Whois & Analysis for smith-wesson.com

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.

Manufacturing is the value added to production of merchandise for use or sale using labour and machines, tools, chemical and biological processing, or formulation.

The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale.

Such finished goods may be sold to other manufacturers for the production of other, more complex products, such as aircraft, household appliances or automobiles, or sold to wholesalers, who in turn sell them to retailers, who then sell them to end users and consumers.

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 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 market is one of the many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange.

While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services (including labor) in exchange for money from buyers.

It can be said that a market is the process by which the prices of goods and services are established.

Markets facilitate trade and enable the distribution and allocation of resources in a society.

Markets allow any trade-able item to be evaluated and priced.

A market emerges more or less spontaneously or may be constructed deliberately by human interaction in order to enable the exchange of rights (cf.

ownership) of services and goods.

Markets generally supplant gift economies and are often held in place through rules and customs, such as a booth fee, competitive pricing, source of goods for sale (local produce or stock registration), and the threat of military or police force if these rules are broken.