  lever-action is a type of firearm action which uses a lever located around the trigger guard area (often including the trigger guard itself) to load fresh cartridges into the chamber of the barrel when the lever is worked. this contrasts to bolt action, semi-automatic, or selective fire weapons. most lever-action firearms are rifles, but lever-action shotguns and a few pistols have also been made. one of the most famous lever-action firearm is undoubtedly the winchester rifle, but many manufacturersânotably marlin and savageâalso produce lever-action rifles. mossberg produces the 464 in center fire .30-30 and rim fire .22. while the term lever-action generally implies a repeating firearm, it is also sometimes (and incorrectly) applied to a variety of single-shot, or falling-block actions that use a lever for cycling, such as the martini-henry or the ruger no. 1. ==history==  the first significant lever-action design was the spencer repeating rifle, a magazine-fed lever-operated breech-loading rifle designed by christopher spencer in 1860. it was fed from a removable seven-round tube magazine, enabling the rounds to be fired one after another, and which, when emptied, could be exchanged for another. over 20,000 were made, and it was adopted by the united states and used during the american civil war, marking the first adoption of a removable-magazine-fed infantry-and-cavalry rifle by any country. unlike later designs, the early spencer's lever only served to unlock the falling-block action and load a new cartridge from the magazine; it did not cock the hammer, and thus the hammer had to be cocked after the lever was operated to prepare the rifle to fire. the henry rifle, invented by benjamin tyler henry, a gunsmith employed by oliver winchester in 1860, used a centrally located hammer rather than the offset hammer typical of muzzleloading rifles, and this hammer was cocked by the rearward movement of the henry's bolt. the henry also placed the magazine under the barrel, rather than in the butt-stock, a trend followed by most tubular magazines since. the martini-henry rifle was the main rifle of british and empire forces from the early 1870s to the turn of the 20th century and remained in use to the end of the first world war. it was used in some areas, either by civilians or by the local military, much longer. variants copying the martini-henry mechanism but using more modern 
Firearm_actions