Buttstock in the context of "Recoil"

A pistol is a type of handgun, characterized by a barrel with an integral chamber. The word "pistol" derives from the Middle French pistolet (c. 1550), meaning a small gun or knife, and first appeared in the English language c. 1570 when early handguns were produced in Europe. In colloquial usage, the word "pistol" is often used as a generic term to describe any type of handgun, inclusive of revolvers (which have a single barrel and a separate cylinder housing multiple chambers) and the pocket-sized derringers (which are often multi-barrelled).

The most common type of pistol used in the contemporary era is the semi-automatic pistol. The older single-shot and lever-action pistols are now rarely seen and used primarily for nostalgic hunting and historical reenactment. Fully-automatic machine pistols are uncommon in civilian usage because of their generally poor recoil-controllability (due to the lack of a buttstock) and strict laws and regulations governing their manufacture and sale (where they are regarded as submachine gun equivalents).

A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, distinguished by having a barrel cut with a helical or spiralling pattern of grooves (rifling). Most rifles are designed to be held with both hands and braced against the shoulder via a buttstock for stability. Rifles are used in warfare, law enforcement, hunting and target shooting sports.

The invention of rifling separated such firearms from the earlier smoothbore weapons (e.g., arquebuses, muskets, and other long guns), greatly elevating their accuracy and general effectiveness. The raised areas of a barrel's rifling are called lands; they make contact with and exert torque on the projectile as it moves down the bore, imparting a spin. When the projectile leaves the barrel, this spin persists and lends gyroscopic stability to the projectile due to conservation of angular momentum, increasing accuracy and hence effective range. The class of firearm was originally termed the rifled gun, with the verb to rifle referring to the early modern machining process of creating grooves with cutting tools.