Basic Rifle Info
Glossary Of Terms
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Glossary Of Terms
We like to be on the same page as our shooters so we can all get the most out of our conversations together. If you need any clarification, this is a great place to start!
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Projectile/Bullet | This is the projectile portion of a cartridge or round that is propelled through a gun’s barrel to hit a target. |
| Brass/Casing | This is the container portion of a cartridge or round. It holds the gunpowder, projectile, and a primer in the casing unit. |
| Powder | Smokeless gun powder is the propellant used to launch the projectile from the case into the barrel. |
| Primer | A sensitive explosive device that responds to percussion to set off gun powder. Composed of the primer compound, cup, and anvil. |
| Cartridge | A casing containing a charge and a projectile. A completed cartridge is one round of ammunition. |
| Round | The term used for a single cartridge or one unit of ammunition. |
| Ammunition | Also referred to as ammo and measured in rounds, ammunition is what is loaded into a firearm. It’s made up of multiple parts, including gunpowder, primer, and a projectile contained in a casing. |
| Caliber | The caliber of a gun refers to the diameter of the inside of the gun’s barrel, also known as the bore. The caliber determines the ammunition size that the gun can fire. It is measured in fractions of an inch (0.264) or in millimeters (6.5mm). |
| Ballistics | The science of cartridge discharge through an examination of the launch, flight path, behavior, and projectile effects of a bullet and its casing. Ballistics is further broken down into three areas of study: internal, external, and terminal. |
| Bullet Drop | The vertical drop of a bullet due to gravity. |
| Trajectory | This describes the arc of the bullet as it exits a gun’s muzzle to impact the target. It’s the scientific term for bullet drop. |
| Chamber | This refers to the portion of the barrel where the cartridge is seated before firing the gun. |
| Barrel | This term refers to the long tube-shaped part of a firearm. It provides an exit path with direction and velocity for a discharging bullet. |
| Rifling | rifling is machining helical grooves into the internal (bore) surface of a gun’s barrel for the purpose of exerting torque and thus imparting a spin to a projectile around its longitudinal axis during shooting to stabilize the projectile longitudinally |
| Ejector | A gun’s mechanism that releases or “kicks” the spent case from the chamber. |
| Extractor | A gun’s mechanism that pulls cases from the chamber after the ammunition has been fired. |
| Firing Pin | The firing pin is directly behind a chambered cartridge of a hammer-fired gun. When the hammer strikes the firing pin, it impacts the cartridge’s primer cap to discharge the weapon. |
| Grain | This term is used as a unit of measurement that defines the weight of a bullet or the amount of powder in a single cartridge. A grain is a measure of weight, A kernel is one piece of smokeless gun powder |
| Hollow Point | In order to increase expansion upon penetration of a target, a hollow point bullet has a concave nose. It generally does more internal damage to a target. |
| Polymer Tip/Ballistic Tip | hollow-point bullet tipped with a nose cone made of synthetic polymer to give it a pointed spitzer-like shape. |
| Boat tail | The tapered rear end of a bullet that is designed to increase ballistic efficiency at long range. |
| Lead Tip | Also known as a soft point, this lead tipped projectile is designed for rapid expansion, however, usually at the sacrifice of a high ballistic coefficient. |
| Ballistic Coefficient | A body is a measure of its ability to overcome air resistance in flight, The higher the BC the more aerodynamic a projectile is. |
| Soft Point | Also known as a lead tip, this lead tipped projectile is designed for rapid expansion, however, usually at the sacrifice of a high ballistic coefficient |
| Cannelure | A groove around a projectile used to assit in crimping a cartridge. Bottleneck cases do not need to be crimped. |
| Fouling Groove | Solid copper projectiles have grooves in the shank of the projectile. This is designed to reduce copper fouling in your barrel. |
| Recoil | Also referred to as a gun’s kick, this is the backward momentum or force exerted by a gun as it fires. |
| Zero | The distance where the rifle scope is set to a point of aim at a specific distance, generally 100 yards. |
| Headspace | This refers to the distance measured from the portion of the chamber that stops a brass casings’ forward motion to the face of the bolt. |
| Magazine | This is the unit that contains the cartridges before they are fed into the chamber of the gun. The term “clip” is sometimes incorrectly used interchangeably with this term. However, they are not the same. Generally, a clip feeds the magazine, which then feeds the gun. |
| FPS | Abbreviation for feet per second |