I suppose I could google this, but I trust you guys more than I trust random searches on the intertubes.
I have no knowledge of guns at all, and have a few questions:
In a recent thread on “fully automatic” weapons, there was a reference to “semi automatics”. What are those? I think I understand the machine-gun idea, that when you hold the trigger it will continue to fire until you release the trigger or it runs out of bullets. But “semi-automatic”? I’m confused.
Some crime novels I read refer to those handguns where they pull a slide type thing after inserting what they call a “clip”. The clip holds the bullets, right? And pulling the slide primes the gun for firing by placing a cartridge in the chamber, or whatever it’s called. Am I correct? If you decide you don’t want to shoot, how do you make the gun safe again?
Folks mentioned handguns “jamming”. All I take from this is that for some reason, the gun screws up and can’t fire. But what actually happens? Is this a common problem?
Oh, and finally, a silly (well, sillier) question: in movies, guys keep stuffing guns down the back of their jeans. Doesn’t that carry a real risk of shooting one’s own ass off? Could a gun fire accidentally in these circumstances?
My gunsmithing knowledge and terminology are not awe-inspiring, but here’s a rough answer.
Semi-automatic means a subsequent shot can be fired by pulling the trigger a second time and doing nothing else (as distinguished from a bolt-action rifle, such as you might see soldiers firing in old war movies – they had to pull up and back on a bolt/lever to eject a spent shell and chamber the next shell).
If you hold down the trigger of a semi, you will not get continuous fire as you will on a full-auto gun.
Your references to a clip were probably references to a semi-automatic handgun. Ammunition is loaded into a spring-equipped rectangular clip that is then inserted into the gun (into the part you hold). Then, you pull back on the slide (which is on top of the barrel) to chamber a round into position in front of the hammer (pulling back on the slide also cocks the hammer).
To “make the gun safe again,” you could do several things. You could disengage (uncock) the hammer. Then you might pull the clip out. Finally (important!), you’d pull the slide back to eject any round already chambered.
Semi-auto pistols have the nice feature that they use the pressure of the exhaust gas from one round firing to push the slide back, eject the spent shell from the side of the gun, and chamber the next round (very clever).
Some guns “jam” more often than others due to questionable design. It can also happen with crappy ammo. A jam is basically one of a couple of things. You may have put the ammo in crooked, or maybe your clip is a bit bent or something, so that the spring pushes the next round up at an angle that is a little bit off and keeps it from slotting nicely into the chamber when it’s next in the queue. There are a couple of curvy flange-like portions at the top of your clip that are meant to retain the rounds but then release them one at a time when it’s their turn to be chambered. Sometimes they don’t quite release them. Or maybe the previous shell (for similar reasons) wasn’t properly ejected after firing.
www.newsoftheweird.com will show you plenty of examples of criminals shooting off their asses and worse. But if the safety is on and the hammer not back, I’d say there’s comparatively little risk.
Semi-automatic basically means that you can pull the trigger multiple times and shoot right away each time. Many guns aren’t like that. You have to cycle many guns by working a mechanism by hand and there are single shot rifles that have to be loaded by hand after every shot.
The media is notorious for calling semi-automatic weapons automatic weapons and that is simply false. Automatic weapons are machine guns and they are both extremely rare and well regulated.
Jamming is caused by either bad gun design or faulty ammunition. If you have a semi-automatic weapon with ten rounds available, you should be able to pull the trigger ten times and have it work each time. A jam means that you fire a shot and you can’t fire again until you fix the problem usually by manually removing the problem cartridge.
A clip simply holds bullets and it plugs into the gun like an ink cartridge plugs into a printer. You can have multiple clips that you can exchange out with new cartridges if you need to.
I have no idea why you would put a gun in your back pocket. That is stupidity beyond the gangster hold of holding a gun sideways to shoot. Putting it almost anywhere else would be better than that. A belt holster is more traditional.
The cool thing about the semi-automatic handgun design is that pulling the slide both chambers a new round from the magazine, and also ejects the cartridge from the round you just fired. If there’s no round already in the chamber, then you have to pull the slide back to get one in there. When you fire that round, the explosive reaction from the cartridge fires the bullet and also actuates the slide, ejecting the cartridge off to the side, and loading the next round, and cocking the hammer. You’re then immediately ready to fire again with another trigger pull.
If you chamber a round and then decide not to fire, you usually have to eject the magazine, then pull the slide to eject the unspent cartridge from the chamber.
Fires a shot every time you pull the trigger and automatically chambers another round. One shot each time. Most guns are semi-automatic. Heck, even my revolver will do this.
The silliness comes when people who don’t know jack about guns drop the “semi” part and rail about these “automatics”.
Correct. The clip holds the rounds and you put one in the chamber (prepare it to be fired) by closing the slide. Generally, this means pulling it slightly backwards when it is open (the position it remains in after the gun is empty) so that the catch releases and it slides forward.
Most guns have a “safety”, which prevents the gun from firing by preventing the hammer (firing pin striker) from moving, or something similar.
The ‘FAIL’ in the movies and on TV is where someone simply removes the clip and the gun is ‘unloaded’. No, Sorry, there is still a round in the chamber. If you carry a weapon, you don’t carry it around without a round already chambered, because you aren’t going to have time (and the clarity of mind) to chamber a round when you’re in enough danger to cause you to draw your weapon.
Heck, enough people do this in real life, then shoot themselves or someone else by being STUPID in handling what they think is an empty weapon. One of the primary rules of firearms is that you ALWAYS treat every gun as if it is loaded, even when you are certain that it is not.
Can be several things. The round fails to fire (the primer doesn’t ignite), in which there is still a live round in the chamber but the gun is no longer “cocked” and ready to fire (in some weapons), or the round literally jams in the mechanism and fails to be ejected, or any number of minor malfunctions. This can be a common problem or not, depending on the weapon and the ammo. When I worked Armored, I didn’t carry my .40, because it has a bad habit of failing to completely eject rounds, and then the slide comes back on the not-completely-ejected empty shell, failing to chamber the new round. Since the only time I would ever be firing my weapon was if my life was on the line, I didn’t want to risk that problem occurring at the worst possible moment. Instead, I carried my 9mm (Cue harassment from some of my size-ist co-workers who sneer at 9mm’s), because in 18 years, it had NEVER malfunctioned. Ever.
Yup, they’re morons. I love a film they showed us in our CCW class at Loomis. This ‘elite cop’ showing his weapon to a bunch of elementary school students, talking about how well trained he is and how well he handles his weapon. Then he shoves it in his pants and shoots himself in the leg. Dumbass.
A CLIP is a device that is used to store multiple rounds of ammunition together as a unit, ready for insertion into the magazine of a repeating firearm. This speeds up the process of loading the firearm as several rounds can be loaded at once, rather than one round being loaded at a time. Several different types of clips exist, most of which are made of inexpensive metal stampings that are designed to be disposable, though they are often re-used.
A MAGAZINE (also called a mag or, commonly but incorrectly, especially when removable, a clip) is an ammunition storage and feeding device within or attached to a firearm. Magazines may be integral to the firearm (fixed) or removable (detachable).
Nitpick Off!
Additional reasons for a jam: magazine not fully seated, round not fully ejected and can “stovepipe”, which means it sticks out the top of the ejector port and deoesn’t allow the new round to chamber.
Yet it’s common to distinguish between a revolver (where movement of the trigger rotates a fresh round into position for firing) and a semi-automatic (where combustion gas from the previous round does the work of ejecting the case and chambering a fresh round).
True enough, but some of the less well educated demonize mechanical semi-automatics as being so much “worse” than revolvers, when in fact there is little difference in effect.
What everyone has said so far, with a few nitpicks:
The type of handgun that is not a revolver was originally referred to as an “automatic”, in the sense that the process of ejecting a spent casing and loading another round was done by the gun’s own action, not by manually working a bolt, lever, or pump action. As said upthread, automatic is now reserved for weapons that can continually fire as long as the trigger is held down, with single shot non-revolver firearms being referred to as semiautomatics. To be fair, I’ve even seen gun class instructors lapse into the older phrasing.
Purists insist that a “clip” is an external device for loading ammunition into a gun, with the part that holds the bullets* that you put into a semiautomatic or automatic is a magazine, or detachable magazine. The confusion may have started with the fact that the M1 Garand, the semiautomatic rifle that was standard American issue during World War 2, required that the clip stay attached in order to fire the rifle. Again, it’s become almost accepted usage through sheer repetition. (On preview: what GaryM said.)
*Purists also insist that a “bullet” is the piece of lead that shoots out of the barrel when you fire the gun; the complete assembly of bullet, propellent, primer, and casing being a “cartridge”.
Regarding making a gun safe: This depends on the make and model of the gun, since semiautomatic gun design has evolved over the years: Originally, most guns had the potential to accidently go off if a round was under the hammer, since any jolt on the hammer could push the firing pin into the prmer at the base of the cartridge. Nowadays, almost all guns have a safety feature that won’t allow the firing pin to reach the catridge primer unless the trigger has actually been pulled. So it’s reasonably safe to carry a semiautomatic gun with a round chambered. If the hammer has been previously cocked however, you do want to decock it either manually or else some guns will decock when the safety is put on.
Jamming: aside from the occasional accidental misfeed, semiautomatic guns can overheat and jam if fired too much too quickly (though we’re talking “firefight with multiple reloads” here), or if they’re improperly maintained and the moving parts are dirty, insufficiently oiled or gummed up with old oil.
I think this is a reasonable distinction to make, to differentiate modern ammunition from the older stuff. In muskets and old-tymey rifles and so forth, the bullet (or ball) was just a chunk of lead, and the propellant and primer had to be loaded separately. The idea to combine all the pieces into an interchangeable cartridge was an important technological development which made revolvers, the gatling-gun, and later machine-guns and semi-automatic handguns possible.
I’m also not that familiar with guns, and curious. Is it actually foolish to hold the gun sideways to shoot it?
Are there dire consequences for firing a gun sideways?
Or is it just stupid because it LOOKS dumb, and you were just using the example to make a point.
My experience has shown it’s effective for getting hot brass thrown back into your face, and not so much for lining up the sights for stuff like actually hitting your target.
I guess I use the word “bullet” in a colloquial sense. I realise that there is more to a round of ammunition than just the projectile, but I suppose that non-gun people like me tend to use the word “bullet” to mean “the thing that guns fire”.
So, from what I’ve read here, we could put cartridges (or shells, is there a difference?) into a clip. Lumpy suggests that a “clip” should be detachable - does that mean that we load bullets into a clip, connect it to the gun and then remove the clip prior to firing? So the thing that gets stuffed into the handle (um, sorry, I know that’s not a technical term) of a handgun should more properly be called a “magazine”.
Final silly question for now: if a gun gets wet, will it still work? That is, I keep seeing movies (Bond movies, mainly, even I’m not naive enough to take those seriously) where folks go underwater diving with machine guns, then pull them out of the water and fire them. Is this realistic?
Here’s what I’ve gathered, mainly from SDMB posts. My knowledge is zero, so this is more a request for info than a GQ answer.
When a gun is fired, it pushes back. Think about this: if you hold your arm out straight with your hand perpendicular to the ground, your arm will bend at the elbow and move up. Try it: hold your arm out that way and push pack on your hand.
Now imagine your hand is held parallel to the ground, so the gun is on its side. What does the recoil force do now? Well, if the gun is in your right hand, your elbow will bend to the left. Perhaps that could be a problem if you needed to aim and fire a subsequent shot.
Someone once told me that one should use both hands to hold a handgun.
A modern gun will work when wet, because gunpowder contains its own oxidizer, so it doesn’t require air to ignite. That said, a bullet will slow down very, very quickly underwater, and isn’t likely to do any damage beyond a few feet away.
A number of means for operating automatic (and semi-automatic) guns have been devised and are used in current production weapons. You have discribed only one of them.
Most mid and high powered semi-automatic RIFLES do use the (so called “gas operated”) operating principal you have discribed. There are a few rifles that come in “handgun” versions that are gas operated. Quotes on handgun because these are really just rifles with a short barrel and no buttstock. These are quite bulky and not what most people mean when they think of a handgun. Here is an example.
Gas operated guns need significant barrel length in order for the pressure to drop to safe levels for use in operating the action. Few “true” pistols have enough length to make this system practical.
Instead, most higher powered (semi) automatic handguns use the recoil, rather than gas pressure, to operate their action.
Most .22 cal, .25 cal (actually ALL that I know of) and many .32 and .380 ACP pistols * (very low powered pistols) use a “blowback” system that is driven by gas pressure, (acting through the cartridge case) though these are not refered to a “gas operated”. Blowback operation is also common for .45 ACP and 9mm “sub-machineguns”, which often do not have a butstock, and so might be classed as “handguns” by some.
It is true that a component of recoil IS due to the high velocity gas behind the bullet acting as a rocket engine. In order to reduce this, so called “compensators” or “muzzle brakes” have been designed which reduce and in some cases reverse this effect, yet recoil operated pistols still function reliably with such devices fitted. Thus we can conclude that it is the reaction due to accelerating the bullet that powers these guns’ action.
*Kel-tec, Colt, and now Ruger make recoil operated guns in.32, .380, or both.
Thinking about some comments Kevbo made above, it does strike me that I don’t really understand calibre. It has something to do with the diameter/cross-section of the bullet, I guess.
Well, this is purely hypothetical (I’m returning to the UK soon, getting a gun is not high on my list of priorities, nor even legal there) but suppose I wanted a gun for basic self-defence purposes. What would I need? I’d want to drop an intruder in my house. Killing him wouldn’t be a priority, I’d just need to make sure he no longer represented a threat to me or my family. Could a little guy like me (5’7’’, 110lbs) handle a gun that would do the job? Or would I find it impossible to manage a useful gun given my slight stature - I’ve been told that recoil and so on is physically demanding.
I restate: I have no real interest in owning a gun, but I am fascinated by machines of all types. I just like to know how things work.
There are a lot of reasons for not firing a gun sideways. First and foremost is that the sights are on the top of the gun. Aiming a gun really does require the ability to see where the barrel is pointed, and you really don’t know where that is unless you have some sort of visual evidence.
Secondly, your arm will swing much more if you don’t have gravity helping you to keep the gun in place. I think most people are a little surprised by the weight (and therefore stabilizing force) of a .45 with 10 bullets in the magazine. The kick of a gun will wrench your arm a lot further if it’s yanking it to the side, instead of fighting its own weight to go upwards.
Not a nitpick but back when the mauser broom handle and the 1911 came out, most revolvers were single action rather than double action so after firing a round in a wheel gun you would have to re-cock the weapon to fire another one ,where the 1911 would have seen to have been automatic.
