Rising knife crime in London is linked to austerity cuts to youth services—here's the evidence
New data released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows knife and gun crime in London rose sharply in the 12 months before December 2023.
New data released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows knife and gun crime in London rose sharply in the 12 months before December 2023.
Social Sciences
May 8, 2024
0
7
"Congress prohibits the NIH from researching the cause of mass shootings."
Political science
May 6, 2024
0
10
Interstate gun transfers are a major contributor to gun crime, injury, and death in the United States. Guns used in crimes traced to interstate purchases move routinely between states along multiple major transportation routes, ...
Social Sciences
Apr 9, 2024
0
32
As the nation braces itself for another pivotal presidential election year, the spotlight on gun control intensifies—one of America's most contentious issues. Shedding light on this debate, new research by Dr. Michael Nelson, ...
Social Sciences
Mar 21, 2024
0
1
Television dramas like CSI and NCIS make criminal investigations look easy. In real life, DNA testing can be challenging and requires expensive equipment, special facilities, and extensive training to identify DNA from a ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Mar 14, 2024
0
0
Gun manufacturers are appealing to women as "serious students" of firearms in their advertising—a shift in strategy over the last two decades that may be contributing to increased gun sales, a new study shows.
Social Sciences
Mar 12, 2024
0
42
New York City ranks in the top 15% safest of more than 800 U.S. cities, according to a pioneering new analysis from researchers at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, suggesting the effectiveness of the city's efforts to mitigate ...
Social Sciences
Feb 29, 2024
0
49
Among Latinos and Asians living in California, immigrants are less likely than citizens to own a firearm and more likely to report being afraid of becoming a victim of gun violence, according to a new study from the UCLA ...
Social Sciences
Nov 28, 2023
0
8
As police fanned out Thursday in pursuit of the gunman who killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine—the deadliest U.S. mass shooting of the year—the nation once again confronted its epidemic of firearms violence. Every year ...
Social Sciences
Oct 27, 2023
3
7
On Nov. 7, the Supreme Court is scheduled to begin hearing United States v. Rahimi, a gun rights case that will decide if a federal law prohibiting possession of firearms by people subject to domestic violence protection ...
Social Sciences
Oct 24, 2023
0
1
A gun is a muzzle or breech-loaded projectile-firing weapon. There are various definitions depending on the nation and branch of service. A "gun" may be distinguished from other firearms in being a crew-served weapon such as a howitzer or mortar, as opposed to a small arm like a rifle or pistol, but there are exceptions, such as the U.S. Air Force's GUU5/P. At one time, land-based artillery tubes were called cannon and sea-based naval cannon were called guns. The term "gun" evolved into a generic term for any tube-launched projectile-firing weapon used by sailors, including boarding parties and marines.
In modern parlance, a gun is a projectile weapon using a hollow, tubular barrel with a closed end—the breech—as the means of directing the projectile (as well as other purposes, for example stabilizing the projectile's trajectory, aiming, as an expansion chamber for propellant, etc.), and firing in a generally flat trajectory.
The term "gun" has also taken on a more generic meaning, by which it has come to refer to any one of a number of trigger-initiated, hand-held, and hand-directed implements, especially with an extending bore, which thereby resemble the class of weapon in either form or concept. Examples of this usage include staple gun, nail gun, glue gun, grease gun. Occasionally, this tendency is ironically reversed, such as the case of the American M3 submachine gun which carries the nickname "Grease Gun".
Most guns are described by the type of barrel used, the means of firing, the purpose of the weapon, the caliber, or the commonly accepted name for a particular variation.
Barrel types include rifled—a series of spiraled grooves or angles within the barrel—when the projectile requires an induced spin to stabilize it and smoothbore when the projectile is stabilized by other means or rifling is undesired or unnecessary. Typically, interior barrel diameter and the associated projectile size is a means to identify gun variations. Barrel diameter is reported in several ways. The more conventional measure is reporting the interior diameter of the barrel in decimal fractions of the inch or in millimeters. Some guns—such as shotguns—report the weapon's gauge or—as in some British ordnance—the weight of the weapon's usual projectile.
A gun projectile may be a simple, single-piece item like a bullet, a casing containing a payload like a shotshell or explosive shell, or complex projectile like a sub-caliber projectile and sabot. The propellant may be air, an explosive solid, or an explosive liquid. Some variations like the Gyrojet and certain other types combine the projectile and propellant into a single item.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA