- "I explained to you that guns were weapons of emotion and unpredictability, but since you are far from an expert at archery, this will have to do for now."
- —Oliver Queen to Helena Bertinelli[src]
A gun is a normally tubular weapon or other device designed to discharge projectiles or other materials. It launches one or more projectiles, (usually bullets, shells or energy blasts), often driven by the action of an explosive or propulsive force. The propulsion or explosion inside the gun tends to shake the user's hands and reduce accuracy, the process being called a recoil. This requires a user to grip the weapon in a certain way and train on how to use it more efficiently. This weapon is often used in Marksmanship.
Today, guns are very popular weapons for hunting and for sport, as well as for war, policing and home protection. Slade Wilson as Deathstroke, Chien Na Wei as China White, and Lyla Michaels as Harbinger all prefer to use this type of weapon. Some guns come in the form of portable, handheld firearms.
Some specially manufactured guns (A.S.A. & Monovista International's DEGs), those invented in special laboratories & organizations, or by Rip Hunter's time, or several alien weapons, are guns that shoot energy bolts or blasts of various colors and intensities, instead of any solid projectiles.
Types of guns
Service guns
- Long gun: A long gun is a type of firearm with longer barrels than most other types, it is generally designed to be held by both hands and braced against the shoulder, in contrast to a handgun; which can be fired being held with a single hand.
- Arquebus: A arquebus is a type of long gun.
- Assault rifle: An assault rifle is a selective-fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine.
- Automatic shotgun: An automatic shotgun is an automatic firearm that fires shotgun shells and uses some of the energy of each shot to automatically cycle the action and load a new round.
- Battle rifle: A battle rifle is a military service rifle that are fed ammunition via detachable magazines and fire a full-powered rifle cartridge.
- Blunderbuss: A blunderbuss is a firearm with a short, large caliber barrel which is flared at the muzzle and frequently throughout the entire bore, and used with shot and other projectiles of relevant quantity or caliber.
- Bolt action: A bolt action is a type of firearm action where the handling of cartridges into and out of the weapon's barrel chamber is operated by manually manipulating the bolt directly via a handle, which is most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the weapon.
- Carbine: A carbine is a long gun firearm but with a shorter barrel than a rifle or musket.
- Combat shotgun: A combat shotgun is a shotgun that is intended for use in an offensive role; typically by a military force.
- Grenade launcher: A grenade launcher is a weapon that fires a specially-designed large-caliber projectile, often with an explosive, smoke or gas warhead..
- Lever action: A lever action is a type of firearm action which uses a lever located around the trigger guard area to load fresh cartridges into the chamber of the barrel when the lever is worked.
- Musket: A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating heavy armor.
- Musketoon: A musketoon is a shorter-barrelled version of the musket and served in the roles of a shotgun or carbine.
- Personal defense weapon: A personal defense weapons are a class of compact, selective fire, magazine-fed, submachine gun-like firearms; a hybrid between a conventional submachine gun and a compact assault rifle.
- Rifle: A rifle is a portable, long-barrelled firearm designed for accurate long-range shooting, to be held with both hands and braced against the shoulder for stability during firing, and with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves ("rifling") cut into the bore wall.
- Semi-automatic shotgun: A semi-automatic shotgun is a shotgun that is able to fire a shell after every trigger pull, without needing to manually chamber another round.
- Service rifle: A service rifle, commonly known as a service weapon, also known as a standard-issue rifle, is a weapon which an armed force issues as standard to its service members.
- Sniper rifle: A sniper rifle is a high-precision rifle designed for sniper missions. It serves to fulfill the tactical need for long range surveillance; effective anti-personnel and anti-materiel operations with a high hit probability.
- Shotgun: A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug.
- Submachine gun: A sub machine gun is a magazine-fed, automatic carbine designed to shoot handgun cartridges.
- Wall gun: A wall gun, also known as a wall piece, is a type of smoothbore firearm used by defending forces to break the advance of enemy troops.
Machine guns
- Gatling gun: A Gatling gun is one of the best-known early rapid-fire spring loaded, hand cranked weapons, and a forerunner of the modern machine gun and rotary cannon.
- General-purpose machine gun: A general-purpose machine gun is an air-cooled, fully automatic weapon that can be adapted to light machine gun and medium machine gun roles.
- Heavy machine gun: A heavy machine gun is a class of machine gun implying greater characteristics than general-purpose machine guns or medium machine guns.
- M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle: A m27 infantry automatic rifle is a lightweight, magazine-fed 5.56mm, select-fire weapon based on the Heckler and Koch HK416; to enhance an automatic rifleman's maneuverability.
- Light machine gun: A light machine gun is a machine gun designed to be employed by an individual soldier; with or without an assistant, as an infantry support weapon.
- Machine pistol: A machine pistol is typically a handgun-style machine gun; capable of fully automatic or burst fire.
- Medium machine gun: A medium machine gun designed as an automatic firearm firing a full-power rifle cartridge.
- Minigun: A minigun, also known as a m134 minigun, is a six-barrel rotary machine gun with a high, sustained rate of fire.
- M249 light machine gun A m249 light machine gun is a light machine gun designed to effective of a number of candidate weapons to address the lack of automatic firepower in small units; it is provides infantry squads with the high rate of fire of a machine gun combined with accuracy and portability approaching that of a rifle.
- Submachine gun: A sub machine gun is a magazine-fed, automatic carbine designed to shoot handgun cartridges.
A handgun as thrown somewhere in Sarajevo; Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Handguns
- Machine pistol: A machine pistol is typically a handgun-style machine gun; capable of fully automatic or burst fire.
- Pistol: A pistol is a type of handgun.
- Revolver: A revolver is a repeating handgun that has a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing.
- Desert Eagle: A desert eagle is a semi-automatic handgun notable for chambering the largest centerfire cartridge of any magazine-fed, self-loading pistol. According to Luke Fox; it is the most powerful magazine-fed semi-automatic commercial handgun.
Often, energy guns use laser bolts instead of any solid projectiles.
Energy guns
By the 21st century in specialized laboratories, and especially by the 22nd century in Rip Hunter's time, energy weapons still have the appearance, functions, components, operation, and usage of modern firearms, as there are handguns that can resemble revolvers, with the exception that they shoot energy bolts or blasts instead of solid projectiles, in which the shots have been called "laser blasts" by some individuals such as Rip Hunter.
Earth-1
The energy shots can have various colors, notably blue, green, purple, white, red, or orange. For most weapons, the part of it that contains ammunition, either the cylinder, handle, or barrel, is glowing or shining the color of its ammunition. Depending on the weapon type firing it, the energy round will either just hit with great force, cause damage through a burst of flames and sparks on the target, or completely vaporize or pulverize a target. In addition, the weapons could also knock a human person unconscious, seemingly due to the weapons having a stun setting. It would seem as some future people's clothing, such as Rip Hunter's, Charles's, and Jon Valor's (but likely not the people themselves), are somewhat immune to the energy rounds, as the wearer will only be sent flying through the air or knocked down/temporarily unconscious.
Earth-Prime
The Time Masters, Chronos, Rip Hunter, the Legion of Doom, and even some Time pirates use these types of weapons. A notable weapon of this kind is Rip Hunter's personal sidearm or the laser pistols used by associates of Eobard Thawne & the Legion of Doom, Plunder's rifle, Black Hole's photon rifle, or the Mercury Labs' energy rifle (or pulse rifle), as well as other anti-speedster weapons such as the Speed Force bazooka.
Earth-38
Alex Danvers also uses an energy gun, comparable to the size of a pistol. It fires blue energy bolts that is strong enough to take down Daxamite soldiers (note that ordinary lead bullets, as suggested by Lillian Luthor[1], are potentially lethal against Daxamites [citation needed]) and can also hurl White Martians great distances.[2] Also Mon-El's blaster emits similar blue energy bolts thst bounce off of Kryptonians such as Supergirl.[3]
Earth-TUD5
There are also lightning guns manufactured by the A.S.A., designed to mimic Black Lightning's powers; however they have a slightly different effect.[4] Other lightning guns, known as Direct Energy Guns or DEGs, are manufactured by Monovista International; in which Lauren Caruso helped to design them.
Known users
Trivia
- Eobard Thawne possessed a handgun at his home and in the Time Vault. He used it to defend himself when Hartley Rathaway attacked his house [5] and took it out when contemplating killing Firestorm. Gideon called the weapon "crude".