Tip 1 My Rifle; My Gun.
A gun is a mechanical device that shoots a projectile at high velocity. A rifle is a device with a stock and a barrel with spiral grooves cut inside, which is fired from the shoulder. All rifles are guns, but only a subset of guns are rifles.

Tip 2 A Six Pound Rifle?
The word ‘rifle’ refers to the grooves cut into the barrel, which stabilize the bullet and allow accurate, long distance shots. The French word ‘rifler’ means ‘scratch,’ referring to those grooves. The earliest English use of the word was a patent application in 1635. George Washington's diary on March 5, 1770, noted that he purchased a rifle for £6.10. This is the earliest reference to a long gun being called a rifle.

Tip 3 Keep The Names Straight.
Yes, muzzleloaders have a stock and a rifled barrel, and were the original ‘rifle.’ However, as breech loading rifle designs came into use, muzzleloaders all but disappeared for a while, and the word ‘rifle’ is now commonly applied only to breech loaders. There has been a modern resurgence in the use of muzzleloaders for hunting, but in today’s usage they are now usually referred to as ‘muzzleloaders.’ Shotguns with rifled barrels are also not called rifles.

Tip 4 Cut, Button, or Hammer.
To make a rifle barrel, steel stock is drilled and then the rifling grooves are cut inside the barrel. Cut rifling was invented in Germany in 1492, and was the industrial standard until production demands during WWII required new technology. Button rifling was utilized in the U.S., while the Germans developed hammer forging in 1939. In any case, it is amazing to comprehend the skill and power it takes to drill and machine very hard steel within incredibly small tolerances, over and over, at a comparatively small price.

Tip 5 Parts is Parts.
The name of the second primary component of a rifle, the stock, is derived from the German word ‘stoc,’ which means tree trunk. A description of a stock can include the length of pull, drop at the heel, drop at the comb, cast off, cast on, pitch, grip, checkering, and forend. Many modern stocks are made of synthetic materials. No one seems to care what word the Germans have for ‘synthetic.’

Tip 6 The Winning Tool.
The M-1 Garand was the first effective semiautomatic rifle, and was the standard service rifle until the mid-1960s. General George Patton said that the M-1 was the single most important piece of equipment that allowed the Allies to win World War II.

Tip 7 Do the Twist.
Rifling is a spiral inside the barrel, and this is called the twist. It is expressed as a ratio, like ‘1:8.’ It means that in the barrel the bullet will make one complete revolution in eight inches. Different twist rates are required by different bullet designs and requirements. Your standard rifle, purchased off the rack, will have a rifling twist that will meet the needs of the average shooter in average use.

Tip 8 Load, Fire, Repeat.
Modern rifles are able to safely contain an explosion that produces tens of thousands of pounds of pressure, just inches from your face, thousands of times in a row, without ever hurting the user. Maximum chamber pressure for a .22 long rifle can exceed 20,000 psi; some rifles can exceed 85,000 psi. They are amazing machines.

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