page_title: Gun
section_title: Barrel
hierarchical_section_title: Gun / Components / Barrel
caption_attribution_description: L7 105mm tank gun Cut model on display at the Deutsches Panzermuseum Munster , Germany.
context_page_description: A gun is a weapon designed to pneumatically discharge solid projectiles but can also be liquid or even charged particles and may be free-flying or tethered.
  The means of projectile propulsion vary according to designs, but are traditionally effected by a high gas pressure contained within a shooting tube, produced either through the rapid combustion of propellants, or by mechanical compression. The high-pressure gas is introduced behind the projectile, accelerating it down the length of the tube, imparting sufficient launch velocity to sustain its further travel towards the target once the propelling gas ceases acting upon it at the end of the tube. Alternatively, acceleration via electromagnetic field generation may be employed, in which case the shooting tube may be substituted by guide rails or wrapped with magnetic coils.
  The first devices identified as guns appeared in China from around CE 1000. By the 12th century, the technology was spreading through the rest of Asia, and into Europe by the 13th century.
context_section_description: Barrel types include rifled—a series of spiraled grooves or angles within the barrel—when the projectile requires an induced spin to stabilize it, and smoothbore when the projectile is stabilized by other means or rifling is undesired or unnecessary.  Typically, interior barrel diameter and the associated projectile size is a means to identify gun variations.  Bore diameter is reported in several ways.  The more conventional measure is reporting the interior diameter (bore) of the barrel in decimal fractions of the inch or in millimetres.  Some guns—such as shotguns—report the weapon's gauge (which is the number of shot pellets having the same diameter as the bore produced from one English pound (454g) of lead) or—as in some British ordnance—the weight of the weapon's usual projectile.
caption: Rifling of a 105 mm Royal Ordnance L7 tank gun.
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