Whois & Analysis for winchester.com

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 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.

Ammunition (noun, commonly shortened to ammo) is the general term used for the material fired, scattered, dropped or detonated from any weapon.

The term ammunition can be traced back to the mid 17th century.

Broadly speaking, ammunition refers to both expendable weapons (e.g. bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines, naval mines and anti-personnel mines) and the component parts of other weapons that create the effect on a target (e.g. bullets and warheads).

Nearly all weapons will require some form of ammunition to operate.

The word comes from the French la munition, which refers to the material used for war.

The terms ammunition and munitions are often used interchangeably, although the term munition now usually refers to both the actual weapons system alongside the ammunition required to operate it.

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.

Hunting is the practice of killing or trapping animals, or pursuing or tracking them with the intent of doing so.

Hunting wildlife or feral animals is most commonly done by humans for food, recreation, to remove predators that are dangerous to humans or domestic animals, or for trade.

Lawful hunting is distinguished from poaching, which is the illegal killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species.

The species that are hunted are referred to as game or prey and are usually mammals and birds.