Once upon a time not so very long ago, Americans knew and understood firearms much better than they do today. Because more people came from rural backgrounds and many had served in the military, there was a greater understanding and less fear of firearms.

In recent years, however, lack of knowledge and fear of guns has so petrified many people that they refuse to learn about guns. Others that seek knowledge limit their questions to such topics as the purpose of “assault weapons” and the utility of handguns.

It is difficult to help them understand the applications and even the mechanics of guns when their only focus is on a specific modern type, because they don’t understand how that particular gun fits into a continuum of history and mechanical development.

If you can get and hold their attention for 10 minutes or so, I have discovered that starting at the beginning and walking them slowly through the centuries of firearms and ammunition development dispels many of their fears.

In the Beginning
In many ways, the function of guns has not changed much from the time when gunpowder was invented almost a thousand years ago. Guns—whether firearms or airguns—are nothing more than launching pads for projectiles. Their patched balls—and later bullets—replaced thrown javelins and spears, arrows and even stones like those used by David to defeat Goliath.

The first use of gunpowder was in cannons, designed to reach out hundreds of yards. The cannons, of course, were crew-served weapons.

Later, smaller-caliber guns of varying lengths were designed for use by individual soldiers and hunters. These were sometimes referred to as “hand canons,” or even small canons, depending on the country.

These early canons and individual arms all used fire to ignite the propellant used to launch the projectile. Hence, the origin of the word “firearms.”

Almost concurrent with the development of firearms as individual small arms were the continuing improvements in powerful crossbows that could launch bolts instead of longer-shafted arrows, and spring- or air-powered guns. These crossbows and airguns proved to be as powerful and effective as firearms within their useful ranges.

Some of these early airguns were carried to North America by the earliest French explorers during the 16th and 17th centuries for use as military arms and to harvest meat for the table. During the 18th and 19th centuries, more powerful airguns were used to such effect as almost silent sniper rifles that Napoleon ordered the death penalty for any enemy soldier found with one.

Of course, air and spring guns of varying power and range are still in use today for competition, hunting and for specialized military use. But let me return to the main theme of this dissertation: firearms.

As I mentioned, the earliest guns required the use of fire to launch the projectiles. The more advanced forms of these early guns are usually referred to as matchlocks, because a lock with a burning fuse was required to trigger ignition. The ignition process—almost totally useless in the rain—was relatively slow and affected the accuracy of these early arms. That is why a form of portable rest was required to hold the muzzle on point of aim throughout the ignition process.

Propellants
From earliest times, all firearms have involved the use of a combustible propellant. The earliest guns employed black powder, which was also an explosive. Since late in the 19th century, smokeless powders, which are not explosives but propel the projectiles by the force of expanding gases, have been used in modern cartridge firearms. Black powder and substitutes such as Pyrodex, however, continue to be used in antique guns, their replicas and modern muzzleloading arms.

Through the first six or seven centuries of firearms development, changes were limited largely to two areas: improving the lock time (ignition) for the propellant, and devising methods to improve accuracy. When firepower was addressed at all, it involved the use of multiple arrangements of single barrel guns.

The very earliest guns required that a projectile (ball or bullet) be seated in front of the gunpowder that needed to be ignited to propel the projectile.

As previously mentioned, the earliest used fire (a match or fuse) to ignite the propellant, and the resulting expanding gases drove the ball or bullet toward the target. The matchlocks were replaced by other ignition systems, including various locks involving a flash from flint striking steel to ignite the priming powder.

Percussion Caps
At the turn of the 19th century, a churchman invented percussion caps made with fulminate of mercury. For much of the 19th century, this caplock, which required no priming powder, was placed over a nipple and struck by a hammer to ignite the main charge behind the projectile. This was the principal method for discharging firearms during the Civil War and for putting meat on the table during the westward migration.

Some years earlier, it had been discovered that if the inside of the barrel were rifled, a spin was imparted to the ball or bullet that greatly improved accuracy. While this was seen by some as the invention of the devil, it was incorporated into many civilian arms in America. The clearly demonstrated accuracy advantage of rifles over smoothbore muskets, while proven during the American revolution, was not encouraged at first by the military in Europe or North America. Military strategists—then and now—preferred greater firepower. This was available in the massed discharge of smoothbore muskets that could be loaded faster than rifles. (This thinking eventually led to the 20th century assault weapon.)

What rifles were employed during the Revolution or the Napoleonic Wars were limited primarily to companies of skirmishers and snipers who engaged an enemy at greater distances than troops armed with muskets. By the Civil War, however, the longer range accuracy of rifled barrels was more fully exploited.

Cartridges
Early in the 19th century, it was discovered that the bullet, blackpowder and ignition system (primer) could be combined in a single, self-contained cartridge. The earliest patents were for pin-fire cartridges, a type of cartridge that saw use by both the North and South in the 1860s, and which gained wide acceptance in Europe for handguns, rifles and shotguns well into the 20th century. It wasn’t long before many other types of self-contained and less fragile cartridges were also developed. The most common of these were rimfire cartridges. Loaded with blackpowder, and later with smokeless propellants, these were the forerunners of the cartridges used today.

The various self-contained cartridges could be loaded quickly from the breech, or rear end, of the firearm. When combined with a revolving cylinder that held several such cartridges, this increased firepower.

By the mid-19th century, firearms development focused on various types of actions for repeating rifles—guns that could be loaded with a number cartridges and required a simple mechanical action by the shooter to load and fire those cartridges one by one in quick succession.

By the end of the 19th century, the world had discovered the primitive forerunners of every known type of repeating firearm action—and every type of cartridge magazine—in use today. Break actions, lever-actions, pump- or slide-actions, bolt-actions and even self- or auto-loading actions were in use by both the world’s major military forces and civilians by 1900.

Even guns that loaded and fired all cartridges—full automatics or machineguns—had been invented by that time. So had ammunition that could pierce the available body or equipment armor of the day.

Little Mystery
There is little mystery or magical power to any modern firearm. Regardless of the action type, all of the guns of the 20th and 21st century perform the same mechanical functions as the earliest matchlock firearms. The mechanics of each gun may be different, but they fire single projectiles, or shot, one shell at a time.

Instead of loading at the front, they load at the breech end of the gun. Actuated by a pull of the trigger, the primer is ignited by a blow to the base of the cartridge, which in turn ignites the propellant, sending the projectile or shot toward a target.

Whether the gun’s magazine—box or tubular—holds three or 30 cartridges, the process is the same. Regardless of action, all repeating arms require a single pull of the trigger to discharge each cartridge.

Full automatics—machineguns and true assault weapons that have been strictly regulated in the US since 1934—will fire a few or all of the cartridges in the magazine with a single pull of the trigger.

That’s all there is to it. The color or cosmetics of a particular gun have nothing to do with its function.