bullet

bullet, an elongated metal projectile that is fired by a pistol, rifle, or machine gun. Bullets are measured by their calibre, which indicates the interior diameter, or bore, of a gun barrel. (See bore.)

Early bullets were round lead balls that were loaded down the muzzle of smoothbore weapons and propelled by the ignition of a physically separate charge of black powder. Modern bullets developed in the 19th century for use in small arms that had rifled barrels. In these rifles, a system of helical grooves cut into the interior surface of the gun’s bore imparts spin to the bullet during its passage. The spin enables a bullet to maintain a point-forward attitude in flight, and under these conditions, an elongated bullet with a pointed tip is aerodynamically much superior to a round ball; it sustains its velocity much better in flight, thereby gaining in both accuracy and range.

Experiments with these “cylindroconoidal” bullets began about 1825, but a difficulty soon arose. The bullets had to fit tightly in the barrel, and it proved difficult to load a tight-fitting bullet in a muzzle-loading gun. The solution was found by Claude-Étienne Minié of France, who in 1849 developed a soft lead bullet with a cavity in its base into which a conical plug was fitted. The bullet’s diameter was small enough that it slid freely down the gun bore, and the sudden inflammation of the propellant charge upon firing drove the conical plug forward to expand the lead bullet tightly into the grooves of the rifled bore.

By the 1860s, percussion caps, which detonate upon being struck a sharp blow by the firing pin of a gun, had been incorporated into a metal cartridge case containing all the components for a complete round that could be used in breech-loading rifles. In the 1880s, the introduction of nitrocellulose, or guncotton, in place of black powder as the propellant charge provided the final element for the modern bullet.

A modern bullet consists of a tube (the cartridge case) with the bullet affixed at the front end, the percussion cap or primer at the base, and the propellant powder contained in the tube between. Upon being struck by the gun’s firing pin, the percussion cap detonates and ignites the propellant; the resulting rapid expansion of gases in the gun’s closed firing chamber propels the bullet forward at high velocity down the bore. The cartridge case is left in the chamber and must be ejected by mechanical means.

Most pistol bullets are made of a lead-antimony alloy encased in a soft brass or copper-plated soft steel jacket. In rifle and machine-gun bullets, a soft core of lead is encased in a harder jacket of steel or cupronickel. Armour-piercing bullets have a hardened-steel inner core. Expanding bullets, used in game hunting and long outlawed in war, are made with an exposed nose of soft metal, which will push back into the jacketed portion to deform it on impact, enlarging the wound and increasing the shock of the impact. See also ammunition.