Guns 101: A Beginner's Guide to Buying and Owning Firearms

By David Steier

With a background in firearms instruction, sales, and organizations, Steier’s knowledge has been cultivated through years of in-depth experience and per- sonal dedication. In Guns 101, Steier covers the basics (what guns are for and how they work), but also discusses many types of firearms, firearm accessories, and gun activities—enough to help any reader carry on an intelligent conversation. From shop etiquette to do-it-yourself repairs, Guns 101 answers all of your gun questions. Complete with diagrams and photographs that make all of the technical details clear, this book is essential reading for any newcomer to the world of guns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Release date: Jun 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781626369719

Book preview

CHAPTER

1

My Significant Other

Doesn’t Want a Gun in

the House

ONE OF THE MOST OFTEN HEARD PHRASES AS TO WHY SOME people don’t own a gun is my wife/husband doesn’t want a gun in the house because of the children. This is a common objection toward owning a firearm, and must be addressed in a positive way prior to bringing home a firearm. Unfortunately, I can’t convince your significant other that you can keep a firearm safely in your house. I can tell you what I have done.

When our son was born, I spent a great deal of time baby-proofing our house. I installed cabinet locks to keep him out of the bleach and cleaning stuff under the sink, I installed drawer locks on the kitchen drawers that had knives. I did all this to protect my child from dangerous items in the house. Guns are dangerous too and should always be secured from young hands. There does come a point where you stop locking the knives and reason with your children about things that can hurt them. My son is sixteen years old (at the time of this writing) and the locks on the drawers and cabinets are long gone. Are the poisons and knives any less dangerous? No, he has just been instructed in their proper use, respects that they are lethal, and, more importantly, they don’t hold any mystery.

Demystifying your firearms is the best way to prevent a tragedy. A person can be killed with that hammer hanging in your shop. Do you worry about that hammer? Probably not, because it’s not forbidden fruit. Your child doesn’t sneak around the house to find a hammer to show his friends. But time and again the airwaves are full of stories where a child has found a gun and shoots someone. Why? Because you didn’t teach them any better. By not taking away the aspect of forbidden fruit, your child is much more likely to get into trouble with your firearm. I started showing my son our firearms by age four. I let him know in no uncertain terms that these were dangerous, just like the knives in the kitchen, and he must not ever touch them without father’s direct supervision. Furthermore, I explained to him that I’d always take the time to show him or his friends any or all of my guns. All they had to do was ask. To this day, my son shows about as much interest in a new gun in the house as he would a new screwdriver.

As important as demystifying your firearm is, it’s also incumbent upon you to secure your gun. If you have kids in the house, for goodness’ sake don’t leave your handgun in the nightstand. They will find it. Later in this book we’ll look at various strategies for securing your guns in greater detail. All guns in our house are locked in safes. The only exceptions to that are two old WWII bolt-action rifles that hang over the mantel. One of those is nonfunctional, and all the ammunition for the other one is also locked in a safe.

CHAPTER

2

How Does

a Gun Work?

IF YOU’RE GOING TO OWN A FIREARM, IT IS INCUMBENT on you to know how it works. This section discusses the modern cartridge and also discusses the parts of a gun." We’ll build on this knowledge in later sections.

Bullets, Cartridges, and Shells—Oh My

At the end of the day, a firearm is a device that launches a projectile (made of lead or lead with a copper jacket) at very high speeds. Now, there are a myriad of ways that that cartridge can be loaded into a chamber, the powder ignited, and the empty case extracted. The common denominator is the cartridge itself.

So, what does it take? Well, the first component is the projectile called the bullet. This is the part that leaves the barrel and strikes whatever the gun was aimed at. See, the bullet never misses. It goes exactly where it is pointed (see the Ten Commandments of Gun Safety).

Having the bullet is not enough. Next you must have the propellant that launches the bullet down the barrel. This propellant is commonly referred to as gunpowder, which is only half-right. In the beginning, the Chinese created a substance which was refined over the centuries (in a long, long and boring story) to become what we now call black powder or gunpowder. This powder was used in guns right up to 1898 when the first powder made out of a nitrocellulose chemical process was created by Nobel (of the Dynamite/TNT/Nobel Prize—Nobels). The new powder burned much cleaner, so it was called smokeless powder. That’s what’s in your everyday cartridge today. If you call it gunpowder, you most likely won’t be corrected, but you should know that they aren’t exactly the same either.

Next, you need something to make the powder burn. A minister in the early 1800s found that if you struck some forms of fulminate mercury, it would produce a spark hot enough to ignite powder. Thus the percussion cap was born. The percussion cap was a cup made of a soft metal (usually tin) that was filled with the priming compound. Prior to cartridge guns, these primers or caps were fitted on a firearm’s nipple and then a hammer struck the nipple, igniting the powder. The cap splintered and was discarded. Perhaps this is where the phrase bust a cap came from to mean fire a gun?

Eventually, Horace Smith and Daniel Baird Wesson figured out that if you took a brass case, installed priming compound, gunpowder (originally black powder, later smokeless), and a bullet, you had a projectile delivery system that would be waterproof, could be made cheaply, and thus created the modern cartridge.

The cartridge case holds the powder, primer, and bullet together. Until after the Second World War, most were made out of brass. As such, most cartridge cases (by themselves) are usually referred to as brass even though they might be made out of steel today.

Today, there are two main variants of cartridges: rimfire and centerfire. The difference between these is largely made up of how the gunpowder is ignited. Individual cartridges are typically referred to as rounds. Rumor has it that in the Old West, a cowboy who was down on his luck could trade a single round for a small glass of whiskey. And that is how the shot glass got its name and how buying a round came into being. However, it’s not against a true cowboy’s nature to pull your leg either, so take that with a grain of salt.

Rimfire versus CenterFire

The most popular cartridge consumed worldwide is the rimfire .22-Caliber long rifle cartridge. More .22 cartridges are produced than ammunition for all the armies of all the world. The diminutive .22 cartridge is used for hunting small game, killing pests and varmints (up to coyote size), and target practice. Although not recommended due to its poor stopping power, it is also carried as a personal protection round.

In a rimfire round the priming compound is poured into the empty case and permitted to dry. The compound settles in the base of the cartridge, around the rim (hence the name). After the compound dries, the cartridge case is filled with powder and caped with a bullet.

When the round is struck sharply on the rim, the priming compound is ignited, thus igniting the powder, and creating a great deal of pressure which pushes the bullet down the barrel. Since the brass cartridge case is permanently dented by the ignition, rimfire cases are unable to be reloaded.

The other major type of cartridge is the centerfire cartridge. In a centerfire cartridge, the priming compound is inserted into a recess in the center of the cartridge case (see illustration). Since the priming compound (or primer) is self-contained, spent rounds can be easily removed and the brass reloaded and used again.

Cartridge versus Shell

The fact of the matter is that when you deal with firearms, you’ll hear lots of terms … many used incorrectly … Go figure. For the purpose of this book, a cartridge is a self-contained metallic hulled device consisting of a single projectile, a propellant, and a priming compound. A shell is a self-contained cylinder consisting of a priming compound, a propellant, one or more projectiles (separated from the powder by a wad). Shells are most commonly used in shotguns; however, some shot shells are marketed to be loaded in handguns, primarily for snake and rodent control (these are commonly called rat shot or snake shot). So when you’re talking about a shotgun, you don’t reach for cartridges, you reach for