A slug barrel is a shotgun barrel that is designed primarily to fire slugs instead of shot, and is usually rifled. A shotgun with such a barrel is often called a slug gun.
A slug barrel is a shotgun barrel that is designed primarily to fire slugs instead of shot, and is usually rifled. A shotgun with such a barrel is often called a slug gun.
A shotgun cartridge, shotshell, or shell is a type of rimmed, cylindrical (straight-walled) ammunition used specifically in shotguns. It is typically loaded with numerous small, spherical sub-projectiles called shot. Shotguns typically use a smoothbore barrel with a tapered constriction at the muzzle to regulate the extent of scattering.
Some cartridges contain a single solid projectile known as a slug (sometimes fired through a rifled slug barrel). The casing usually consists of a paper or plastic tube with a metallic base containing the primer. The shot charge is typically contained by wadding inside the case. The caliber of the cartridge is known as its gauge.
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.
A slug is a term used for a bulky solid ballistic projectile. It is "solid" in the sense of being composed of one piece; the shape can vary widely, including partially hollowed shapes. The term is occasionally applied to bullets (just the projectile, never the cartridge as a whole), but is most commonly applied to one-piece shotgun slugs, to differentiate them from shotshells containing numerous shots. Slugs are commonly fired from un-choked smoothbore barrels, but some specially designed slug barrels have riflings that can impart gyroscopic spin required for in-flight stability.
An airgun slug is a type of pellet more recently developed for pre-charged pneumatic airguns. Unlike the conventional diabolo-shaped pellet, which is aerodynamically poor and relies heavily on drag-stabilisation to maintain accuracy, the slug pellet is cylindro-conoidally shaped like a Minié ball and relies predominantly on spin-stabilisation from a rifled barrel. Because of the greater contact area with the barrel bore, these pellets require more power from the gun to overcome the frictional resistance, and therefore are mainly used in PCP airguns, which generally have much higher muzzle energy ratings than other types of airguns such as spring-piston, pump pneumatic or HPA/CO2 airguns.