Was just playing Call Of Duty and it got me wondering. Thanks in advance.
In: Engineering
So high powered can mean a lot of things. There are guns that work with electricity and without. A “[machine gun](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/BundeswehrMG3.jpg/250px-BundeswehrMG3.jpg)” usually means a gun that is operated by recoil. That is, some of the power of the explosion that propels the bullet is harvested to make the reloading mechanism work (this is also how semi-automatic guns work, only they fire once, reload, and stop until you let the trigger loose and pull it again). Basically, the bullet fires, the expanding gas pushes the bullet out of the barrel, and while there is pressure in the barrel, some of that energy is used to throw the bolt back, ejecting a new shell and loading another. This could theoretically happen almost as fast as the bullet travels, but in reality the mechanisms take time to operate. The faster they operate, the faster the rate of fire.
There are other classes of guns though. Some examples are [autocannons](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocannon), [mini-guns](https://youtu.be/ddIIeoQ4K9M), and [chain guns](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_gun). Although some guns in this category operate by the explosion of the gunpowder as well, in many cases, it will have multiple barrels that spin around (or in some cases, a single barrel with a rotating drum, similar to a revolver that can unload and reload a chamber as it spins). An electric motor spins the barrels, and as they move it ejects a spent casing, puts another bullet in, and then fires the bullet when it gets into place. These operate much faster than a conventional machine gun. They fire so fast that it’s usually impossible for a human to carry one around and fire it (due to weight, recoil, amount of ammo needed, ect.). Usually they are attached to vehicles, and can range from normal rifle-caliber, all the way up to 2 inches or so. A 2 inch wide, high explosive bullet coming your way along with a few hundred of his friends over the course of a second will absolutely ruin your day.
Note that I’ve been a little loose with the terminology here to hopefully make it easier to understand. Gun aficionados often get butthurt when you use the wrong terminology, so if you want to know more, it will help to learn the proper terms.
Depends. I’m pretty sure most large bore guns currently used by the military work the same as regular guns, but bigger. There are railguns being experimented with that run a large electric current down a rail to fire a projectile using the lorentz force. These have the potential to have extreme range. There are also certain guns called light gas guns that achieve high speeds through sending compressed helium or hydrogen down the barrel, but to my knowledge these are used in impact related experiments and not by the military.
The metal in the gun is super dooper high grade steel so that it can withstand the big bang that happens inside the chamber that holds the bullet.
That means that the cartridge (bullet shell) can be loaded up with lots of gun powder and create a huge amount of pressure to blow the projectile (shooty bit) out the end of the barrel really fast.
So combine this with a long, thick barrel (which helps it stay straight and doesn’t go bendy when the bang happens) *AND* the correct rifling (the twisty bit inside the barrel to make the bullet go spinny spin) for long range shooting; you can get a bullet to travel very fast and straight for a long way.
For example; the [Browning M2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning) …or a whole bunch of other high powered hunting/long range rifles
No electricity required in this one.
No electricity required for small arms (human carried), but their accessories such as optics and illumination may require batteries. As a round is fired, in the fractions of a second before the bullet leaves the mouth of the barrel, guns can use the captive gas pressure that builds in the barrel behind the bullet. A small hole in the barrel let’s some of that pressure escape into a tube that routes the gas back to the bolt of the gun. For a split second the gas is under enough pressure to force the bolt of the gun backwards. This action ejects the spent case, and allows the gas to escape. A spring behind the bolt presses the bolt forward again and as this bolt returns to a closed position it lifts a new round into the chamber and resets the trigger.
In a semi-automatic gun (most guns today) the operator would pull the trigger once, one round is fired but this mechanical “action” sets the gun up for another round to be in a ready state to fire when the operator pulls the trigger a second time.
In a fully automatic gun or “automatic”, most commonly in military hands and illegal for civilian possession in the US without going through an onerous registration process and paying lots and lots of money (~$20k), holding down the trigger fires the weapon again as soon as the bolt closes on a new round. This speed commonly fires at many hundreds of rounds per minute, far faster than a human can actuate a trigger on a semi-auto.
This simple but ingenious mechanical “action” is very old tech (over 100 years) and can be applied to any firearms platform irrespective of how much “power” characterizes it. Small calibers such as .22’s employ these mechanics, as well as large .50 caliber crew weapons and large turret-mounted weapons. This style of cyclic action contrasts with the lever action, the bolt action, and the revolver to name a few examples which all require more mechanical manipulation to get a weapon ready to fire again.
Semi-auto and fully-auto actions are generally considered less accurate rifle platforms than bolt actions, but their rate of fire offers other advantages. As such, many of the higher power rifle platforms do not employ automatic bolt actions. For example, hunting rifles such as the .30-06 and the .45-70 are commonly in bolt action or lever action platforms and exceed the knock-down power of the most common semi-auto platforms on the market (.223 or handgun calibers). I mention this to emphasize that contrary to a popular perception, most gas-operated guns available today are not considered “high-powered” in the broad scope of gun design for which power is measured by sectional density, retained velocity, and effective range.
It varies.
Handguns *typically* operate as blowback or delayed blowback, where the force of the gas on the back of the casing propels the slide backwards, which will then be returned forward by a spring. This forward/back motion includes other sub-steps that reset the trigger, eject the case, and pull a new round from the magazine.
Modern rifles typically use some variant of a gas-operated system, where the barrel has a hole drilled in it that leads to a piston, which then drives the action to go through the ejection and loading cycle.
Just about the only guns that are electrically driven are going to be cannons and gattling-style guns such as the [GAU-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger) or [M-134](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minigun).
This is a very broad overview, and many exceptions exist. If you want to learn the details about specific guns operating cycles, I highly recommend checking out https://www.forgottenweapons.com
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