Articles with introduction to firearms

How Safe Is Stored Ammunition When Exposed to Fire?

Ever wonder if the sporting ammunition of cartridges (up to .50 caliber) and shot shells (up to 8 gauge) you store poses an extreme danger to you, your family, or neighbors if a fire should ever occur? Wonder no more: it doesn’t.

Rifle and handgun cartridges consist of a metal case with a primer, gunpowder, and bullet; shotgun shells typically consist of a plastic or paper tube often with a metallic covering at the base which retains a primer, and the shot charge is typically contained by a wadding inside the case.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Learn the Basics of Ammunition with Winchester® Educational Infographics ]

In the following video by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute with input by the International Association of Fire Chiefs, over 400,000 rounds of bulk packaged and unpackaged small arms ammunition were burned and crushed in a variety of scenarios to determine the ammo’s lethality in stored configurations outside of firearms. The tests involved were single cartridge impact, 65-foot drop, bullet impact, blasting cap attacks, forklift and bulldozer friction and compression, bonfire with and without packaging, and retail store and semi-trailer fire simulations.

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Learn the Basics of Ammunition with Winchester® Educational Infographics

By using retail surveys, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF®) estimates records were surpassed when nearly 14 million Americans purchased a firearm for the first time in the two years of 2020 and 2021, when a total of about 40 million firearms were sold. Gallup research suggests 44% of US adults—114 million people—report living in a gun household.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, The 4 Basic Rules of Gun Safety ]

With so many first-time gun owners needing to learn the basics of responsible firearm ownership, Winchester®—the largest small caliber ammunition enterprise in the world—has created “Introduction to Ammunition-Ammo 101” easy-to-understand infographics illustrating the ammunition categories of

  • rimfire,
  • pistol,
  • centerfire, and
  • shotshell,

and showcasing

  • ammunition construction,
  • components,
  • calibers, and
  • common usage

for each.

Click each image below to enlarge it on your screen. Also, click here to download the pdf document of the following images.

Image of the inner working of pistol ammunition
Handgun calibers are determined by the inside diameter of the barrel they’re shot from. These sizes range from as small as .22 to as large as .50 caliber. Popular cartridges are .22 LR, .380 Auto, 9 MM, .38 Special, 40 S&W, and 45 Auto.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Checklist: Matters to Consider When Deciding on a Handgun which includes links to web articles that are glossaries of gun terms ]

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Why Do You Carry a Gun for Self-Defense?

If a family member, friend, or stranger asks why you carry a gun for self-defense, tell them:

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Concealed Carry Daily Prayer ]

I exercise my US Constitutional right to concealed carry a firearm and I diligently train in the civil right of self-defense because I’m pro-life and pro-social justice, since malicious and violent criminals and terrorists don’t have the right to steal a person’s life, liberty, and happiness.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, USA State Constitutions Providing for Armed Self-Defense ]

The civil right of the US Constitution’s 2nd Amendment does not grant me the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, it precludes the government from infringing on my natural right to do so.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Worldviews and Emotional Assumptions in the Gun Civil Rights Debate ]

Criminals, terrorists, and the dangerously mentally ill act suddenly and make our nation more violent. Law-abiding, responsibly prepared gun owners save and protect lives.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, 15 Truths About Defensive Gun Use ]

Invite SemperVerus® to present its 5 life-changing success-generating components—prepare, aware, be, know, do—to your organization to inspire and motivate your members.

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Why Use and How to Choose Pepper Spray

If you carry a gun for self-defense, you should also carry pepper spray.* Even if you don’t carry a gun, you should carry pepper spray, also known as oleoresin capsicum (“OC”).

Using a firearm for self-defense is always the very last option in a lethal attack situation. But you shouldn’t rely solely on a gun as your only means of self-defense. FBI/DOJ crime statistics tell us we’re 5 times more likely to be faced with a non-deadly threat, against which only non-deadly defensive force is legally appropriate, than we are a deadly threat.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, The 5 Elements of Self-Defense Law ]

Under what circumstances is the use of pepper spray as a defensive tool lawful and advisable? What conditions have to be met before you can use pepper spray in self-defense? Pepper spray is a non-deadly form of self-defense and can be used to stop any reasonably perceived threat of non-deadly harm, which means almost any degree of harm. So long as you use it defensively and not offensively, generally speaking you should be within your rights.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Checklist: Categories and Their Items for Every Day Carry (EDC) ]

In the following video, Chris Baker of Lucky Gunner says, “OC gives you a force option that’s somewhere between harsh language and shooting somebody. We all know that statistically, we are very unlikely to end up in a situation where we need to use our firearm to defend our life. Much more common are situations that call for some kind of intervention that’s less than deadly force. Maybe someone is behaving in a threatening way, but they don’t have a weapon and they have not done anything yet that would warrant using deadly force. That might be a good time to deploy some OC.

[ Read the SemperVerus article, Video: Always Carry Pepper (OC) Spray for Non-Lethal Force Self-Defense ]

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