Repeating Firearm

A repeating firearm or repeater is any firearm (either a handgun or long gun) that is capable of being fired repeatedly before having to manually reload new ammunition into the weapon.

Unlike single-shot firearms, which can only hold and fire one round, a repeating firearm can store multiple cartridges inside a magazine (either internal or detachable), a cylinder (as in revolvers) or a belt (as in machine guns), and uses a moving action to manipulate each cartridge into, and out of, battery position (within the chamber and in alignment with the bore). This allows the weapon to be discharged repeatedly, in relatively quick succession, before a manual ammunition reload is needed.

Typically the term "repeaters" refers to the more ubiquitous single- barreled variants. Multiple-barrel firearms such as derringers, pepperbox guns, double-barreled rifles, double-barreled shotguns, combination guns, and volley guns can also hold and fire more than one cartridges (one in each barrel) before needing reloads, but do not use magazines for ammunition storage and also lack any moving actions to facilitate ammo-feeding, which makes them technically just bundled assemblies of multiple single-shot barrels fired in succession or simultaneously, therefore not ''true'' repeating firearms despite the functional resemblance. On the contrary, rotary-barrel firearms (e.g. Gatling guns), though also multi-barreled, ''do'' use belts/magazines with moving actions for feeding ammunition, which allow each barrel to fire repeatedly just like any single-barreled repeater, and therefore still qualify as repeating firearms from a technical point of view.

Although repeating flintlock breechloading firearms (e.g. the Lorenzóni/Cookson repeater and Kalthoff repeater) had been invented as early as the 17th century, the first repeating firearms that received widespread use were revolvers and lever-action repeating rifles in the 19th century. These were a significant advance over the preceding single-shot breechloading guns, as they allowed a much greater rate of fire as well as a longer interval between reloads for more sustained firing, and the widespread use of metallic cartridges also made reloading these weapons quicker and more convenient. Revolvers became very popular sidearms since its introduction by the Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company in the late 1830s, and repeating rifles saw use in the early 1860s during the American Civil War. Repeating pistols were invented during the 1880s, and became widely adopted after design contributions from inventors such as John Browning and Georg Luger were introduced in the early 20th century.

The first repeating gun to see military service was actually not a firearm, but an airgun. The Girardoni air rifle, designed by Italian inventor Bartolomeo Girardoni circa 1779 and more famously associated with the Lewis and Clark Expedition into western North America during the early 1800s, was one of the first guns to make use of a tubular magazine.

Early repeaters

* Kalthoff repeater (about 1630)
* Lorenzoni repeater (about 1650)
* Lagatz Rifle: a modification of the Lorenzoni System, designed by Danzig gunsmith Daniel Lagatz around the year 1700.
* Harmonica gun (1742)
* Cookson repeater (1750)
* Fafting Rifle: In 1774 a rifle was invented by a Norwegian colonel by the name of Fafting capable of firing 18 to 20 shots a minute and being used as an ordinary rifle by taking off a spring-loaded container attached to the gun's lock. It was also stated that the inventor was working on a gun capable of firing up to 30 times in a minute on more or less the same principles.
* Girandoni air rifle (1779)
* 1789 French Rifle: In 1791 it was mentioned in a book published in France that there existed since at least 1789 a rifle that held 5 or 6 shots and was capable of being reloaded three times in a minute for a total of 15 or 18 shots a minute. A rifle similar in type to this was also stated to be kept at the Hotel de la Guerre( fr).
* Church and Bartemy/Bartholomew gun: A repeating rifle designed by the Americans William Church and Chrostus Bartemy or Bartholomew in 1813 with three separate magazines for containing up to 42 charges of ammunition and capable of firing 25 shots a minute. It could be reloaded in one minute.
* Thomson Rifle: a flintlock repeating rifle patented in 1814, using multiple breeches to obtain repeating fire.
* Lepage Guns: In 1819 a French gunsmith called Lepage invented and presented at the French industrial exposition of that year percussion 2-shot and 4-shot turn-over rifles. In 1823 he exhibited a volley rifle that fired 7 rifled barrels simultaneously as well as a turn-over carbine. In 1827, the same inventor exhibited at another French industrial exposition 11 percussion and 1 flintlock firearms which included a 4-shot turn-over rifle, a 'double rifle' with a cylinder with 5 charges and a 'single rifle' and a pair of pistols also with a cylinder with 5 charges.
* Sutherland Magazine Pistol: In 1821 the British gunmakers R and R Sutherland advertised for auction, amongst a variety of firearms, a single-barrelled six-shot magazine pistol.
* Pirmet-Baucheron Revolving Rifle: In 1822 a French gunsmith called Pirmet-Baucheron presented a revolving rifle with 7 shots and a single lock.
* Hewson Magazine Gun: In 1824 an English gunsmith called W. P. Hewson advertised, amongst other firearms and one air gun, a magazine gun.
* Jobard Rifle: a turret rifle with 14 shots patented in Belgium in 1826 and presented to the government in 1835.
* Henry Rifle: a French 14 shot flintlock rifle in the style of the Kalthoff and Lorenzoni rifles patented in 1831 (granted in 1835) by Francois-Antoine Henry though possibly based on an earlier design published in 1809 by the same author.
* Kavanagh Pistol: In 1834 a variety of pistols were exhibited by the Irish gunsmith William Kavanagh, one of which had a 'revolving breech' capable of firing 7 or 8 times, as well as a 'self-loading pistol'.
* Silas Day Magazine Gun: A percussion revolving rifle to which was attached a loose-powder-and-ball magazine patented in the US in 1837.
* Colt Ring Lever rifles (1837)
* Bailey, Ripley and Smith Magazine Rifle: In 1838 the Americans Lebbeus Bailey, John B. Ripley and William B. Smith patented a percussion repeating rifle with a gravity-operated tubular magazine in the stock which could hold up to 15 re-useable steel cartridge-chambers.
* Eaton Rifle: In 1838 a percussion rifle invented in America by James Eaton was described as being capable of holding 24 rounds in a rotating magazine and discharging them all in four minutes for a rate of fire of 6 rounds per minute.
* Kratsch Rifle: In 1839 it was reported that a mechanic called Kratsch from Bayreuth had invented a rifle capable of firing 30 times in a minute and being reloaded in one minute.
* Devisme Guns: In 1844 a French gunsmith known as Devisme presented a variety of repeating firearms for the French Industrial Exposition of 1844 including an 18 shot pistol with no visible hammer or lock, a 6 shot pistol, a rifle with 6 shots and a 'revolving thunder' and a four shot 'double acting' rifle.
* Jennings Magazine Rifle: in 1847 Walter Hunt patented in Britain a repeating rifle he called "the Volitional Repeater". He would patent it again in the United States in 1849. This rifle featured a tubular magazine beneath the barrel and a lever mechanism to raise cartridges into the chamber. Unable to finance the building of the rifle, Hunt sold the rights to George Arrowsmith who in turn had an employee, Lewis Jennings, improve the lever mechanism. Courtland Palmer placed the first order for the "Jennings Magazine rifle" for his hardware store: Robbins & Lawrence. The rifle did not sell well as the ammunition was a hollow based bullet containing gunpowder. Most of the guns were later converted to single shot rifles. Two employees working at Robbins & Lawrence: Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson improved the design and sold it as the "Smith-Jennings Repeating Rifle". At first they used a slightly modified Flobert cartridge, patented in 1853, but later they would switch to a modified Rocket Ball type of ammunition altered so as to function as a self-contained centerfire cartridge.
* Cass Repeating Belt Gun: A percussion repeating rifle patented in 1848 in the US using a chain or belt in the stock which carried paper cartridges to the breech of the gun.
* Buchel Cartridge Magazine Gun: The first tubular cartridge magazine gun to be patented in the United States in February 1849.
* Perry 'Faucet-Breech' Gun: A hinged or tilting breech repeating rifle patented in the US in December 1849 by Alonzo Perry using paper cartridges contained in several gravity-operated tubular magazines in the stock and a separate magazine for fulminate pills which were used for ignition.
* Porter Self-Loading Gun: In February 1851 a loose-powder-and-ball percussion magazine gun invented by a Parry W. Porter, better known for the turret rifle he invented and to which the magazine for his loose-powder-and-ball gun was to be attached, was reported on in American newspapers and later in the same year a patent was procured by the inventor.
* Needham Self-Loading Carbine: A self-loading carbine demonstrated in June 1851 at the Great Exhibition by Joseph Needham.
* Dixon Self-Loading and Self-Priming Gun: A repeating gun demonstrated by a C. S. Dixon which won a silver award at the Annual Fair of the American Institute in October 1851.
* The first slide action patent: Issued in Britain in 1854, to Alexander Bain who modified the mechanism of a harmonica gun.
* 1854 Lindner Revolving Rifle: In 1854 the German Edward Lindner patented in the United States and Britain a repeating rifle which used a revolving cylinder to elevate the cartridges, which were paper and could be either self-contained needlefire cartridges or use external percussion caps for ignition, to the breech from a tubular magazine located under the barrel.
* Colette Gravity Pistol: a repeating saloon gun premiered at the 1855 World's Fair. Despite popularly being known as the Colette Gravity Pistol its original inventor was actually a Belgian called Jean Nicolas Herman.
* Colt revolving rifle (1855)
* Leroux Magazine Gun: At the Exposition Universelle (1855) in France a French gunsmith called Leroux demonstrated a repeating carbine with a magazine for 36 Flobert cartridges and which featured a novel cartridge extractor.
* Spencer repeating rifle (1860)
* Roper repeating shotgun (1866)

Mechanisms

Manual

In a manually-operated repeating firearm (or "manual repeater" for short), the user needs to manually apply force to the action to operate it, either directly via a handle on the bolt or an external hammer, or indirectly via linkaged lever or slide.

Revolver action

Colt Holster Model Paterson Revolver No. 5
Circuit Judge revolver mechanism carbine

Revolvers use a rotating cylinder containing multiple chambers, which functions similarly to a rotary magazine (with each chamber holding a round of cartridge). When the hammer is cocked (either directly by hand, or indirect via trigger-pull), internal linkage will rotate the cylinder and index each chamber into alignment with the barrel bore. When firing, the bullet will make a slight "jump" across the gap between the cylinder and the barrel, creating out a small "breech blast" from any hot, high-pressure propellant gas that leaks out of the gap. The breech portion of the bore is also often widened slightly into a funnel-like "cone" to better facilitate the bullet jump across the cylinder gap.

Although multiple-barrel " pepper-box" guns had appeared for centuries and were popular handguns in the early 19th century, the revolver was the first ''true'' repeating handgun. In 1836, Samuel Colt applied patent for a "revolving gun" later named the Colt Paterson; he was granted the patent on 25 February 1836 (later numbered 9430X). This instrument and patent No. 1304, dated 29 August 1836, protected the basic principles of his revolving-breech-loading, folding- trigger firearm and gave him a monopoly of revolver manufacture until 1857. It was the first practical revolver and the first practical repeating firearm, and became an industrial and cultural legacy as well as a contribution to the development of war technology, represented ironically by the name of one of his company's later innovations, the "Peacemaker".

While some early long guns were also made using the revolver mechanism, these did not have longevity as it posed a problem with long guns: without special sealing details, the cylinder produces a gas discharge close to the face when the weapon is fired from the shoulder, as was a common approach with rifles.

Revolver cannon

A revolver cannon is a large-caliber gun (cannon) that uses a revolver-like cylinder to speed up the loading-firing-ejection cycle. Unlike a rotary cannon, a revolver cannon has only a single gun barrel. An early precursor was the Puckle gun of 1718, a large manually-operated flintlock gun, whose design idea was impractical due to it being far ahead of what 18th century technology could achieve. During the 19th century, The Confederate Army used a single 2-inch revolver cannon with 5 manually rotated chambers during the Siege of Petersburg. The gun was captured in Danville, Virginia by the Union Army on 27 April 1865.

Modern revolver cannons are actually automatically operated weapons. In 1905, C. M. Clarke patented the first fully automatic, gas-operated rotary chamber gun, but his design was ignored at the time as it came as reciprocating-bolt automatic weapons like the Maxim gun and the Browning gun were peaking in popularity. In 1932, the Soviet ShKAS machine gun, a 7.62 mm calibre aircraft ordnance, used a twelve-round capacity, revolver-style feeding mechanism with a single barrel and single chamber, to achieve firing rates of well over 1800 rounds per minute, and as high as 3,000 rounds per minute in special test versions in 1939, all operating from internal gas-operated reloading. Some 150,000 ShKAS weapons were produced for arming Soviet military aircraft through 1945. Around 1935, Silin, Berezin and Morozenko worked on a 6000 rpm 7.62 mm aircraft machine gun using revolver design, called SIBEMAS (СИБЕМАС), but the project was abandoned.

It was not until the mid-1940s that the first practical modern revolver cannon emerged. The archetypal revolver cannon is the Mauser MK 213, from which almost all current revolver cannons are derived. In the immediate post-war era, Mauser engineers spread out from Germany and developed similar weapons around the world. Both the British and French made outright copies of the 30 mm versions of the MK 213, as the ADEN and DEFA, respectively. Switzerland produced the Oerlikon KCA. The American M39 cannon used the 20 mm version, re-chambered for a slightly longer 102 mm cartridge, intermediate between the 213's 82 mm and Hispano-Suiza HS.404's 110 mm. Several generations of the basic ADEN/DEFA weapons followed, remaining largely unchanged into the 1970s. Around that time, a new generation of weapons developed, based on the proposed NATO 25 mm caliber standard and the Mauser 27 mm round. A leading example is the Mauser BK-27. In the 1980s, the French developed the GIAT 30, a newer generation power-driven revolver cannon. The Rheinmetall RMK30 modifies the GIAT system further, by venting the gas to the rear to eliminate recoil. Larger experimental weapons have also been developed for anti-aircraft use, like the Anglo-Swiss twin barrel but single chamber 42 mm Oerlikon RK 421 given the code name "Red King" and the related single-barrel "Red Queen" – all of which were cancelled during development. The largest to see service is the Rheinmetall Millennium 35 mm Naval Gun System.

Soviet revolver cannon are less common than Western ones, especially on aircraft. A mechanism for a Soviet revolver-based machine gun was patented in 1944. The virtually unknown Rikhter R-23 was fitted only to some Tu-22 models, but later abandoned in favor of the two-barrel, Gast gun Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-23 in the Tu-22M. The Rikhter R-23 does have the distinction of being fired from the space station Salyut 3. The Soviet navy has also adopted a revolver design, the NN-30, typically in a dual mount in the AK-230 turret.

Lever-action

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In a classic Henry Repeating Arms">Henry-Winchester Repeating Arms">Winchester type lever-action firearm, cartridges are loaded tandemly into a tubular magazine below the barrel. A short bolt is manipulated via linkage to a pivoted cocking lever. Once closed, an over-center toggle action helps locking the bolt in place and prevents the breech from opening accidentally when the weapon is fired. The cocking lever is often integral with the trigger guard, and gets manually flexed down and forward when operated. An interlock prevents firing unless the toggle is fully closed. The famous Model 1873 Winchester is exemplary of this type. Later lever-action designs, such as Marlin lever guns and those designed for Winchester by John Browning, use one or two vertical locking blocks instead of a toggle-link. There also exist lever-action rifle/shotguns that feed from a box magazine, which allows them to use pointed bullets. Some of the early manual repeating pistols (e.g. Volcanic pistol) also use a scaled-down version of lever-action.

A one-off example of lever-action loading on an automatic firearm is the M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun. This weapon had a swinging lever beneath its barrel that was actuated by a gas bleed in the barrel, unlocking the breech to reload. This unique operation gave the nickname "potato digger" as the lever swung each time the weapon fired.

Pump-action

The Colt Lightning .22 pump action rifle

With a pump-action firearm, the action is operated by sliding a movable handguard on the fore-end backwards and forwards, with manipulated the bolt via linkage to eject a spent round, and extract and chamber a fresh round of ammunition. Pump-actions are usually associated with shotguns, but one example of a pump-action rifle is the Remington Model 7600 series. Rifles with pump action are also called slide-action. This style of rifle is still popular with some local law enforcement branches as a rifle that is easy to train officers who are already familiar with the pump shotgun.

Bolt-action

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