Firearm

A Japanese arquebus: The arquebus was the first firearm to become a main weapon of warfare.

Firearms are projectile weapons that use directed chemical explosions to propel projectiles at high speeds and are the most commonly used weapons in the world today. Firearms first emerged in China around 1100 and in Europe around 1300, after which they evolved into a form which made them a primary weapon of war by 1500. Over the next five centuries, developments in firearm technology would move warfare more and more towards ranged combat with melee being a minor consideration in war.

Types of Firearms

• Handgonnes/Firelances: The first firearms developed consisted basically of a small metal tube that was sealed off at one end with a hole drilled on its backside on a wooden handle. They were fired by putting a burning stick or wick into the drilled hole. Handgonnes were inacurate and mainly used for their intimidating effect, though they did have good armor penetration and were sucessfully used against Knights by the Hussites.
• Arquebuses: A more refined version of the Handgonne, an arquebus has a mechanism which brought a flaming wick to the powder to fire (often no more complex than an S shaped bar bolted to the side of the weapon) to make it easier to fire, load and allow a greater degree of control. Arquebuses would remain the most common type of firearm from the mid 15th to the mid 17th century.
• Wheel-locks: Wheel-locks use a spring-driven wheel grinding against a flint to generate a shower of sparks to ignite the powder.
• Flintlocks: Flintlocks use a piece of flint to strike a spark into a pan of powder to ignite the charge and fire. The flint is part of a spring loaded mechanism attached to a trigger.
• Pistol: Any compact, short-barreled firearm which can be fired easily with one hand.
• Rifles: Any firearm with a barrel that has several spiral groves cut into it to improve ballistics. Rifled firearms have a longer effective range than smoothbore guns. Rifles first emerged in the 16th century, but came to replace smoothbore guns by 1850.
• Breech Loading Rifles: A single shot rifle which has a mechanism allowing it to be loaded from the back end, as opposed to stuffing the shot down the length of a barrel. Breech Loading Rifles became the primary type of rifle around the 1860s to the 1890s.
• Repeaters: Any firearm which can store multiple shots inside itself to minimize the time between firings. One of the earliest widely used catagories of Repeaters was the Colt Revolver. The term has fallen out of use because modern firearms are typically Repeaters.
• Bolt-action Rifles
• Semi-automatic Firearms: Semi-automatic weapons use reaction force from the weapon discharge to eject the empty casing from the firing chamber and load a new round from the magazine.
• Assault Rifles
• Anti-material Rifles

Firearms in Science Fiction

In various science fiction series (especially those set in or close to modern times), firearms are often the primary form of small arms.

• The United States Colonial Marines in the Alien series make use of various firearms
• In Stargate, the forces of Earth make use of various projectile weapons
• Firearms are used in the Star Wars universe, generally by civilians among the more backwards sections of the Galaxy.

Firearms in Fantasy

Many fantasy writers steer clear of gunpowder weaponry, prefering to have their fiction in worlds in which gunpowder is absent or at least unrefined for military purposes, for several reasons.

• The most common reason for this is that most fantasy is based on mythology conceived of well before the development of firearms.
• Many fantasy writers are interested in pre-gunpowder means of warfare and romanticized conceptions about pre-gunpowder warfare, particularly the need for martial skill. One of the key reasons why firearms displaced earlier weapons of war was the ease with which it is possible to train conscripts in their use, thus making it possible to cheaply train armies of peasant Arquebusiers in months who could defeat knights who trained for years.
• In some settings, supernatural abilities are fairly commonly available which best at least early firearms and could conceivably divert societies from going along lines of development which would lead to the development of firearms (such as Bending in Avatar: The Last Airbender).

Their are exceptions to this rule, however.

Firearms in Politics

Their is a divide in ideology in regards to civilian firearm ownership. This is between those who beleive that beleive in tight regulation and restriction of firearm owenrship and those who beleive that such laws are counter productive and infringes on individual liberites (the latter viewpoint being common in the United States). Their is some division of opinions of this matter among SD.net's population on this matter and debates on the subject can get heated.