Welcome at Man Magnum Magazine September-October 2023 Issue

LANGUAGES change and develop as man improves upon his various inventions, including firearms. This can become a problem in publishing, especially since most firearm literature entering Southern Africa in recent decades has been American. Formerly we locals followed British terminology. It becomes necessary to settle on fixed terms for various items so that the subjects under discussion are always clear to our readers. This can be tricky, as so many terms have been incorrectly used for so long that they have become part of the lingua franca (I doubt we will ever persuade newspapers or movie makers that the items loaded into breech-loading weapons are not ‘bullets’ but cartridges). I’ll confine this discussion to the terms applied to the various types of firearm.
The one generic term that can be correctly applied to all small-arms except air-weapons, is ‘firearm’. The word ‘piece’ is an alternative but its use is very limited: we can’t write about ‘a clampdown on private piece ownership’ or ‘crimes committed with pieces’. Two centuries ago, in Britain, ‘fowling piece’ was commonly used for ‘shotgun’; today the term ‘piece’ has a wider application but has become somewhat sullied by use in gangster movies, as in, ‘He’s carrying a piece’.
The word ‘gun’ has been used generically for so long that we are pretty well stuck with it – which is fine in general use, but in Magnum it is often necessary to make distinctions. Strictly speaking, ‘gun’ applies to a smoothbore – whether muzzleloader or modern shotgun. Long-arms (shoulder-arms) with rifled barrels are not guns, they are rifles. Air-weapons with smoothbore barrels are ‘airguns’ or ‘pellet guns’; those with rifled barrels are ‘airrifles’. (Air-weapons are not firearms, as fire plays no role in launching their projectiles.)
The Middle-English term ‘hand gonne’ was applied to any hand-held firearm, whether shoulder-arm or pistol. Over the ages, this term fell into disuse, and the current application of ‘handgun’ exclusively to describe pistols and revolvers is fairly recent. Emanating from America, it has been adopted as a generic term for what the British called a ‘side-arm’. ‘Handgun’ is a useful word in ‘gun writing’ (another misnomer, technically) but in Magnum, when referring to a particular type, we prefer to use ‘revolver’ or ‘pistol’ according to design.
As always, there are exceptions to rules: certain special-purpose ‘shotguns’ now have rifled barrels for exclusive use with solid slugs instead of shot or pellets. The Americans call these ‘slug guns’ which, strictly speaking, is incorrect, but mostsuch models offer the additional option of interchangeable smoothbore barrels, so it becomes complicated.
Another exception to the rule is the military and naval application of the word ‘guns’ to artillery pieces, even though these now have rifled barrels (historically, smoothbore cannons were indeed guns).
This is a tradition that will not change. In military terms, muzzle-loading shoulder- arms were called ‘muskets’ whether smooth-bored or rifled. Even when breech-loading shoulder-arms were adopted, the term ‘muskets’ was retained in some armies – when Winchester introduced their Model 86 “Yellow Boy” lever-action repeating rifle, they also made a bayoneted military version which they called the ‘musket’ model. During my citizen force
training in the SA army in 1964, the term ‘musketry’ was still used to mean rifle know-how and handling. But calling your rifle a ‘gun’ got you an hour’s pack-drill. However, in time, the term ‘rifle’ became universal in military use.
To focus on handguns: initially, all muzzle-loading pistols were smoothbores, hence were indeed ‘guns’, but when the term ‘hand gonne’ faded out, firearms made for one-handed use became known as pistols. Rifling grooves were later added to certain muzzle-loading pistol barrels (duelling and officers’ pistols); however, both types remained simply ‘pistols’.
In American literature (and western movies) the term ‘pistol’ is often applied to revolvers, as in ‘pistol-packing cowpokes’. This is a ‘hangover’ from the lengthy muzzle-loader era, when all handguns were ‘pistols’. The first revolvers appeared during the late muzzle-loading era, but despite having multi-shot revolving cylinders, these were not cartridge weapons. Each chamber of the cylinder was loaded from the front with loose gunpowder and a separate ball, and a percussion cap was pushed onto a nipple at the rear of each chamber, as with muzzle-loaders. The word ‘revolver’ entered firearm jargon, but after centuries of reference to ‘pistols’, the general public (and the media) took a long time to use specific terminology. Even Colt’s marketing people were guilty of such use, as in ‘Colt Pocket Pistol’ and ‘Colt Root Pistol’– both cap-and-ball revolvers. Capand- ball revolvers couldn’t really be called muzzle-loaders, as they were not loaded via the muzzle of the barrel, but via the frontal orifices of the cylinder chambers. The term ‘front-end loader’ is a more accurate description, though also correctly applies to muzzle-loading pistols and shoulder-arms.
Soon, self-contained metallic cartridges appeared and breech-loading revolvers rapidly eclipsed cap-and-ball revolvers, yet many Americans still referred to the breech-loaders as ‘pistols’. Likewise, in Mexico, a man carrying a Colt .45 ‘Peacemaker’ or a top-break Smith & Wesson Schofield revolver was referred to as a pistolero.
Later, gun-writers were forced to be more specific, and so any handgun with a revolving cylinder became known as a ‘revolver’. However, even in my time, I’ve knowngun-writers to refer to 5-shot snubbie revolvers as ‘pocket pistols’. Most gun-writers now refer to front-end loading revolvers as ‘cap-and-ball revolvers’ to distinguish them from breech-loading revolvers.
In the late 1800s, magazine-fed semi-automatic handguns appeared. They were called ‘pistols’, initially qualified by the term ‘automatic’ – yet another misnomer (with one or two rare exceptions, they were semi-automatic). Nowadays most gun-writers refer to these as ‘semi-autos’ or just ‘pistols’.

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