end up fighting against Springfields and Winchesters and they will end up the worse in that exchange. If tech reaches that point, expect the Archer/Hunter stereotype to turn into Snipers.
*Wood Elves and other Fey/Nature types: They'd rather die than use a firearm, even if the rest of the world has moved onto biplanes, bolt-action rifles, shell-firing cannons, and tanks. If this happens, this means they either have powerful magic (so the actual weapons used are unimportant), they are ''really really'' good shots with a bow, they have much stronger friends (Think like the amish) or they're about to die out. That said: the problem they have are not guns themselves, but making them as mass production always has some environmental costs they can not stand for. If they could get there hands on some way to make guns that did not harm the environment in the process, at least anymore then making a sword does they might go small for small scale fire arm production, but this is rarely explored in fiction.

For how this conservative attitude tends to apply to tech in general for fantasy settings, see [[Medieval Stasis]].

Of course, sci-fi writers almost exclusively use firearms, seeing as how it's THE FUUUUUUTTTTTUUUUURRRREEEE. The exceptions are [[Warhammer 40,000]] and ''[[Dune]]'': although guns are the main combat implement in 40K, close combat is still alive and well, and most armies have at least one elite, close-combat unit wielding weapons that are distinctly not firearms; in ''Dune'', guns are pretty much dead as a weapon of war, as personal-scale force fields stop fast-moving matter (like bullets) from crossing them, but slower matter (like swung knives) can pass through, and if a lasgun blast touches the field, at least one end of the equation comes out "BOOM!!!". Most sci-fi universes do have close combat weapons on the scale we see in modern warfare, though, like in Mass Effect, where, as the Reaper forces (who are basically [[Necron]]s and [[Tyranids]] combined) invade the galaxy, people begin developing their Omnitools to snap-produce a white-hot blade of hard metal above the wearer's hand... And then there's the Krogan, who are too bloodthirsty and too large to properly take cover, so they headbutt things instead of using guns.

== Rules ==

Most fantasy RPGs deal with firearms the way they deal with lots of things that threaten their [[Medieval Stasis]]: terror, suspicion, and shitty rules. If you have the option of using a firearm in most games, it probably has one shot that's weaker than a bow, then takes an entire encounter to reload, and is illegal everywhere in-setting in case you didn't get the hint.

[[D&D#Basic_Dungeons_&_Dragons|BECMI]] Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have rules for firearms, but there were one or two adventure modules that incorporated a crash-landed spaceship, with weapons the players could loot. They were treated as magic wands and staves. A few issues of Dragon magazine offered rules for early cannons and hand cannons.

[[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] mentions guns in a tucked-away subsection on importing TSR's Cowboys & Indians game Boot Hill to AD&D (DMG, pg113). Revolver pistols and Gatling guns would do as much damage as a longsword; shotguns as much damage as a two-handed claymore, a (thrown) stick of dynamite does 4x the damage of a short sword. The rules insist "...when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk, ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it." To reinforce this concept, the ''Manual of the Planes'' included rules for factors of prime material planes, one of which determined if complex (read: setting destroying) chemical compositions like blackpowder would even work in said plane. If you have any knowledge of chemistry, you may cry now. Notably, [[Greyhawk]] had a [[Murlynd|god of firearms]], and his paladins were basically Wild West sheriffs.

[[Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#AD.26D_2nd_Edition|Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition]] included the arquebus in the Players Handbook, where they were depicted as slow, powerful and expensive (500 Gp!). They were also potentially dangerous to the user as the result of a bad roll. It was painfully stressed that the inclusion of firearms in the campaign was the call of the DM. Firearms were a bit more common in the [[Spelljammer]] setting. Moving away from the classic fantasy background, there was the historical campaign sourcebook ''A Mighty Fortress'' that introduced rules for firearms of the 16th and 17th centuries and the ''Masque of the Red Death'' setting for [[Ravenloft]] pushed everything into a gothic horror version of the 1890's.

[[Dungeons_&_Dragons_3rd_Edition|D&D third edition]] has a section on advanced technology (DMG, pp162-164) for Renaissance-era, 20th century, and futuristic weapons. The weapons are more powerful than what can be found among ranged weapons in the Player's Handbook, but also heavier and more expensive. You're better off with magic crossbows.

[[Pathfinder]] greatly over complicates guns: they have shorter range than bows without magical items, take longer to reload, and have at least a 1/20 chance to break or explode every time you fire it, and use up more expensive ammunition. As though this wasn't enough, they have a stiff feat tax needed to make use of them and the fact that there's really only one major gun factory in the land, the Gunworks of the small nation of Alkenstar, and they keep most of their guns to themselves. In return they hit harder, have a ''terrifying'' 4x crit modifier, and ''use touch AC'' in the first range increment, effectively ignoring armor when fired close up. A specialized class, the [[gunslinger]], is centered around the use of firearms. [[Lasgun|Energy weapon]] specialists in Iron Gods have it a bit better, though ammo is limited for most of the adventure.

[[Dragonmech]] has guns, sort of kinda, as well. Only instead of using gunpowder, they use steam to propel the bullet like an airsoft gun. they can only be fired once every other round as the pressure needs to build up. There Treated a bit like crossbows that do more damage and can shoot a little further.

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] includes a section on firearms in the ''Dungeon Master's Guide''. They hark back to 2nd edition in terms of stats, fitting the general tone of the game, but aren't quite as punishing for a player to learn to use and make. And with the increased emphasis on houseruling and homebrewing, modding the Crossbow Expert feat to work for them seems a simple leap of logic. The "race builder" guide in the back even suggests changing around the dwarf weapon proficiencies to include them! Furthermore, if you want to get your [[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks]] on, it includes some futuristic guns as well, like lasers and disintegrators.

[[Warhammer Fantasy]] features firearms based on early real-world equivalents, like flintlock pistols, musket rifles and the blunderbuss. Although deadly and still on the experimental side, they're also considered very unreliable and are prone to misfire and sometimes even to explode. Rpg-wise, firearms were already included in the core rulebook of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition, but were later somewhat expanded in the Old World Armoury supplement. Some variations that function like firearms were also added as weapons to some Skaven classes in the Old World Bestiary supplement. Generally speaking, firearms require more costs in order to be used, as each shot requires a firearm shot (bullet) and additional gunpowder. Except for the obvious disadvantages of becoming useless once getting wet and longer reloading times, firearms deal more damage than bows and crossbows, with more complex models even having a repeater function, but obviously longer reloading times for each barrel to be loaded again.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}