Long gunA long gun is a category of firearms with long barrels. In small arms, a long gun or longarm is generally designed to be held by both hands and braced against the shoulder, in contrast to a handgun, which can be fired being held with a single hand. In the context of cannons and mounted firearms, an artillery long gun would be contrasted with a field gun or howitzer. The actual length of the barrels of a long gun is subject to various laws in many jurisdictions, mainly concerning minimum length, sometimes as measured in a specific position or configuration.
Leopard 1The Kampfpanzer Leopard 1 (also styled Leopard I, before the Leopard 2 simply known as the Kampfpanzer Leopard) is a main battle tank designed by Porsche and manufactured by Krauss-Maffei in West Germany, first entering service in 1965. Developed in an era when HEAT warheads were thought to make conventional heavy armour of limited value, the Leopard design focused on effective firepower and mobility instead of heavy protection. It featured moderate armour, only effective against low caliber autocannons and heavy machine guns, giving it a high power-to-weight ratio.
Machine gunA machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled auto-loading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) are typically designed more for firing short bursts rather than continuous firepower and are not considered true machine guns. Submachine guns fire handgun cartridges rather than rifle cartridges, therefore they are not considered machine guns, while automatic firearms of caliber or more are classified as autocannons rather than machine guns.
AutocannonAn autocannon, automatic cannon or machine cannon is a fully automatic gun that is capable of rapid-firing large-caliber ( or more) armour-piercing, explosive or incendiary shells, as opposed to the smaller-caliber kinetic projectiles (bullets) fired by a machine gun. Autocannons have a longer effective range and greater terminal performance than machine guns, due to the use of larger/heavier munitions (most often in the range of , but bigger calibers also exist), but are usually smaller than tank guns, howitzers, field guns, or other artillery.
RecoilRecoil (often called knockback, kickback or simply kick) is the rearward thrust generated when a gun is being discharged. In technical terms, the recoil is a result of conservation of momentum, as according to Newton's third law the force required to accelerate something will evoke an equal but opposite reactional force, which means the forward momentum gained by the projectile and exhaust gases (ejectae) will be mathematically balanced out by an equal and opposite momentum exerted back upon the gun.
General-purpose machine gunA general-purpose machine gun (GPMG) is an air-cooled, usually belt-fed machine gun that can be adapted flexibly to various tactical roles for light and medium machine guns. A GPMG typically features a quick-change barrel design calibered for various fully powered cartridges such as the 7.62×51mm NATO, 7.62×54mmR, 7.5×54mm French, 7.5×55mm Swiss and 7.92×57mm Mauser, and be configured for mounting to different stabilizing platforms from bipods and tripods to vehicles, aircraft, boats and fortifications, usually as an infantry support weapon or squad automatic weapon.
Assault gunAn assault gun (from Sturmgeschütz, storm gun, meaning "assault gun") is a type of self-propelled artillery which uses an infantry support gun mounted on a motorized chassis, normally an armored fighting vehicle, which are designed to provide direct fire support for infantry attacks, especially against other infantry or fortified positions. Assault guns were pioneered by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during the 1930s, initially being self-propelled guns with direct fire in mind (such as the Soviet SU-5-1), with Germany introducing the first purpose-built (and purpose-named) assault gun, the Sturmgeschütz III, in 1940.
Maxim gunThe Maxim gun is a recoil-operated machine gun invented in 1884 by Hiram Stevens Maxim. It was the first fully automatic machine gun in the world. The Maxim gun has been called "the weapon most associated with imperial conquest" by historian Martin Gilbert, and was heavily used by colonial powers during the "Scramble for Africa". Afterwards, Maxim guns also saw extensive usage by different armies during the Russo-Japanese War, the First and Second World Wars, as well as in contemporary conflicts.
