Rifle

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Rifle" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting and higher stopping power, with a barrel that has a helical or spiralling pattern of grooves (rifling) cut into the bore wall.^[1][2][3] In keeping with their focus on accuracy,^[4] rifles are typically designed to be held with both hands and braced firmly against the shooter's shoulder via a buttstock for stability during shooting. Rifles are used in warfare, law enforcement, hunting and target shooting sports.

The invention of rifling separated such firearms from the earlier smoothbore weapons (e.g., arquebuses, muskets, and other long guns), greatly elevating their accuracy and general effectiveness. The raised areas of a barrel's rifling are called lands; they make contact with and exert torque on the projectile as it moves down the bore, imparting a spin. When the projectile leaves the barrel, this spin persists and lends gyroscopic stability to the projectile due to conservation of angular momentum, increasing accuracy and hence effective range. The class of firearm was originally termed the rifled gun, with the verb to rifle referring to the early modern machining process of creating grooves with cutting tools. By the 20th century, the weapon had become so common that the modern noun rifle is now often used for any log-shaped handheld ranged weapon designed for well-aimed discharge activated by a trigger.

Like all typical firearms, a rifle's projectile (bullet) is propelled by the contained deflagration of a combustible propellant compound (originally black powder and now nitrocellulose and other smokeless powders), although other propulsive means are used, such as compressed air in air rifles, which are popular for vermin control, small game hunting, competitive target shooting and casual sport shooting (plinking).