Rifle

[1][2][3] In keeping with their focus on accuracy,[4] rifles are typically designed to be held with both hands and braced firmly against the shooter's shoulder via a buttstock for stability during shooting.

The invention of rifling separated such firearms from the earlier smoothbore weapons (e.g., arquebuses, muskets, and other long guns), 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.

Like all typical firearms, a rifle's projectile (bullet) is propelled by the contained deflagration of a combustible propellant compound (originally black powder and now nitrocellulose and other smokeless powders), 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 (plinking).

Rifles, with their relatively lighter components (which overheat quickly) 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.

[5][6] 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.

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 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.

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.

Taking advantage of the rifle's improved accuracy, Morgan's sharpshooters picked off cannoneers and officers, reducing the impact of enemy artillery.

In the later part of the 19th century, rifles were generally single-shot, breech-loading guns, designed for aimed, discretionary fire by individual soldiers.

Individual shots were unlikely to hit, but a platoon firing repeatedly could produce a 'beaten ground' effect similar to light artillery or machine guns.

[citation needed] In Central Asia, Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Tadjiks in the course of the 19th century adopted a form of large-calibre rifle: the karamultuk [ru] or karamultyk.

The innovation was shortly followed by the mass adoption of breech-loading weapons, as it was not practical to push an overbore bullet down through a rifled barrel.

In 1826 Henri-Gustave Delvigne, a French infantry officer, invented a breech with abrupt shoulders on which a spherical bullet was rammed down until it caught the rifling grooves.

[21] Soon after, Louis-Etienne de Thouvenin invented the Carabine à tige, which had a stem at the bottom of the barrel that would deform and expand the base of the bullet when rammed, therefore enabling accurate contact with the rifling.

The expanding skirt of the Minié ball also solved the problem that earlier tight-fitting bullets were difficult to load as black powder residue fouled the inside of the barrel.

Minié system rifles, notably the U.S. Springfield and the British Enfield of the early 1860s featured prominently in the U.S. Civil War of 1861-1865, due to their enhanced power and accuracy.

The higher accuracy and range, combined with reduced vulnerability generally benefited defense, while making the traditional battle between lines of standing and volleying infantrymen obsolete.

[citation needed] The mid-century drive for increased rates of fire led to the development of the first repeating rifles, a type of breechloader that can load multiple cartridges ahead of time to be stored on the weapon itself.

[25] In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, military observers from Europe and the United States witnessed a major conflict fought with high velocity bolt-action rifles firing smokeless powder.

Today, an infantryman's rifle is optimized for ranges of 300 m or less, and soldiers are trained to deliver individual rounds or bursts of fire within these distances.

[29] It was created by a Canadian only known by the pseudonym "Matthew" who told The Verge that he was in his late 20s, and his main job was making tools for the construction industry.

Modern ammunition has a hardened lead core with a softer outer cladding or jacket, typically of an alloy of copper and nickel – cupro-nickel.

During the 18th century, breech-loading weapons were designed, which allowed the rifleman to reload while under cover, but defects in manufacturing and the difficulty in forming a reliable gas-tight seal prevented widespread adoption.

During the 19th century, multi-shot repeating rifles using lever, pump or linear bolt actions became standard, further increasing the rate of fire and minimizing the fuss involved in loading a firearm.

[34] The record for the longest confirmed kill shot stands at 3,540 m (11,610 ft), set by an unnamed soldier with Canada's elite special operations unit Joint Task Force 2 using a McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle.

Weapons designers and strategists realized that service rifles firing smaller-caliber projectiles would allow troops to carry far more ammunition for the same weight.

The lower recoil and more generous magazine capacities of small-caliber weapons also allow troops a much greater volume of fire, compared to historical battle rifles.