Winchester Model 70 Rifle - 458 Winchester Magnum. This is the actual rifle used by Clint Eastwood in the original "Dirty Harry" (1971)
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 raised areas of the rifling are 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, this spin lends gyroscopic stability to the projectile and prevents tumbling, in the same way that a properly thrown American football or rugby rugby ball behaves. This allows the use of aerodynamically-efficient bullets (as opposed to the spherical balls used in muskets) and thus improves range and accuracy. The word "rifle" originally referred to the grooving, and a rifle was called a "rifled gun." The word "rifle" is now used for any long hand-held aimed device activated by a trigger, such as Air rifles and the Personnel halting and stimulation response rifle. Rifles are used in warfare, hunting and shooting sports.
Terminology[]
Formerly, rifles only fired a single projectile with each squeeze of the trigger. Modern rifles are capable of firing more than one round per trigger squeeze; some fire in a fully automatic mode and others are limited to fixed bursts of two, three, or more rounds per squeeze. Thus, modern automatic rifles overlap to some extent in design and function with machine guns. In fact, many light machine guns (such as the Russian RPK) are adaptations of existing automatic rifle designs. A military's light machine guns are typically chambered for the same caliber ammunition as its service rifles. Generally, the difference between an automatic rifle and a machine gun comes down to weight, cooling system, and ammunition feed system. Rifles, with their relatively lighter components (which overheat quickly) and smaller capacity magazines, are incapable of sustained automatic fire in the way that machine guns are; they trade this capability in favor of increased mobility. Modern military rifles are fed by magazines, while machine guns are generally belt-fed. Many machine guns allow the operator to quickly exchange barrels in order to prevent overheating, whereas rifles generally do not. Most machine guns fire from an open bolt in order to reduce the danger of "cook-off", while almost all rifles fire from a closed bolt for accuracy. Machine guns are often crewed by more than one soldier; the rifle is an individual weapon.
Appearances[]
- The Stand
- The Stand (miniseries)
- Desperation (novel)
- Desperation (miniseries)
- Dreamcatcher (film)
- The Dead Zone (film)
- The Dead Zone
- The Green Mile (film)
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Under the Dome (television series)
- Haven (TV series)
- Maximum Overdrive
- Silver Bullet
- Roadwork
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