Parts of a Gun

Yahoo Answers here:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080427213418AAdk4Zj

Includes link to schematic and parts list. I'll paste that here:

http://www.e-gunparts.com/productschem.asp?chrMasterModel=0660zHUNTSMAN

Don't forget many of those parts are screwed in and wouldn't be easily detached and thrown away. Both pistols I owned had only the magazine easily detached. In a rifle you take off the bayonet, sling, bolt and magazine in that order.

The magazine holds the bullets.

The slide helps remove the empty bullet shell and reload another. The barrel is a separate piece. It can also help expel gas and heat.

Some military weapons (M9/9mm Berretta and, to a degree, the M16/AR-15) can be pulled apart quickly, but they are made to do that so soldiers can clean and move on quickly. Not every weapon is like this.

Remember, it's a movie and there's artistic license involved. If the gun had been fired before Jet Li did whatever he'd done, he would have burned his hand.

And along an entirely different line, removing the firing pin is the most surefire way to make a handgun or rifle useless.

There is a retaining pin that must be pushed out of the gun. Once that's out, the slide (top of the gun) will slide forward and off. you now have the barrel and the recoil spring.
The magazine is ejected by pushing a button on the handle behind the trigger housing. The magazine holds all the bullets.
To take the automatic pistol down any further, you need tools.

Given you describe it as a civilian's gun, the gun in your story is not an auto and it is a handgun, so it is either a revolver or a semi-auto. Both revolvers and semi-auto pistols are very quick and easy to turn into two pieces (--not counting dropping the mag of the semi-auto, which would be a third piece. If a round is in the chamber, then a semi-auto is not unloaded merely by dropping the mag because the round is still in the chamber. The chambered, semi-auto w/ a released mag can still fire (once).)

If you pick a semi-auto, do not use the word "cartridge" as your character breaks down the pistol.

There's nothing like hands on, or at least being in person w/ someone who can talk you through pics. Given you're in So Ko, I realize you likely don't have access to an arsenal, but are you close to Kunsan or Osan? Just ask.

Hehehe... you copied my thread (Here's the one I started; it's got a lot of good information, like the fact that guns aren't generally that easy to pull apart unless you're writing comedy)

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124703

People have already given good advice, but I just wanted to echo the terminology. PLEASE do not call it a cartridge or a clip. Please, for the love of all that is holy.

This entire thread is really sad. Much of it is the blind leading the blind. At best, it's the sighted trying to shortcut a complicated description for the unsighted.

While it's true someone familiar with most single-action revlovers (cowboy six-guns) can remove the cylinder pin and cylinder without tools, it's not a slick one-handed, half-second move like in those completely fakey martial arts movies. Do you also believe the heros fly through the air and dodge bullets in slow motion?

Most double action revolvers cannot be reduced to ineffective parts without tools and time. Period.

Most semi-automatic pistols require a series of actions before the barrel link pin can be removed to separate the slide housing from the frame. For instance, for that operation with a 1911 model, the barrel bushing must be turned and the spring housing released before the slide is placed in the precise position to punch out the link pin. It takes several seconds. Anyone who says different learned gunlore from TV.

Most other disassembly of a semi-autos is similar. Otherwise, the weapon could and would fall apart in use.

A cartridge is an assembled bullet, casing, primer, and powder. It's not part of a pistol or revolver except when the firearm is loaded.

In this case, "poetic license" is writing what one hasn't a clue about. As someone mentioned, it turns into comedy.

All I know is what my father--who was a police officer for almost 25 years--told me, which was that only video games call magazines clips or cartridges. But that's one bloke, so...

Here is a case where a picture is worth a thousand words.

And to me, the pictures say it takes two hands and several seconds to position the slide on the frame so the link pin may be removed to separate the two major groups.

No Glock owner at the range this morning could manage it faster or with one hand. Of course Jet Li wasn't there.

Chase said:

And to me, the pictures say it takes two hands and several seconds to position the slide on the frame so the link pin may be removed to separate the two major groups.

No Glock owner at the range this morning could manage it faster or with one hand. Of course Jet Li wasn't there.

Click to expand...

That's why he's Jet Li. Mere mortals cannot measure up.

semilargeintestine said:

All I know is what my father--who was a police officer for almost 25 years--told me, which was that only video games call magazines clips or cartridges. But that's one bloke, so...

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Your father is correct. A magazine is not a clip. A clip is a device holding cartridges for loading into a magazine.

In weapons nomanclature, a cartridge is a round of ammunition, not a device for holding ammunition.

Perhaps some writer somewhere confused an audio or video cartridge, which often resembled a weapons magazine, which brings us full circle to my comment about trying to explain complicated weapons designs in over-simplified terms.

For what it's worth, this was actually a concern in the early versions of the Beretta 92. While I don't know of any first-hand anecdotal evidence, apparently the early Berettas (what Riggs carries) had an issue where a suspect could grab the slide and pull it right off the front of the weapon, as if it was being field stripped. I've heard two versions: that it could be done just by pulling the slide forward (until the problem was corrected with a slide stop/lock), and two that you needed to squeeze a button/lever at the same time.



http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/guns/berettam9.htm

http://www.thefiringline.com/forum/showthread.php?p=334673

The Grift said:

For what it's worth, this was actually a concern in the early versions of the Beretta 92. While I don't know of any first-hand anecdotal evidence, apparently the early Berettas (what Riggs carries) had an issue where a suspect could grab the slide and pull it right off the front of the weapon, as if it was being field stripped. I've heard two versions: that it could be done just by pulling the slide forward (until the problem was corrected with a slide stop/lock), and two that you needed to squeeze a button/lever at the same time.



http://www.borelliconsulting.com/evals/guns/berettam9.htm

http://www.thefiringline.com/forum/showthread.php?p=334673

Click to expand...

Version two is correct.

semilargeintestine said:

All I know is what my father--who was a police officer for almost 25 years--told me, which was that only video games call magazines clips or cartridges. But that's one bloke, so...

Click to expand...

I'm a police officer and I call it a 'clip' all the time.

When I'm at the range.

And the rangemasters are around to hear it.

Mainly to watch them cry. Cause it's fun.

They, of course, think it's fun to tell me I failed because of the heretofore unmentioned part of the course that I was unaware of - and was supposed to read their mind to figure out.

Which they do. A lot.

Mainly to watch me cry. Cause it's fun.

Rabe...

semilargeintestine said:

All I know is what my father--who was a police officer for almost 25 years--told me. . . .

Click to expand...

Rabe said:

I'm a police officer and I call it a 'clip' all the time.

Click to expand...

One of the huge pieces of gun misinformation out there is that law enforcement officers know all there is to know about guns.

I edit for a firearms magazine group, and many writers ask staff to verify information from a friend or relative who's a policeman or deputy and are shocked to learn their source is often as full of beans as a case of frijoles.

It's as if carrying one transmits gun knowledge by osmosis. If that were true, every cop would also be an expert on every intricate detail of radios, minutia about four-door sedans, and how to bake and glaze every variety of doughnuts.

It's very much like expecting clothing models to be expert seamstresses and tailors. A few may be; the great mass of them aren't.

By the same token, since I've competed many firearms schools, worked as an instructor and competed with firearms for decades, I should then know all there is to know about police work.

The truth is I don't have a clue, and much of what I pick up from cops on the range is pure BS. I often wish law enforcement officers would be as honest when asked about weaponry.

Well, to take the Beretta 92 apart (Martin Riggs' gun in LW4): push in disassembly button on right-side of frame and, while holding button in, push disassembly lever down on left side of frame (opposite said button), then pull slide, barrel, recoil spring, and guiderod forward off of frame. If you can manage that with one hand or two, it'll come apart.

Most other popular service pistols, although a little more complicated than that, still come apart easily, though it's certainly a two-handed affair because slide disassembly notches, barrel link pins, barrel plungers, bushings, ejectors, sear disconnectors, disassembly levers and so forth have to be pushed, rotated, lined up, or otherwise doodled with in some concert to make them work.

That said, what you have in mind can be done, and pretty quickly, too, but in the midst of a fight, it would be easier to simply throw the gun as far away as possible, or, if you want to take a little longer, dump the ammo one way, the gun another. If you want to know how to disassemble a given firearm, just Google "[type of gun] field strip". As to parts and names, Brownells.com hosts a buncha exploded parts diagrams for a variety of firearms. Just click a part # and it'll tell you what that thing is. The start page for diagrams is here:

http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/schematics/SchemMFG.aspx

jst5150 said:

The magazine holds the bullets.

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If you want to get really picky, the cartridge is the thing that holds the bullets--the magazine holds the cartridges.

Early Mausser autos used clips--the same type of stripper clip that their rifles used. M1 Garands also used clips--the metal N clips--that made a loud "CLANG" when the last round was fired and the thing was ejected.

Forgot to add that there are a few more modern weapons that still use clips... Some Smith and Wesson revolvers--such as the 625 which fires .45 auto cartridges--can use half, and full moon clips, which I'd guess would be more efficient than a speed loader.

Tiger said:

Early Mausser autos used clips--the same type of stripper clip that their rifles used. M1 Garands also used clips--the metal N clips--that made a loud "CLANG" when the last round was fired and the thing was ejected.

Forgot to add that there are a few more modern weapons that still use clips... Some Smith and Wesson revolvers--such as the 625 which fires .45 auto cartridges--can use half, and full moon clips, which I'd guess would be more efficient than a speed loader.

Click to expand...

Good listing of clips. Another popular weapon utilizing clips was the .30 caliber carbine.

Bandoliers of ammunition came in stripper clips of 15. The carbine's removable magazine could be topped off from stripper clips when the magazine was in or out of the gun.

I think the M-1 rifle you mentioned and its famous "ka-ching" clip is what made "clip" a household word. The M-1 actually had a magazine, a built-in magazine which the clip filled. But since you couldn't see the magazine or remove it, the clip became the magazine.

In dialog, "clip" is still a handy word to say.

Here's the Jet Li scene from the movie. It is 3 minutes into this clip, I mean magazine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMTjcrSWHo0