Revolver in the context of Colt Paterson

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 shotgun (also known as a scattergun, peppergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge known as a shotshell, which discharges numerous small spherical projectiles called shot, or a single solid projectile called a slug. Shotguns are most commonly used as smoothbore firearms, meaning that their gun barrels have no rifling on the inner wall, but rifled barrels for shooting sabot slugs (slug barrels) are also available.

Shotguns come in a wide variety of calibers and gauges ranging from 5.5 mm (.22 inch) to up to 5 cm (2.0 in), though the 12-gauge (18.53 mm or 0.729 in) and 20-gauge (15.63 mm or 0.615 in) bores are by far the most common. Almost all are breechloading, and can be single barreled, double barreled, or in the form of a combination gun. Like rifles, shotguns also come in a range of different action types, both single-shot and repeating. For non-repeating designs, over-and-under and side-by-side break action shotguns are by far the most common variants. Although revolving shotguns do exist, most modern repeating shotguns are either pump action or semi-automatic, and also fully automatic, lever-action, or bolt-action to a lesser extent.

In American English, a pocket pistol is any small, pocket-sized semi-automatic pistol (or less commonly referencing either derringers, or revolvers), and is suitable for concealed carry in a pocket or a similar small space.

Pocket pistols are sometimes categorized as smaller than sub-compact pistols, but the distinction is not clear-cut as some small sub-compact pistols may be categorized as pocket pistols, and some large pocket pistols may be classified as sub-compact pistols.

A sidearm is an individual-served weapon that is kept at one's side and can be rapidly accessed if needed. A sidearm may be carried alone or as an ancillary weapon to a more frequently-used primary weapon. The term historically referred to swords, daggers, and similar small weapons kept at one's side in a sheath, and in modern combat dominated by guns, sidearms are often defined as handguns that are similarly kept in a holster.

A sidearm is typically required equipment for military officers and may be carried by law enforcement personnel. Usually, uniformed personnel of these services wear their weapons openly, while plainclothes personnel have their sidearms concealed under their clothes.

Paul-Marie Verlaine (/vɛərˈlɛn/ vair-LEN; French: [pɔl maʁi vɛʁlɛn]; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet, writer and critic associated with the Symbolist, Parnassianist, and Decadent movements. He is considered one of the paramount exponents of the fin de siècle in French and international poetry.

Born in Metz to a petit-bourgeois family, Verlaine bore a lifelong interest in the arts, whether literary, musical or visual. His début collection, Poèmes saturniens (1866), were released at the age of twenty-two; they were published by Alphonse Lemerre. Verlaine's tempestuous sexual relationship with young poet Arthur Rimbaud (ten years his junior and under eighteen years, and while he himself had a wife and infant son), a member of the Zutistes, aroused great controversy; the couple peregrinated throughout England and Belgium until their split in 1873, which was caused by him wounding Rimbaud with a revolver. Following trial, Verlaine was sentenced to two years in prison for battery and sodomy. During his sentence, Verlaine reverted to practising Catholicism and composed Sagesse (published 1880), Jadis et naguère (published 1884) and Parallèlement (published 1889). As his reputation grew, he became increasingly haunted by guilt and paranoia, lapsing into depression, alcohol and chemical abuse and disease, culminating in his death in Paris from acute pneumonia.

A handgun is a firearm designed to be usable with only one hand. It is distinguished from a long barreled gun (i.e., carbine, rifle, shotgun, submachine gun, or machine gun) which typically is intended to be held by both hands and braced against the shoulder. Handguns have shorter effective ranges compared to long guns, and are much harder to shoot accurately. While most early handguns are single-shot pistols, the two most common types of handguns used in modern times are revolvers and semi-automatic pistols.

Before commercial mass production, handguns were often considered a badge of office — comparable to a ceremonial sword – as they had limited utility and were more expensive than the long barreled guns of the era. In 1836, Samuel Colt patented the Colt Paterson, the first practical mass-produced revolver, which was capable of firing five shots in rapid succession and quickly became a popular personal weapon, giving rise to the saying, "God created men, but Colt made them equal."

Samuel Colt (/koʊlt/; July 19, 1814 – January 10, 1862) was an American inventor, industrialist, and businessman who established Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company and made the mass production of revolvers commercially viable.

Colt's first two business ventures were producing firearms in Paterson, New Jersey, and making underwater mines. His business expanded rapidly after 1847, when the Texas Rangers ordered 1,000 revolvers during the American war with Mexico. During the American Civil War, his factory in Hartford supplied firearms both to the North and the South. Later, his firearms were used widely during the settling of the western frontier. When Colt died in 1862, he was one of the wealthiest men in the United States.

George I of Greece was assassinated on the late afternoon of March 18, 1913, in Thessaloniki, Greece. It was carried out by an alleged Greek anarchist named Alexandros Schinas.

On the day of the murder, King George I was in Thessaloniki, recently conquered from the Ottomans by his son, Crown Prince Constantine. After 50 years of reign, the King, feeling frail, planned to abdicate during his upcoming golden jubilee in October. In the afternoon, the King took his daily walk in the city streets, with minimal protection, as he did in Athens throughout his reign. At around 5:15 p.m. near the White Tower, Alexandros Schinas shot him with a revolver. King George I was rushed to the hospital but died before arrival. To avoid inciting Greek resentment towards Thessaloniki, a city largely populated by Slavs, authorities denied any political motive for the regicide, attributing it to Schinas, described as an alcoholic and mentally unstable individual. Schinas was arrested by the Hellenic Gendarmerie, placed in custody, and interrogated, but he died from defenestration on May 6, 1913.

In firearms, the cylinder is the cylindrical, rotating part of a revolver containing multiple chambers, each of which is capable of holding a single cartridge. The cylinder rotates (revolves) around a central axis in the revolver's action to sequentially align each individual chamber with the barrel bore for repeated firing. Each time the gun is cocked, the cylinder indexes by one chamber (for five-chambers, by 72°, for six-chambers, by 60°, for seven-chambers, by 51.43°, for eight-chambers, by 45°, for nine-chambers, by 40°, and for ten-chambers, by 36°). Serving the same function as a rotary magazine, the cylinder stores ammunitions within the revolver and allows it to fire multiple times, before needing to be reloaded.

Typically revolver cylinders are designed to generally hold six cartridges (hence revolvers sometimes are referred to as six-guns or six-shooters), but some small-frame concealable revolvers such as the Smith & Wesson Model 638 have a 5-shot cylinder, due to the smaller overall size and limited available space. The Nagant M1895 revolver has a 7-shot cylinder, the Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver has an 8-shot cylinder in .38 ACP, the LeMat Revolver has a 9-shot cylinder, and the Smith & Wesson Model 617 has a 10-shot cylinder in .22 Long Rifle.

A derringer or deringer is a small handgun that is neither a revolver, semi-automatic pistol, nor machine pistol. It is not to be confused with mini-revolvers or pocket pistols, although some later derringers were manufactured with the pepperbox configuration. The modern derringer is often multi barreled, and is generally the smallest usable handgun of any given caliber and barrel length due to the lack of a moving action, which takes up more space behind the barrel. It is frequently associated with discreet use by women because it is easily concealable in a purse or a stocking.

The original Philadelphia Deringer was a muzzleloading caplock single-shot pistol introduced in 1825 by Henry Deringer. In total, approximately 15,000 Deringer pistols were manufactured. All were single-barrel pistols with back-action percussion locks, typically .41 caliber with rifled bores and walnut stocks. Barrel length varied from 1.5 to 6 in (38 to 152 mm), and the hardware was commonly a copper-nickel alloy known as "German silver".

In firearm designs, the term single-shot refers to guns that can hold only a single round of ammunition inside and thus must be reloaded manually after every shot. Compared to multi-shot repeating firearms ("repeaters"), single-shot designs have no moving parts other than the trigger, hammer/firing pin or frizzen, and therefore do not need a sizable receiver behind the barrel to accommodate a moving action, making them far less complex and more robust than revolvers or magazine/belt-fed firearms, but also with much slower rates of fire.

The history of firearms began with muzzleloading single-shot firearms such as the hand cannon and arquebus, then multi-barreled designs such as the derringer appeared, and eventually many centuries passed before breechloading repeating firearms became commonplace. Although largely disappeared from military usage due to insufficient firepower, single-shot firearms are still produced by many manufacturers in both muzzleloading and cartridge-firing varieties, from zip guns and ultra-concealable pocket pistols to the highest-quality hunting and match rifles.

A repeating firearm or repeater is any firearm (either a handgun or long gun) that is designed for multiple, repeated firings before the gun has to be reloaded with new ammunition.

Unlike single-shot firearms, which can only hold and fire a single round of ammunition, a repeating firearm can store multiple cartridges inside a magazine (as in pistols, rifles, or shotguns), a cylinder (as in revolvers), or a belt (as in machine guns), and uses a moving action to manipulate each cartridge into and out of the battery position (within the chamber and in alignment with the bore). This allows the weapon to be discharged repeatedly in relatively quick succession, before manually reloading the ammunition is needed.

Break action is a type of firearm action in which the barrel(s) are hinged much like a door and rotate perpendicularly to the bore axis to expose the breech and allow loading and unloading of cartridges. A separate operation may be required for the cocking of a hammer to fire the new round. There are many types of break-action firearms; break actions are universal in double-barreled shotguns, double-barreled rifles, combination guns, and are commonly found in single shot pistols (especially derringers), rifles, shotguns, including flare guns, grenade launchers, air guns, and some older revolver designs. They are also known as hinge-action, break-open, break-barrel, break-top, or, on old revolvers, top-break actions.

Small arms and light weapons (SALW), in arms control protocols, are two main classes of man-portable weapons.

Small arms, broadly speaking, are individual-service (i.e. for carry and operation by individual infantrymen) kinetic projectile firearms. These include: handguns (revolvers, pistols, derringers, and machine pistols), muskets, rifled muskets, shotguns, rifles (assault rifles, battle rifles, carbines, designated marksman rifles, short-barreled rifles, sniper rifles, etc.), submachine guns, personal defense weapons, squad automatic weapons, and light machine guns.

The .22 long rifle, also known as the .22 LR or 5.7×15mmR, is a long-established variety of .22 caliber rimfire ammunition originating from the United States. It is used in a wide range of firearms including rifles, pistols, revolvers, and submachine guns, but the ammunition is not commonly used in hunting rifles because it can not kill average game.

In terms of units sold, it is by far the most common ammunition that is manufactured and sold in the world. Common uses include hunting and shooting sports. Ammunition produced in .22 long rifle is effective at short ranges, has little recoil, and is inexpensive to purchase. These qualities make it ideal for plinking and marksmanship training.

A wax bullet is a non-lethal projectile made of wax material — often paraffin wax or some mixture of waxes and other substances that produce the desired consistency — that mimics the external ballistics but not the terminal effects of real bullets. Due to the low weight and density, wax bullets are typically used in a primed centerfire cartridge with little to no propellant powders, as often the primer ignition alone can provide all the necessary energy needed to propel the wax bullet out.

Due to the lack of propellants, wax bullet cartridges do not provide enough recoil/blowback energy to cycle self-loading firearms, so they are most commonly used in revolvers and other manually cycled firearms. Specially designed cartridges and conversion kits can be used together to convert semi-/fully automatic firearms into wax bullet guns, used in tactical training for police and military.

Lethal Enforcers is a 1992 light gun shooter video game developed and published by Konami for arcades. The graphics consist entirely of digitized photographs and digitized sprites. Home console versions were released for the Super NES, Sega Genesis, and Sega CD, and include a revolver-shaped light gun known as the Justifier.

The game was a critical and commercial success, becoming one of the top five highest-grossing dedicated arcade games of 1993 in the United States. However, it also caused controversy as it allowed players to shoot photorealistic representations of enemies. Lethal Enforcers was followed by Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters. Both games would later be released in the two-in-one compilation Lethal Enforcers I & II (Lethal Enforcers Deluxe Pack in Japan) for the PlayStation. Years later, Konami released the Police 911 series as a Japan-themed sequel to the original plot. This was also followed by the arcade game Heroes of Justice, which was localized and renamed as Lethal Enforcers 3 for Western audiences.