Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Rifle shopping experience:
1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Rifle offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Rifle at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.
2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about
3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Rifle? Wrong! If the Rifle is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.
4. Questions - Got a question about Rifle then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....
5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Rifle? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Rifle and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.
6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Rifle wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.
7. Feedback - happy with your Rifle then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.
8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Rifle site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site
9. Contact - got a question about Rifle, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.
10. Payment - ready to pay for your Rifle, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.
A
rifle is a
firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves ("rifling") cut into the barrel walls. The grooves are known as "rifling", and produce raised areas called "lands," which make contact with the projectile (for small arms usage, called a bullet), imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the orientation of the weapon. When the projectile leaves the barrel, the conservation of angular momentum improves accuracy and range, in the same way that a properly thrown
American football or
rugby football ball behaves. The word "rifle" originally referred to the grooving, and a rifle was called a "rifled gun." Rifles are used in
warfare, hunting and
shooting sports.
Typically, a bullet is propelled by the contained
deflagration of an explosive compound (originally
black powder, later
cordite, and now
nitrocellulose), although other means such as compressed air are used in
air rifles, which are popular for
pest control,
hunting small game, and casual shooting ("
plinking").
Originally the name "rifle" was short for "rifled gun"; but in many armed forces units it is thought wrong to use the word "gun" to mean a rifle. Furthermore, in many works of
fiction a rifle refers to any weapon that has a stock (firearm) and is shouldered before firing, even if this weapon is not rifled or doesn't fire solid projectiles.
Overview
Remington Arms.Originally, rifles were
Marksman weapons, while the regular infantry made use of the greater firepower of massed
muskets, which fired round
musket balls of calibers up to 0.75 inch (19 mm).
Benjamin Robins, an English mathematician, realized that an extruded bullet would retain the mass and kinetic force of a musket ball, but would slice through the air with much greater ease. The innovative work of Robins and others would take until the end of the
18th century to gain acceptance.
By the mid-
19th century, however, manufacturing had advanced sufficiently that the musket was replaced by a range of rifles—generally single-shot, breech-loading—designed for aimed, discretionary fire by individual soldiers. Then, as now, rifles had a stock, either fixed or folding, to be braced against the shoulder when firing. Early military rifles, such as the Baker rifle were shorter than the day's muskets, and usually the weapon of a
marksman. Until the early
20th century rifles tended to be very long—an 1890 Martini-Henry was almost six feet (1.8 m) in length with a fixed
bayonet. The demand for more compact weapons for cavalrymen led to the
carbine, or shortened rifle.
History
Origins
Muskets were smooth-bore, large caliber weapons using ball-shaped ammunition fired at relatively low velocity. 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. Consequently on firing the ball bounced off the sides of the barrel when fired and the final direction on leaving the muzzle was unpredictable. (In the late 1800s, the term "rifled musket" was used to distinguish between smoothbore and rifled long arms.)
The performance of muskets were sufficient in early warfares primarily because of the styles of warfare at the time. At the time, European soldiers tended to stand in stationary long lines and fire at the opposing forces, which meant that you did not necessarily have to have the bullet going in the direction you wanted to hit an opponent.
The origins of rifling are difficult to trace, but some of the earliest practical experiments seem to have occurred in Europe during the fifteenth century.
Archery had long realized that a twist added to the tail feathers of their arrows gave them greater accuracy. Early muskets produced large quantities of smoke and soot, which had to be cleaned from the action and bore of the musket frequently; either the action of repeated bore scrubbing, or a deliberate attempt to create 'soot grooves' might also have led to a perceived increase in accuracy, although no-one knows for sure. True rifling dates from the mid-15th century, although the precision required for its effective manufacture kept it out of the hands of infantrymen for another three and a half centuries, when it largely replaced the unrifled
musket as the primary infantry weapon.During the Napoleonic wars the British army created several experimental units known as "Rifles" the Rifles were deployed as skirmishers during the Peninsular war in Spain and Portugal, and were more effective than skirmishers armed with muskets due to their accuracy and long range. There is also a historic account of a riflman killing a french officer from almost a kilometere away.
First designs
Some early rifled guns were created with special barrels that had a twisted polygonal shape. Specially-made bullets were designed to match the shape so the bullet would grip the rifle bore and take a spin that way. These were generally limited to large caliber weapons and the ammunition still did not fit tightly in the barrel. Many experimental designs used different shapes and degrees of spiraling. Although uncommon, polygonal rifling is still used in some weapons today with one example being the
Glock line of pistols. Unfortunately, many early attempts resulted in dangerous backfiring, which could lead to destruction of the weapon and serious injury to the person firing.
19th century
Gradually, rifles appeared with cylindrical barrels cut with helical grooves, the surfaces between the grooves being called "lands". The innovation shortly preceded the mass adoption of breech-loading weapons, as it was not practical to push an overbore bullet down through a rifled barrel, only to then (try to) fire it back out. The dirt and grime from prior shots was pushed down ahead of a tight bullet or ball (which may have been a loose fit in the clean barrel before the first shot), and, of course, loading was far more difficult, as the lead had to be deformed to go down in the first place, reducing the accuracy due to deformation. Several systems were tried to deal with the problem, usually by resorting to an under-bore bullet that expanded upon firing.
The original muzzle-loading rifle, with a closely fitting ball to take the rifling grooves, was loaded with difficulty, particularly when foul, and for this reason was not generally used for military purposes. Even with the advent of rifling the bullet itself didn't change, but was wrapped in a greased, cloth patch to grip the rifling grooves.
The first half of the nineteenth century saw a distinct change in the shape and function of the bullet. In 1826 Delirque, a French
infantry officer, invented a breech with abrupt shoulders on which a spherical bullet was rammed down until it caught the rifling grooves. Delirque's method, however, deformed the bullet and was inaccurate.
Minié
One of the most famous was the Minié system, which relied on a conical bullet (known as a
Minié ball) with a hollow at the base of the bullet that caused the base of the round to expand from the pressure of the exploding charge and grip the rifling as the round was fired. Minié system rifles, notably the U.S. Springfield and the British Enfield of the early 1860s, featured prominently in the U.S. Civil War, due to the enhanced power and accuracy. The better seal gave more power, as less gas escaped past the bullet, which combined with the fact that for the same
bore (
caliber) diameter a long bullet was heavier than a round ball. Enhanced accuracy came from the expansion to grip the rifling, which spun the bullet more consistently.
Another important area of development was the way that cartridges were stored and used in the weapon. The
Spencer repeating rifle was a breech-loading manually operated
lever action rifle, that was adopted by the United States and over 20,000 were used during the Civil War. It marked the first adoption of a removable magazine-fed infantry rifle by any country. The design was completed by
Christopher Spencer in 1860. It used copper rimfire cartridges stored in a removable seven round tube magazine, enabling the rounds to be fired one after another, and which, when emptied, could be exchanged for another.
As the bullet enters the barrel, it screws itself into the rifling, a process that gradually wears down the barrel, and more rapidly causes the barrel to heat up. Therefore, some machine-guns are equipped with quick-change barrels that can be swapped every few thousand rounds, or, in earlier designs, were water-cooled. Unlike older carbon steel barrels, which were limited to around 1,000 shots before the extreme heat caused accuracy to fade, modern stainless steel barrels for target rifles are much harder, and so wear far less, allowing tens of thousands of rounds to be fired before accuracy drops. (Many shotguns and small arms have Chrome plating-lined barrels to reduce wear and enhance corrosion resistance. This is rare on rifles designed for extreme accuracy, as the plating process is difficult and liable to reduce the effect of the rifling.) Hardened
armor piercing bullets produce wear rapidly, which necessitates that they are encased in a softer metal jacket (typically
Copper) or
Teflon.
Bullet design
Over the
19th century, bullet design also evolved, the slugs becoming gradually smaller and lighter. By 1910 the standard blunt-nosed bullet had been replaced with the pointed, 'spitzer' slug, an innovation that increased range and penetration.
Cartridge (weaponry) design evolved from simple paper tubes containing
black powder and shot to sealed brass cases with integral primers for ignition, while black powder itself was replaced with cordite, and then other smokeless mixtures, propelling bullets to higher velocities than before.
The increased velocity meant that new problems arrived, and so bullets went from being soft lead to harder lead, then to copper jacketed, in order to better engage the spiraled grooves without "stripping" them in the same way that a screw or bolt thread would be stripped if subjected to extreme forces.
20th century
As mentioned above, rifles were initially single-shot, muzzle-loading weapons. 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-action, pump-action or linear
bolt actions became standard, further increasing the rate of fire and minimizing the fuss involved in loading a firearm. The problem of proper seal creation had been solved with the use of brass cartridge cases, which expanded in an elastic (solid mechanics) fashion at the point of firing and effectively sealed the breech while the pressure remained high, then relaxed back enough to allow for easy removal. By the end of the 19th century, the leading bolt-action design was that of Paul Mauser, whose action—wedded to a reliable design possessing a five-shot magazine—became a world standard through two world wars and beyond. The
Mauser rifle was paralleled by Britain's ten-shot
Lee-Enfield and America's 1903
M1903 Springfield rifle models (the latter pictured above). The American M1903 closely copied Mauser's original design.
The advent of massed, rapid firepower and of the machine gun and the rifled
artillery piece was so quick as to outstrip the development of any way to attack a
Trench warfare defended by riflemen and machine gunners. The carnage of World War I was perhaps the greatest vindication and vilification of the rifle as a military weapon. By
World War II, military thought was turning elsewhere, towards more compact weapons.
WWII
Experience in World War I led German military researchers to conclude that long-range aimed fire was less significant at typical battle ranges of 500 m. As mechanisms became smaller, lighter and more reliable, semi-automatic rifles, including the M1 Garand rifle, appeared. World War II saw the first mass-fielding of such rifles, which culminated in the
Sturmgewehr 44, the first assault rifle and one of the most significant developments of 20th century small-arms.
By contrast, civilian rifle design has not significantly advanced since the early part of the 20th century. Modern hunting rifles have fiberglass and carbon fibre stocks and more advanced
recoil pads, but are fundamentally the same as infantry rifles from 1910. Many modern
sniper rifles can trace their ancestry back for well over a century, and the Russian 7.62 x 54 mm cartridge, as used in the front-line SVD Dragunov sniper rifle, dates from
1891.Snipers were dangerous in trees.
History of use
Muskets were used for comparatively rapid, unaimed volley fire, and the average conscripted soldier could be easily trained to use them. The (muzzle-loaded) rifle was originally a sharpshooter's weapon used for targets of opportunity and sniper fire. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British 95th Regiment (Green Jackets) and 60th Regiment (Royal American) used the rifle to great effect during skirmishing. Because of a slower loading time than a musket, they were not adopted by the whole army. The adoption of cartridges and
breech-loading in the 19th century was concurrent with the general adoption of rifles. In the early part of the 20th century, soldiers were trained to shoot accurately over long ranges with high-powered cartridges. World War I Lee-Enfields rifles (among others) were equipped with long-range 'volley sights' for massed firing at ranges of up to a mile (1600 m). Individual shots were unlikely to hit, but a platoon firing repeatedly could produce a 'beaten ground' effect similar to light artillery or machine guns; but experience in WWI showed that long-range fire was best left to them.
During and after WW II it became accepted that most infantry engagements occur at ranges of less than 500 m; the range and power of the large rifles was "overkill"; and the weapons were heavier than the ideal. This led to Germany's development of the
7.92 x 33 mm (short) round, the Karabiner 98, the
Sturmgewehr 44, and ultimately, the assault rifle. Today, an infantryman's rifle is optimised for ranges of 300 m or less, and soldiers are trained to deliver individual rounds or bursts of fire within these distances. The application of accurate, long-range fire is the domain of the
sniper in warfare, and of enthusiastic target shooters in peacetime. The modern sniper rifle is usually capable of accuracy better than one minute of arc (300 μrad).
In recent decades, large-caliber anti-materiel sniper rifles, typically firing .50 Browning Machingun-BMG (12.7 mm) and 20mm caliber cartridges, have been developed. The US
M82 Barrett rifle is probably the best known such rifle. These weapons are typically used to strike critical, vulnerable targets such as computerized command and control vehicles, radio trucks, radar antennae, vehicle engine blocks and the jet engines of enemy aircraft. Anti-materiel rifles can be used against human targets, but the much higher weight of rifle and ammunition, and the massive recoil and muzzle blast, usually make them less than practical for such use. The Barrett M82 is credited with a maximum effective range of 1800 m (1.1 mi); and it was with a .50BMG caliber McMillan
TAC-50 rifle that Canadian Corporal
Rob Furlong made the longest recorded confirmed sniper kill in history, when he shot a Taliban insurgent at a range of 2,430 meters (1.51 miles) in
Afghanistan during
Operation Anaconda in 2002.
Modern civilian use
Currently, rifles are the most common firearm in general use for hunting purposes (with the exception of bird hunting where
shotguns are favored). Use in competition is also very common, and includes Olympic events. Military-style rifles in semi-automatic such as the AR-15 have become very popular in the United States and are now used for hunting all sizes of game since a selection of different calibers have become available.
See also
Kinds of rifles
External links
- Rifle Database - Video and Review
A
rifle is a
firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves ("
rifling") cut into the barrel walls. The grooves are known as "rifling", and produce raised areas called "lands," which make contact with the projectile (for small arms usage, called a
bullet), imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the orientation of the weapon. When the projectile leaves the barrel, the conservation of
angular momentum improves accuracy and range, in the same way that a properly thrown
American football or
rugby football ball behaves. The word "rifle" originally referred to the grooving, and a rifle was called a "rifled gun." Rifles are used in warfare,
hunting and shooting sports.
Typically, a bullet is propelled by the contained deflagration of an explosive compound (originally
black powder, later cordite, and now nitrocellulose), although other means such as compressed air are used in
air rifles, which are popular for pest control,
hunting small game, and casual shooting ("
plinking").
Originally the name "rifle" was short for "rifled gun"; but in many armed forces units it is thought wrong to use the word "gun" to mean a rifle. Furthermore, in many works of
fiction a rifle refers to any weapon that has a
stock (firearm) and is shouldered before firing, even if this weapon is not rifled or doesn't fire solid projectiles.
Overview
Remington Arms.Originally, rifles were
Marksman weapons, while the regular
infantry made use of the greater firepower of massed muskets, which fired round musket balls of calibers up to 0.75 inch (19 mm).
Benjamin Robins, an English mathematician, realized that an extruded bullet would retain the mass and kinetic force of a musket ball, but would slice through the air with much greater ease. The innovative work of Robins and others would take until the end of the 18th century to gain acceptance.
By the mid-
19th century, however, manufacturing had advanced sufficiently that the musket was replaced by a range of rifles—generally single-shot, breech-loading—designed for aimed, discretionary fire by individual soldiers. Then, as now, rifles had a stock, either fixed or folding, to be braced against the shoulder when firing. Early military rifles, such as the
Baker rifle were shorter than the day's muskets, and usually the weapon of a marksman. Until the early
20th century rifles tended to be very long—an
1890 Martini-Henry was almost six feet (1.8 m) in length with a fixed
bayonet. The demand for more compact weapons for
cavalrymen led to the carbine, or shortened rifle.
History
Origins
Muskets were smooth-bore, large caliber weapons using ball-shaped ammunition fired at relatively low velocity. 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. Consequently on firing the ball bounced off the sides of the barrel when fired and the final direction on leaving the muzzle was unpredictable. (In the late 1800s, the term "rifled musket" was used to distinguish between smoothbore and rifled long arms.)
The performance of muskets were sufficient in early warfares primarily because of the styles of warfare at the time. At the time, European soldiers tended to stand in stationary long lines and fire at the opposing forces, which meant that you did not necessarily have to have the bullet going in the direction you wanted to hit an opponent.
The origins of rifling are difficult to trace, but some of the earliest practical experiments seem to have occurred in Europe during the fifteenth century.
Archery had long realized that a twist added to the tail feathers of their arrows gave them greater accuracy. Early muskets produced large quantities of smoke and soot, which had to be cleaned from the action and bore of the musket frequently; either the action of repeated bore scrubbing, or a deliberate attempt to create 'soot grooves' might also have led to a perceived increase in accuracy, although no-one knows for sure. True rifling dates from the mid-
15th century, although the precision required for its effective manufacture kept it out of the hands of infantrymen for another three and a half centuries, when it largely replaced the unrifled musket as the primary infantry weapon.During the Napoleonic wars the British army created several experimental units known as "Rifles" the Rifles were deployed as skirmishers during the Peninsular war in Spain and Portugal, and were more effective than skirmishers armed with muskets due to their accuracy and long range. There is also a historic account of a riflman killing a french officer from almost a kilometere away.
First designs
Some early rifled guns were created with special barrels that had a twisted polygonal shape. Specially-made bullets were designed to match the shape so the bullet would grip the rifle bore and take a spin that way. These were generally limited to large caliber weapons and the ammunition still did not fit tightly in the barrel. Many experimental designs used different shapes and degrees of spiraling. Although uncommon, polygonal rifling is still used in some weapons today with one example being the
Glock line of pistols. Unfortunately, many early attempts resulted in dangerous backfiring, which could lead to destruction of the weapon and serious injury to the person firing.
19th century
Gradually, rifles appeared with cylindrical barrels cut with helical grooves, the surfaces between the grooves being called "lands". The innovation shortly preceded the mass adoption of breech-loading weapons, as it was not practical to push an overbore bullet down through a rifled barrel, only to then (try to) fire it back out. The dirt and grime from prior shots was pushed down ahead of a tight bullet or ball (which may have been a loose fit in the clean barrel before the first shot), and, of course, loading was far more difficult, as the lead had to be deformed to go down in the first place, reducing the accuracy due to deformation. Several systems were tried to deal with the problem, usually by resorting to an under-bore bullet that expanded upon firing.
The original muzzle-loading rifle, with a closely fitting ball to take the rifling grooves, was loaded with difficulty, particularly when foul, and for this reason was not generally used for military purposes. Even with the advent of rifling the bullet itself didn't change, but was wrapped in a greased, cloth patch to grip the rifling grooves.
The first half of the nineteenth century saw a distinct change in the shape and function of the bullet. In 1826 Delirque, a French infantry officer, invented a breech with abrupt shoulders on which a spherical bullet was rammed down until it caught the rifling grooves. Delirque's method, however, deformed the bullet and was inaccurate.
Minié
One of the most famous was the Minié system, which relied on a conical bullet (known as a
Minié ball) with a hollow at the base of the bullet that caused the base of the round to expand from the pressure of the exploding charge and grip the rifling as the round was fired. Minié system rifles, notably the U.S. Springfield and the British Enfield of the early 1860s, featured prominently in the
U.S. Civil War, due to the enhanced power and accuracy. The better seal gave more power, as less gas escaped past the bullet, which combined with the fact that for the same bore (
caliber) diameter a long bullet was heavier than a round ball. Enhanced accuracy came from the expansion to grip the rifling, which spun the bullet more consistently.
Another important area of development was the way that cartridges were stored and used in the weapon. The Spencer repeating rifle was a breech-loading manually operated lever action rifle, that was adopted by the United States and over 20,000 were used during the Civil War. It marked the first adoption of a removable magazine-fed infantry rifle by any country. The design was completed by Christopher Spencer in
1860. It used copper rimfire cartridges stored in a removable seven round tube magazine, enabling the rounds to be fired one after another, and which, when emptied, could be exchanged for another.
As the bullet enters the barrel, it screws itself into the rifling, a process that gradually wears down the barrel, and more rapidly causes the barrel to heat up. Therefore, some machine-guns are equipped with quick-change barrels that can be swapped every few thousand rounds, or, in earlier designs, were water-cooled. Unlike older carbon
steel barrels, which were limited to around 1,000 shots before the extreme heat caused accuracy to fade, modern stainless steel barrels for target rifles are much harder, and so wear far less, allowing tens of thousands of rounds to be fired before accuracy drops. (Many shotguns and small arms have
Chrome plating-lined barrels to reduce wear and enhance corrosion resistance. This is rare on rifles designed for extreme accuracy, as the plating process is difficult and liable to reduce the effect of the rifling.) Hardened
armor piercing bullets produce wear rapidly, which necessitates that they are encased in a softer metal jacket (typically Copper) or Teflon.
Bullet design
Over the 19th century, bullet design also evolved, the slugs becoming gradually smaller and lighter. By 1910 the standard blunt-nosed bullet had been replaced with the pointed, 'spitzer' slug, an innovation that increased range and penetration.
Cartridge (weaponry) design evolved from simple paper tubes containing black powder and shot to sealed brass cases with integral primers for ignition, while black powder itself was replaced with cordite, and then other smokeless mixtures, propelling bullets to higher velocities than before.
The increased velocity meant that new problems arrived, and so bullets went from being soft lead to harder lead, then to copper jacketed, in order to better engage the spiraled grooves without "stripping" them in the same way that a screw or bolt thread would be stripped if subjected to extreme forces.
20th century
As mentioned above, rifles were initially single-shot, muzzle-loading weapons. 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-action,
pump-action or linear
bolt actions became standard, further increasing the rate of fire and minimizing the fuss involved in loading a firearm. The problem of proper seal creation had been solved with the use of brass cartridge cases, which expanded in an elastic (solid mechanics) fashion at the point of firing and effectively sealed the breech while the pressure remained high, then relaxed back enough to allow for easy removal. By the end of the 19th century, the leading bolt-action design was that of Paul Mauser, whose action—wedded to a reliable design possessing a five-shot magazine—became a world standard through two world wars and beyond. The Mauser rifle was paralleled by Britain's ten-shot
Lee-Enfield and America's 1903
M1903 Springfield rifle models (the latter pictured above). The American M1903 closely copied Mauser's original design.
The advent of massed, rapid firepower and of the machine gun and the rifled
artillery piece was so quick as to outstrip the development of any way to attack a Trench warfare defended by riflemen and machine gunners. The carnage of
World War I was perhaps the greatest vindication and vilification of the rifle as a military weapon. By World War II, military thought was turning elsewhere, towards more compact weapons.
WWII
Experience in World War I led German military researchers to conclude that long-range aimed fire was less significant at typical battle ranges of 500 m. As mechanisms became smaller, lighter and more reliable,
semi-automatic rifles, including the M1 Garand rifle, appeared. World War II saw the first mass-fielding of such rifles, which culminated in the Sturmgewehr 44, the first
assault rifle and one of the most significant developments of 20th century small-arms.
By contrast, civilian rifle design has not significantly advanced since the early part of the 20th century. Modern hunting rifles have fiberglass and carbon fibre stocks and more advanced
recoil pads, but are fundamentally the same as infantry rifles from 1910. Many modern
sniper rifles can trace their ancestry back for well over a century, and the Russian 7.62 x 54 mm cartridge, as used in the front-line
SVD Dragunov sniper rifle, dates from
1891.Snipers were dangerous in trees.
History of use
Muskets were used for comparatively rapid, unaimed volley fire, and the average conscripted soldier could be easily trained to use them. The (muzzle-loaded) rifle was originally a sharpshooter's weapon used for targets of opportunity and
sniper fire. During the
Napoleonic Wars, the British 95th Regiment (Green Jackets) and 60th Regiment (Royal American) used the rifle to great effect during skirmishing. Because of a slower loading time than a musket, they were not adopted by the whole army. The adoption of cartridges and
breech-loading in the 19th century was concurrent with the general adoption of rifles. In the early part of the 20th century, soldiers were trained to shoot accurately over long ranges with high-powered cartridges. World War I Lee-Enfields rifles (among others) were equipped with long-range 'volley sights' for massed firing at ranges of up to a mile (1600 m). Individual shots were unlikely to hit, but a platoon firing repeatedly could produce a 'beaten ground' effect similar to light artillery or machine guns; but experience in WWI showed that long-range fire was best left to them.
During and after WW II it became accepted that most infantry engagements occur at ranges of less than 500 m; the range and power of the large rifles was "overkill"; and the weapons were heavier than the ideal. This led to Germany's development of the 7.92 x 33 mm (short) round, the Karabiner 98, the
Sturmgewehr 44, and ultimately, the
assault rifle. Today, an infantryman's rifle is optimised for ranges of 300 m or less, and soldiers are trained to deliver individual rounds or bursts of fire within these distances. The application of accurate, long-range fire is the domain of the
sniper in warfare, and of enthusiastic target shooters in peacetime. The modern sniper rifle is usually capable of accuracy better than one minute of arc (300 μrad).
In recent decades, large-caliber anti-materiel sniper rifles, typically firing .50 Browning Machingun-BMG (12.7 mm) and 20mm caliber cartridges, have been developed. The US M82 Barrett rifle is probably the best known such rifle. These weapons are typically used to strike critical, vulnerable targets such as computerized command and control vehicles, radio trucks, radar antennae, vehicle engine blocks and the
jet engines of enemy aircraft. Anti-materiel rifles can be used against human targets, but the much higher weight of rifle and ammunition, and the massive recoil and muzzle blast, usually make them less than practical for such use. The Barrett M82 is credited with a maximum effective range of 1800 m (1.1 mi); and it was with a .50BMG caliber McMillan
TAC-50 rifle that Canadian Corporal
Rob Furlong made the longest recorded confirmed sniper kill in history, when he shot a Taliban insurgent at a range of 2,430 meters (1.51 miles) in Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda in 2002.
Modern civilian use
Currently, rifles are the most common firearm in general use for hunting purposes (with the exception of bird hunting where shotguns are favored). Use in competition is also very common, and includes Olympic events. Military-style rifles in semi-automatic such as the
AR-15 have become very popular in the United States and are now used for hunting all sizes of game since a selection of different calibers have become available.
See also
Kinds of rifles
External links
- Rifle Database - Video and Review
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Rifle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves ("rifling") cut into the barrel walls.
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The govening body of the sport in the UK. Includes information for beginners and links to find your nearest rifle range.
Precision Rifle | "Only Accurate Rifles Are Interesting!"
Congratulations! You've found your way to the UK's first on-line shooting magazine for the precision rifle enthusiast. PRECISION RIFLE is the UK's premier webzine covering all ...
Alans Air Rifles
Retailers of air guns and accessories, and fishing tackle; information about products stocked.
National Rifle Association of the UK | NRA | Home Page
National Rifle Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
BASC - Air Rifles Code of Practice (revised July 2008)
Home > Magazines > Codes of Practice > Air Rifles Code of Practice (revised July 2008) The most important rule of gun handling…… NEVER POINT ANY RIFLE, LOADED OR UNLOADED, IN ...
