For many years, gun ownership in the United States has been on the increase leading to violence in various states. Although there are inadequate studies on the correlation between the prevalence of arms to violent crimes, guns used during these incidents have been identified and described. On the contrary, weaponry is utilized by law enforcement officers during operations, for recreation, and sometimes in illegal activities by criminals. Consequently, such crimes are meted by intelligence experts using the latest imaging technology (National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, 2019). Moreover, firearms are divided into handguns which consist of pistols and revolvers, and long guns comprising of rifles and shotguns. This paper explores the types and characteristics of guns as used by different groups of people.
As aforementioned in the preceding paragraph, there are various fire arms used by different groups of people. For instance, a rifle is long-barreled gun which is usually fired by the shoulder of the bearer. It has spiral grooves inside its barrel which results in a rapid revolution during a single projectile. Similarly, a short gun is long and fired from the shoulder but it is not characterized by rifling and is meant for large quantities of shots rather than a single bullet as compared to the aforementioned fire arm (United Nations, n.d.). Also, the other fire arm is the sub- and the machine gun where the latter is an automatic firearm that continues loading and firing until it is jammed or the bullets are exhausted.
Furthermore, a sub-machinegun is light and contains low-energy and fewer cartridges that are fired from the hip, hand, and shoulders. In addition, a revolver contains a cylinder consisting of shells in chambers that keep rotating into position and as the trigger is pulled, they are released to hit the target. In addition, apart from pistols being commonly available, their cartridges are contained in magazines that are inserted into the guns (United Nations, n.d.). For example, when a machine gun is fired, the bullets are released and others are fed into the chamber automatically.
Another type of fire arm is a combined gun which is shoulder-held and consists of 2 barrels; that of a rifle and a shotgun. In most cases, these two features are configured by billing which leads to two outlets; drilling modifies them to 3, while vierling produces 4 barrels (United Nations, n.d.). However, the unique feature is that it is single -shot action. Similarly, the recent increase in illegal guns across the world has introduced another type of rudimentary-firearm or craft guns. These are not manufactured in the legal weapon producing industries. They consist of ammunition and guns that are fabricated in small quantities.
The rudimentary or crafted firearms do not have specific characteristics as the other guns since they are a combination of the other weapons. These include copycat rifles, shotguns, and pistols with specific ammunition (United Nations, n.d.). Further, there are specifically crafted expensive bespoke guns used for special target shooting and trophy hunting. Such machines are difficult to design and describe characteristically, but they can be identified and classified by the Automated Firearms Ballistic Technology (AFBT) (National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, 2019). Therefore, they are in a position to determine and classify the guns by evaluating their used bullets and casings.
In conclusion, crafted and combined type of weapons have become popular among various groups since they are readily available. While it is difficult to describe them, they have features of a machine gun, a pistol and automatic rifle in one weapon. Lastly, automated fire arms such as short guns are long in appearance, fired from the shoulder of a person and they usually carry many bullets, thus making them favorable weapons for hunting.
References
National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. (2019). Automated firearms ballistics technology. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Web.
United Nations. (n.d.). Classification. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Web.