Rifle
A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, distinguished by having a barrel cut with a helical or spiralling pattern of grooves. Most rifles are designed to be held with both hands and braced against the shoulder via a buttstock for stability. Rifles are used in warfare, law enforcement, hunting and target shooting sports.
The invention of rifling separated such firearms from the earlier smoothbore weapons, greatly elevating their accuracy and general effectiveness. The raised areas of a barrel's rifling are called lands; they make contact with and exert torque on the projectile as it moves down the bore, imparting a spin. When the projectile leaves the barrel, this spin persists and lends gyroscopic stability to the projectile due to conservation of angular momentum, increasing accuracy and hence effective range. The class of firearm was originally termed the rifled gun, with the verb to rifle referring to the early modern machining process of creating grooves with cutting tools.
Like all typical firearms, a rifle's projectile is propelled by the contained deflagration of a combustible propellant compound, although other propulsive means are used, such as compressed air in air rifles, which are popular for vermin control, small game hunting, competitive target shooting and casual sport shooting.
Terminology
Historically, rifles only fired a single projectile with each squeeze of the trigger. Modern rifles are commonly classified as single-shot, bolt-action, semi-automatic, or automatic. Single-shot, bolt-action, and semi-automatic rifles are limited by their designs to fire a single shot for each trigger pull. Only automatic rifles are capable of firing more than one round per trigger squeeze; however, some automatic rifles are limited to fixed bursts of two, three, or more rounds per squeeze.Modern automatic rifles overlap to some extent in design and function with machine guns. In fact, many light machine guns are adaptations of existing automatic rifle designs, such as the RPK and M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle. A military's light machine guns are typically chambered for the same caliber ammunition as its service rifles. Generally, the difference between an automatic rifle and a machine gun comes down to weight, cooling system, and ammunition feed system. Rifles, with their relatively lighter components and smaller capacity magazines, are incapable of sustained automatic fire in the way that machine guns are; they trade this capability in favor of increased mobility. Modern military rifles are fed by magazines, while machine guns are generally belt-fed. Many machine guns allow the operator to quickly exchange barrels in order to prevent overheating, whereas rifles generally do not. Most machine guns fire from an open bolt in order to reduce the danger of "cook-off", while almost all rifles fire from a closed bolt for accuracy. Machine guns are often crewed by more than one soldier; the rifle is an individual weapon.
The term "rifle" is sometimes used to describe larger rifled crew-served weapons firing explosive shells, for example, recoilless rifles and naval rifles.
In many works of fiction "rifle" refers to any weapon that has a stock and is shouldered before firing, even if the weapon is not rifled or does not fire solid projectiles.
Historical overview
The origins of rifling are difficult to trace, but some of the earliest European experiments seem to have been carried out during the 15th century. Archers had long realized that a twist added to the tail feathers of their arrows gave them greater accuracy. Early muskets produced large quantities of smoke and soot, which had to be cleaned from the action and bore of the musket frequently, either through the action of repeated bore scrubbing, or a deliberate attempt to create "soot grooves" that would allow for more shots to be fired from the firearm.Some of the earliest examples of European grooved gun barrels were reportedly manufactured during 1440, and further developed by Gaspard Kollner of Vienna, although other scholars allege they were a joint effort between Kollner and Augustus Kotter of Nuremberg. Military commanders preferred smoothbore weapons for infantry use because rifles were much more prone to problems due to powder fouling the barrel and because they took longer to reload and fire than muskets.
Rifles were created as an improvement in the accuracy of smoothbore muskets. In the early 18th century, Benjamin Robins, an English mathematician, realized that an elongated bullet would retain the momentum and kinetic energy of a musket ball, but would slice through the air with greater ease. The black powder used in early muzzle-loading rifles quickly fouled the barrel, making loading slower and more difficult. The greater range of the rifle was considered to be of little practical use since the smoke from black powder quickly obscured the battlefield and made it almost impossible to aim the weapon from a distance. Since musketeers could not afford to take the time to stop and clean their barrels in the middle of a battle, rifles were limited to use by sharpshooters and non-military uses like hunting.
Muskets were smoothbore, large caliber weapons using spherical ammunition fired at relatively low velocity. Due to the high cost and great difficulty of precision manufacturing, and the need to load readily from the muzzle, the musket ball was a loose fit in the barrel. Consequently, on firing the ball bounced off the sides of the barrel when fired and the final direction on leaving the muzzle was unpredictable.
The performance of early muskets defined the style of warfare at the time. Due to the lack of accuracy, soldiers were deployed in long lines to fire at the opposing forces. Precise aim was thus not necessary to hit an opponent. Muskets were used for comparatively rapid, imprecisely aimed volley fire, and the average soldier could be easily trained to use them.
In the Province of Pennsylvania, British America, one of the most successful early rifles, the long rifle, was developed over the course of the 18th century. Compared to the more common Brown Bess, these Pennsylvania and Kentucky rifles had a tighter bore with no space between bullet and barrel, and still used balls instead of conical bullets. The balls the long rifle used were smaller, allowing the production of more rounds for a given amount of lead. These rifles also had longer barrels, allowing more accuracy, which were rifled with a helical groove. These first started appearing sometime before 1740, one early example being made by Jacob Dickert, a German immigrant. By 1750 there were a number of such manufacturers in the area. The longer barrel was a departure by local gunsmiths from their German roots, allowing bullets to achieve a higher speed before emerging from the barrel.
During the 1700s, colonial settlers, particularly those immigrating from Germany and Switzerland, adapted and improved upon their European rifles. The improved long rifles were used for precise shooting, aiming, and firing at individual targets, instead of the musket's use for imprecise fire. During the American Revolution, the colonist troops favoured these more accurate rifles while their use was resisted by the British and Hessian troops.
File:Henry_Rifle.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|A Henry rifle, the first successful lever action repeating rifle
By the time of the American Revolutionary War, these rifles were commonly used by frontiersmen, and Congress authorized the establishment of ten companies of riflemen. One of the most critical units was Morgan's Riflemen, led by Daniel Morgan. This sharpshooting unit eventually proved itself integral to the Battle of Saratoga, and in the southern states where General Morgan commanded as well. Taking advantage of the rifle's improved accuracy, Morgan's sharpshooters picked off cannoneers and officers, reducing the impact of enemy artillery. This kind of advantage was considered pivotal in many battles, such as the battles of Cowpens, Saratoga, and King's Mountain.
Later during the Napoleonic Wars, the British 95th Regiment and 60th Regiment,, as well as sharpshooters and riflemen during the War of 1812, used the rifle to great effect during skirmishing. Because of a slower loading time than a musket, they were not adopted by the whole army. Since rifles were used by sharpshooters who did not routinely fire over other men's shoulders, long length was not required to avoid the forward line. A shorter length made a handier weapon in which tight-fitting balls did not have to be rammed so far down the barrel.
The invention of the Minié ball in the 1840s solved the slow loading problem, and in the 1850s and 1860s rifles quickly replaced muskets on the battlefield. Many rifles, often referred to as rifled muskets, were very similar to the muskets they replaced, but the military also experimented with other designs. Breech-loading weapons proved to have a much faster rate of fire than muzzleloaders, causing military forces to abandon muzzle loaders in favor of breech-loading designs in the late 1860s. In the later part of the 19th century, rifles were generally single-shot, breech-loading guns, designed for aimed, discretionary fire by individual soldiers. Then, as now, rifles had a stock, either fixed or folding, to be braced against the shoulder when firing.
The adoption of cartridges and breech-loading in the 19th century was concurrent with the general adoption of rifles. In the early part of the 20th century, soldiers were trained to shoot accurately over long ranges with high-powered cartridges. World War I Lee–Enfield rifles were equipped with long-range 'volley sights' for massed firing at ranges of up to. Individual shots were unlikely to hit, but a platoon firing repeatedly could produce a 'beaten ground' effect similar to light artillery or machine guns.
Currently, rifles are the most common firearm in general use for hunting. Rifles derived from military designs have long been popular with civilian shooters.