Johnny: I think you’re right about that cartridge being designed for but never using black powder. Similarly, the .38 Special case (which originally DID use black powder) is much larger than the ballistically comparable 9mm Parabellum. The poor .357 Magnum is huge (and the .357 Maximum even huger!) compared to my ballistically comparable 10mm (my biggest calibre) just so it wouldn’t blow up .38 revolvers.
Occurs to me that the OP actually asks about size of gun, not ahem the size of the load you shoot… I suppose my boat-anchor S&W 1006 (39 ounces empty!) counts as my largest handgun. Anyone got a .50 Desert Eagle? My big and beefy Mossberg 590 is the largest long arm I’ve got, although it’s no match for any freakin’ coastal defense weapons. Gotta admit to a wee bit of barrel envy over Rodd Hill’s collection.
Sure, I’m all for moderation – as long as it’s not excessive.
Shotgun and rifle sizes don’t officially “max out” anywhere; if you’re rich and guns are legal where you live, in most places you can have either built basically as large as you want. Once or twice a year there’s stories in most gun magazines about somebody else making another “monster” African game rifle; the last one I saw was .800 “Nitro Express” : in other words, the whole thing was custom, so the guy could pretty much call it anything he wanted. The gun, the bullets and the cases/cartridges all have to be custom-made. They don’t have much more power though; few handheld recoiling rifles exceed the .50 BMG (13,000 ft/lbs energy); there’s a Russian 14 mm round that’s a bit stronger than that, but military bullets tend to be long and thin and (in this case) you want a game round to be short and squat. Most African hunting rifles have much less power that that, especially when you consider that the owner usually wants some twisty grained, very pretty but quite weak piece of timber for a stock. -And the huge calibers start to sound pretty wussy after you learn that 60-80 years ago they went after everything with H&H .375’s.
Shotguns also used to be huge: once upon a time in Britain there were punt guns; they had local names in other European countries also. What this was, was a shotgun caliber measured in inches, like say, 1.5 inches across, or 1.75 inches across. (A 12 gauge is a bit less than .75 inch; a 10 gauge is a bit more than .75 inch) These were used for harvesting waterfowl and so tended to look pretty plain; the few I’ve seen info on were all muzzle-loaders. Due to increasing British firearm regulations (now a total ban, methinks) functional examples in the hands of ordinary people are now very rare. They were only fired from the prone position; any other way was too hard. The shooter would lie a distance away and another person would drive a group of ducks or other birds into the air. Bringing down a dozen ducks with one shot was considered “normal”; fifteen was “lucky”. - MC
You’re going to have fun with that Johnny. What make upper did you get? I started with a Colt flattop HBAR model and converted it to a carbine a couple of years ago with a Bushmastrer M4 barrel and CAR buttstock (legal as it’s a pre-94 rifle). It’s a feather now compared to what it was with the 20" heavy barrel and a lot more fun to shoot.
MC - I always thought that a “punt gun” referred to a rigged serious of large bore shotguns in a boat, and that the operator fired the device by pulling a string. I guess it’s a pretty loose term… or am I thinking of something else?
Padeye,
The new is the A2 with a 16" bbl. and the closed-bottom flash-hider from Bushmaster. The lower is a pre-ban from “E.A. Co.” that I picked up at a local gun store a long time ago. This replaces a Colt M-16A1 upper and a 16" std. weight bbl. that I think came from Bushmaster.
The other A2 is a heavy-barrel rifle version I built from a Bushmaster pre-ban lower. Actually, all of the parts are from Bushmaster; I built it as I had the money. Except for the civilian parts, of course, it’s “issue”.
Then there’s the Colt AR-15. It was made in 1979 and is stock, triangle handguards and all. Being an actual Colt, and having the sacred “AR-15” stamped on the side and a smooth upper (no fwd. assist), this one is in semi-retirement (pun unintentional).
All of these were “banned” in California so I registered them with the DoJ. I found out later that I didn’t have to register the Bushmaster or the E.A. Co., but better safe than sorry.
Now I have a left-over 16" A1 upper assembly (small hole) and a 20" A2 upper assembly (Colt, large hole, no bayonet lug, but with flash hider). Plus I have a couple of extra stocks (including an original M-16 type without the trapdoor, A1 and A2), extra handguards (shorty and standard), pistol grips (A1 and A2) I need a couple more lowers! But they’re truly banned here now! I guess I’ll have to wait 'til I move out of state.
Frank Barnes’ Cartridges of the World lists the bullet diameter of 45 ACP as 0.452", so I don’t think the land diameter is nearly that small.
I think what you are thinking of is the 45/410 chambering, which can fire both 45 Colt (rimmed) cartridges and 410 shotshells. I don’t know where this chambering was invented, but I think it’s just 45 Colt lengthened to accomodate 2.5" and 3" shells. The oldest gun chambering it (that I know of) is the Thompson/Center Contender; others including the American Derringer Model 1 and Magnum Research’s Maxine (aka Sidewinder).
The deal is, you can overbore a barrel quite a bit before really messing with a shot pattern. The 45/410 barrels are rifled (they have to be, or they would be shotguns or Any Other Weapons, with all sorts of Federal requirements…) It doesn’t really mean too much, since with the big 45/410 (the Thompson/Center and the Sidewinder, you can choke the shot as you would with a shotgun. With the little 45/410s (e.g. the American Derringer and the Thunder Five), you’re going for close-range scattergun effect, so quick shot spread is okay. At least in theory.
Yeah, johnnyharvard, I think punt guns were fired from monopod mountings on punts. I haven’t heard of anyone firing them prone although I guess it could be done. Firing it from a monopod would cause the boat to absorb the recoil, which could be a good thing, or a bad thing if the little thing capsized! Certainly four-bore and eight-bore elephant guns were fired without the benefit of a punt, since elephant country isn’t quite the same as duck country…
I’d usually heard them measured with the same bore system the British use for shotguns … just like the American gauge system. A four-bore would fire a quarter-pound ball - not useful for hunting but a decent weapon for small boat combat. The “bore” system is just the reciprocal of the “pound” system formerly used for measuring gun sizes … a gun firing a two-pound ball would be a two-pounder; a gun firing a half-pound ball would be a two-bore. And yes, a four-bore loaded with birdshot could probably bag a couple of waterfowl with a single shot, which is good since reloading would be pretty laborious, and these weren’t casual sport hunters, but rather “market hunters” - people who made their living selling duck meat.
Yeah, my last paragraph had typical Borisian amounts of clarity. I meant the four-ounce ball would be of little value for duck hunting. It would be great for buffalo or boar or whatever, especially before smokeless powder and conical bullets. Also, the “small boat combat” was supposed to be a reference to the swivel guns that small boats (as well as warships) carried back in the days of fighting sail. Swivel guns rarely fired a shot as heavy as a pound, so it made sense to bore-size them using the denominator, rather than the numerator.
Boris,
I have seen one derringer that can fire .45 Long Colt and .410 shotgun shells. I thought about buying one because I have a Ruger Blackhawk in .45LC, but the derringer is illegal in California because it it considered a “short-barreled shotgun”.
Curiously, blowguns are also illegal in California.
I think California prohibits firearms in excess of .60 calibre, but I’m not sure.
I hefted a .50 Barnet semi-auto at Edwards AFB. The demolition crew said it was for destroying ordnance at lonnnnnng range. It’s fired from the prone position and with a bipod, or mounted on a pintle on a HMMWV.
I have only seen one photo of a man shouldering one, that was in National Geographic- methinks. It looked like a regular single-barrel shotgun (it had a regular-style stock). I could not see if it was intended to be mounted, and that particular article didn’t say as much. - MC
Johnny LA
Funny thing is, I saw a blackpowder derringer chambered for 45/410. It was a side-by-side, and an obvious attempt to get around laws against mail ordering firearms, since blackpoweder weapons are regulated so differently.
The Federal government heavily regulates weapons over .50 caliber as “destructive devices”, with an exception for certain weapons (i.e. shotguns) which the Secretary of the Treasury (i.e. the ATF’s taskmaster) determines have sporting purposes. So that means that any “gauge shotgun” (28-gauge or better) can be declared a destructive device, and thus subject to tax and registration, if the Secretary decides it. Only a few have been declared such … a Daewoo and the South African Striker-12.
When the Magaw (Macaw? spelling?) Indians go whaling, they’ll be carrying a spear and a .50-caliber rifle … a McMillan or a Barret, I think. So when somebodies says, “Who needs a weapon in 50 BMG for hunting” you know the answer…!
Regarding Punt Guns…
From NRA testimony
"While they migrated, when they wintered over, wherever they were seen, waterfowl were slaughtered. The most threatened species of the era are now the very populations hunters have worked so hard to nurture – snow geese, wood ducks, Canada geese. The marketplace mercenaries used devices like the “punt gun.” Weighing as much as 120 pounds with a bore of up to 2 1/2 inches, it could bring down as many as 100 birds with a single shot. The NRA termed this “slaughter.” "
““Two well-defined types [of gun were used]: the shoulder gun [weighing 14 pounds or more; 5.5’ or 6’ barrel]…and the great punt gun, with a barrel of eight, nine or ten feet, which, being too heavy to fire without support, was mounted upon a lightly-built gunning punt, drawing only a few inches of water, in which the fowler could work his way through the shallows and marshes to within gunshot of the fowl, so as to let fly with his great gun as they took off from the water. The early punt guns were…merely supported upon a crutch set in the forepart of the boat, and were fired from the shoulder, with a protective cushion of straw and sacking wrapped around the butt, the gunner lying prone in the bottom of the punt, and bracing his feet against its sides as he made his shot, so that the force of the recoil should be distributed as evenly as possible, and the punt and gunner alike moving bodily backwards as the gun was discharged.” (George, p. 124.)”
Finally a photo of gun and punt can be found at this museum
““Big guns” were an American adaptation of the English punt gun. Mounted in a small boat at night, these guns – weighing 100-175 pounds each – were paddled out onto the Bay. One shot could kill up to 30 ducks and 8-10 geese at a time which might produce the equivalent of a month’s salary on the market. The largest gun on display measures nine feet four inches. Punt guns were banned in 1910 and finally disappeared in the 1930s.”