Learning About the Basic Shooting Terms

Posted by Warner on March 30th, 2016

Learning how to shoot is a critical start point that you need to take prior to purchasing a firearm. Whatever reasons you have for wanting to carry a gun, it will serve you no good if you do not first practice at one of the many outdoor gun range Orlando Floridaboasts of. To get the best deal, compare gun range orlando prices before settling on one. It will also be useful if you familiarize yourself with some of the basic terms with regard to guns and shooting. This article differentiates between automatic and semi-automatic weapons; magazines and clips.

Automatic and semi-automatic weapons

The easiest way to let people know that you are clueless about what you are talking is to conflate semi-automatic and automatic. An automatic firearm is one with which a single trigger pull is capable of discharging multiple rounds. Countries such as the US have a total ban on civilian ownership of automatic weapons. If a crime is carried out using an automatic weapon, then the crime weapon was definitely obtained illegally.

A semi-automatic weapon on the other hand will discharge one round at every trigger pull. What makes a weapon semi-automatic and not fully automatic is that the recoil that is as a result of firing one round, leads to the weapon chambering another bullet round from the magazine while an automatic weapon both fires and chambers multiple rounds with a single trigger pull. In real technical terms, a semi-automatic weapon: has a single trigger pull discharge a single round; cocks the striker or hammer after firing a single round; once the weapon discharges a round, it cocks another and ejects/extracts the shell casing, all these without the need for the shooter adding any mechanical energy.

Magazine and Clip

A clip holds rounds together in a way that allows easy feeding of the rounds into a magazine or directly into the gun’s chamber. A clip has no moving parts and its only function is to clip ammunition together.

Magazines on the other hand have moving parts and in most cases these moving parts are springs. Magazines are inserted into the firearm directly and remain there unlike clips. The springs move the next round and position it in the chamber for firing. It positions another round for chambering when necessary. In a semi-automatic pistol, a round is stripped from the magazine top and the rack chambers it and slides it forward; the springs automatically push the next round to be chambered in position; upon firing, the slide is propelled back by the recoil and the shell casing is ejected; the slide moves forward and strips the magazine of the next round and chambers it.