BASIC
CONCEPTS

Ammunition

• Firearms are merely the launching platforms for projectiles, which are expelled from their barrels by the expanding gases generated by the combustion of gunpowder.
• Modern firearms generally use fixed cartridges, as opposed to loose gunpowder, a flint or percussion cap to ignite the powder, wads to secure the powder and projectiles in the firing chamber and the projectiles themselves.
• A fixed cartridge consists of a cartridge case, a primer to ignite the powder, the powder and the bullet. In the case of a shot shell, pellets of shot replace the bullet and there is usually some sort of wad or plastic cup to cushion the shot and to seal the gases behind the shot as it is driven out the bore. Thus, the bullet is only one component of a cartridge.
• Politicians notwithstanding, the power of a firearm derives from the cartridge it fires, not whether it automatically replenishes the fired round or even if it continues to fire so long as the trigger is not released. In the long run, it's usually only hits on your target that count, unless you hit the wrong person.
• Projectiles are designed for different purposes. Bullets used for defense will generally perform best if they deform on contact with fleshy substances. At handgun velocities, this generally requires a hollow point.
• The term "caliber" can be misleading because it is sometimes used to give the diameter of the bore of the barrel and sometimes used to name the specific cartridge. There can be many cartridges using the same diameter bullet, resulting, for example, in several different cartridges labeled as "9mm." There can also be different numerical designations for cartridges using bullets of the same diameter. There are even .38-caliber cartridges with different diameter bullets! It's not logical, so we won't go into it. The important thing is that the "caliber" of the ammunition needs to match the designated "caliber" of the gun, with a few specific exceptions where a revolver can fire more than one length of related cartridges.

Guns

• While purists argue about restricting the use of the word "gun" to artillery pieces, most people use it as a synonym for a firearm. As we said, it is the launching platform for the bullet (or shot).
• While power is a function of the cartridge, the properties of the gun can affect the ease with which you can place your projectiles in their intended target.
• Ergonomics is the science of the physical and psychological relationships between machines and their users. The physical relationship of the gun to the shooter can have a large influence on how easily the alignment of the gun with its target is acquired and maintained during the process of shooting.
• Other factors being equal, it is usually easier to maintain this alignment under stress with a shoulder-supported gun, such as a rifle or shotgun, than with one which is only supported by the hands, such as a pistol or revolver. On the other hand, it is usually rather cumbersome to carry a long gun around all day, especially if it's supposed to be concealed.
• Guns which are intended to fire bullets have helical or spiral grooving in their barrels to impart a spiral motion to the bullet; this is true of handguns as well as of rifles. Shotguns have smooth bores as they are normally expected to launch shot pellets, which will spread excessively if fired down a rifled barrel.
• The mechanism which replaces the fired cartridge with a fresh one, whether operated by gas pressure, recoil, a long trigger stroke, a pumping motion with the support hand, a manual reciprocation of a turn-bolt or done directly with the fingers, only influences how quickly one can fire the next shot. It has little, if anything, to do with lining things up so a subsequent shot will also hit the selected target.
• There is a lot of useless, semantic bickering in the world of firearms, generated both by gun writers and instructors who need to fill space on the page or class time and by politicians, frequently for evil motives known only to them and those who bankroll them. For example, what some politicians call an "assault weapon," I might consider a "family protection rifle." As always, use common sense!

Safety

• Safety is paramount. It's not too difficult to argue for maintaining a safe environment to ensure that no one is injured while learning and training. What usually requires effort is to keep safety foremost in mind when other things begin to distract you.
• What may not be so obvious is that if we don't ingrain safe habits in training, we may unintentionally injure ourselves or someone else we want to protect when we are confronted with a threat.

The law

• We currently live under the rule of law. Even if that rule is temporarily disrupted, for an instant or a prolonged period, if we are compelled to use deadly force to survive that disruption, it is most likely that we will have to account for that use of force, in a police investigation or in a court, when the rule of law is eventually re-established.
• It makes little sense to prepare only for the short-term survival of a criminal attack and to leave ourselves vulnerable to a judicial attack on our life or liberty in its aftermath. Don't forget to study the "rules of the road."

If you have taken the time to read this page, it should serve you as an introduction to the other pages which make up this website. Please read them; they were created to help you.