Whois & Analysis for guns.com

A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug.

Shotguns come in a wide variety of sizes, ranging from 5.5 mm (22 inch) bore up to bore, and in a range of firearm operating mechanisms, including breech loading, single-barreled, double or combination gun, pump-action, bolt-, and lever-action, semi-automatic, and even fully automatic variants.

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves ("rifling") cut into the barrel walls.

The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile (for small arms usage, called a bullet), imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the orientation of the weapon.

When the projectile leaves the barrel, this spin lends gyroscopic stability to the projectile and prevents tumbling, in the same way that a properly thrown American football or rugby ball behaves.

This allows the use of aerodynamically-efficient bullets (as opposed to the spherical balls used in muskets) and thus improves range and accuracy.

The word "rifle" originally referred to the grooving, and a rifle was called a "rifled gun." The word "rifle" is now used for any long hand-held aimed device activated by a trigger, such as Air rifles and the Personnel halting and stimulation response rifle.

Rifles are used in warfare, hunting and shooting sports.

A handgun is a firearm designed to be , in either one or both hands.

This characteristic differentiates handguns as a general class of firearms from long guns such as rifles and shotguns (which usually can be braced against the shoulder).

A firearm is a portable gun - a barreled weapon that launches one or more projectiles, often driven by the action of an explosive force.

The first primitive firearms originated in 13th-century China when the one-person-portable fire lance was combined with projectiles.

The technology gradually spread through the rest of East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and then into Europe.

Older firearms typically used black powder as a propellant, but modern firearms use smokeless powder or other propellants.

Most modern firearms (with the notable exception of smoothbore shotguns) have rifled barrels to impart spin to the projectile for improved flight stability.