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In 1842, the Norwegian Armed Forces adopted the breech-loading caplock, the Kammerlader, one of the first instances in which a modern army widely adopted a breech-loading rifle as its main infantry firearm. The Dreyse Zündnadelgewehr (Dreyse needle gun) was a single-shot breech-loading rifle using a rotating bolt to seal the breech
Projectile (early on with shot and then later on with shells) and powder charge are loaded via the muzzle and rammed down the barrel, and then fired at the target. Muzzle-loading artillery came in smoothbore and rifled form, the rifled guns increasingly taking over from the smoothbores as time past and technology improved.
A muzzleloader is any firearm in which the user loads the projectile and the propellant charge into the muzzle end of the gun (i.e., from the forward, open end of the gun's barrel). This is distinct from the modern designs of breech-loading firearms, in which user loads the ammunition into the breech end of the barrel .
The hinged block used in the earliest metallic-cartridge breechloaders designed for general military issue began as conversions of muzzle-loading rifle-muskets. The upper rear portion of the barrel was filed or milled away and replaced by a hinged breechblock, which opened upward to permit loading.
A bolt is the part of a repeating, breechloading firearm that blocks the rear opening (breech) of the barrel chamber while the propellant burns, and moves back and forward to facilitate loading/unloading of cartridges from the magazine. The firing pin and extractor are often integral parts of the bolt.
Metallic cartridges package projectile, propellant and primer together. They are initiated by striking with a firing pin or striker that passes through the breechblock.Early metallic-cartridge, single-shot breechloading rifles, such as the British Snider–Enfield model 1866 and the American Springfield model 1873, continued to use side-mounted hammers and lock mechanisms that differed little ...
Some simple submachine gun designs, such as the Sten, can discharge spontaneously when dropped onto a hard surface – even when uncocked – as the collision can jolt the bolt backward far enough that on returning it will pick up a round from the magazine, chamber it and fire it; the risk is intrinsic to hand-held open-bolt guns unless safety ...
A muzzle-loading rifle is a muzzle-loaded small arm that has a rifled barrel rather than a smoothbore, and is loaded from the muzzle of the barrel rather than the breech. Historically they were developed when rifled barrels were introduced by the 1740ies, which offered higher accuracy than the earlier smoothbores.