Bullet Calibur

I never said it would be a practical gun but it sure would be slick to look at!

The genetically manipulated bionic soldier of the distant future just might think it was a pea shooter if she saw it.

Spelling wrong.

Calibre is spelt this way.

If it was a sniper rifle then you could at least put it in a mount and reduce the recoil.

The pistol would fly past you probably taking your hand and or harm with it.

If you had your elbow bent even slightly when you squeezed the trigger, you'd probably give yourself a concussion. The recoil would send the barrel smashing into your forehead.

No, that's the French spelling, McT. It is sepelled 'caliber' in civilized English. (And isn't 'spelt' a variety of wheat?)

As Seed indicated, it coud very well be a practical gun,
if mounted to protect the gunner from recoil.
Obviously, the diameter of the slug will not hurt the gunner;
its the amount of powder that is inserted behind it in its shell.
Historically, larger caliber slugs have had more powder put behind them.
The rest is up to Isaac Newton and his 3rd Law of Motion.

So far as I 'm aware no sniper 's rifle has exceeded .50 caliber.
Some of these rifles (for shoulder use) are of very advanced design,
with a great deal of very careful, precise and creative engineering built into them
after experimentation and with good results at long distances; around 1.5 miles,
but thay r not necessrily slick in appearance.
Some of them look like boxy, cumbersome machines that get the job done effectively.
Some of their mfgrs. call them "weapons systems" rather than a rifle.
Thay have multiple accessories, including bi-pod or tri-pod braces and hand-held computers.

My prize for best slick appearance of any gun (not for sniping)
woud go to Georg Luger for his P-'08. I have one from 1940 in my collection,
most of which consists of revolvers.





David

Nothing beats the old German eighty-eight for a sniper rifle. Intended as an anti tank weapon, I believe, but on a slow day they could do some really cute stuff with it.

Really, the .50 BMG is about the limit. Air currents and heat shimmer are enough to defeat almost any shooter before its limits of accuracy are exceeded.

I just noticed that after getting snide with good ole McTag, I pulled a spellink error my own self. That bold-faced word should read 'spelled', not 'sepelled.' Dunno what language that'd be. Apologies.

Well we're all human beings here ... (at least I hope so...).

Sorry, this does not compute

One can only speak for oneself, tsar.

I can see your problem.

You guys have been using American reference books, which are wrong.

Geeze, is there anything you people can't hijack into an English language thread?

Just fooling around, pardon.

Anyway......shotguns are not usually classified by caliber/caliber, but by something like gauge.
What is that, and why?

That has something to do with the number of lead balls, the diameter of the barrel and how much is on a pound - are something like that.

Not too bad, my memory - but here's the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_(bore_diameter)][b]definition at wikipedia[/b].

Oh, okay. I was kiddin' too, since some people are charged with (at times, rightly) turning everything else into a gun thread.

One shotgun is classified by caliber. The .410 shotgun is often called a gauge, but it is really a 41 caliber.

I don't know why shotguns use a gauge designation instead of caliber, but I explained the system earlier in the thread. The gauge indicated how many bore sized lead balls it takes to equal one pound. Not just everyone knows this, by the way. Anyway, this is why the larger the bore, the smaller the gauge. Again, I don't know why they settled on the system. Just speculation, someone may have wanted to make it somewhat more unlikely for someone else to load a shotgun as they would the same size rifle. Rifle barrels are much thicker than shotgun barrels, so I assume rifle pressures are much higher.

I also don't know why wire is designated by gauge instead of thickness.

I got a page error Walt, but it's probably substantially the same as my answer a few days ago.

My bad, sorry.

Fixed link for "gauge (bore diameter)"