Glossary

The base of the grip and backstrap on a handgun and the rearmost portion of the stock on a rifle or a shotgun (the part that braces against the shooter's shoulder).

A rifle configuration in which the action and magazine are located behind the trigger. This allows for a firearm smaller than your typical rifle without sacrificing barrel length.

A type of backstop that catches the fired bullet and prevents it from leaving the area. These are most commonly used for indoor shooting ranges.

This is the metal projectile portion of a cartridge or round that is propelled through a gun’s barrel to hit a target. A bullet is generally cylindrical in shape with one rounded end.

Often used for hunting large animals, this is ammunition for shotguns that have medium or large pellets that burst when fired. Buckshot pellets are around .24” in diameter, creating a bigger impact on the target. For hunters, that means a buckshot has the intensity to kill the animal quickly.

A box of ammunition that is roughly equal in size (and possibly weight) to an actual brick.

This is the portion of a gun’s barrel behind the bore. Depending on the model, a gun’s breech may contain the chamber or just the back of the barrel.

As in trigger break, which is the point at which the trigger allows the hammer to fall, releasing the striker and firing the shot.

A shooter's term for empty shell casings, as most shells are made of brass or have brass in them.

A type of cartridge whose bullet diameter is much smaller than the body diameter of the casing in which it rests.

To align the sights by sighting through the bore. When mounting a scope, it will get you close so it takes less time to sight in the rifle.

The diameter of the inside of the barrel after boring, but before rifling. In shotguns, for instance, the smaller the gauge of the firearm, the larger the bore diameter. 

This is an imaginary line that runs through the center of a handgun's barrel and out through the back of the gun. Different handguns have a different bore axis--either a high axis (above the hand) or a low axis (near the hand)--a high bore axis tends to create greater recoil and more muzzle flip when firing the gun than does a low bore axis.

Derived from the process used to make a barrel, this term refers to the interior of the gun barrel. A special drill is used to carve a hole inside a solid bar stock to make the bore. It can also be used to describe some sizes of shotgun shells.

This is a type of action that fires one round at a time. After the bullet is fired, the empty shell is unloaded by the user manually pulling back on the bolt before loading another round into the chamber.