A light automatic rifle with a shorter barrel for ease of use More

The Bee case is a necked-down .25-20 Winchester (itself a necked-down version of the .32-20 Winchester). Only one factory load was offered: a 46-grain hollowpoint at 2,860 fps.

At the time, the .22 Hornet was loaded with a 45-grain bullet at 2,690 fps, and the .22 Hornet has enjoyed far greater popularity among varmint shooters, probably because it was introduced first and it has been available in a greater variety of rifles. But the .218 Bee is superior to it in several ways.

For starters it is a bit faster, which gives it a longer effective range. More

In 1963 the Browning Arms Company made history. The firm began chambering its Browning High Power rifle for the .22-250--a wildcat cartridge for which there was no commercial ammunition available. John T. Amber, reporting the development in the 1964 Gun Digest, called the event "unprecedented."

Overnight, it seemed, the .22-250 established itself as the dominant high-velocity .22. Winchester had just discontinued the .220 Swift and replaced it with the oddball .225 Winchester, a rimmed cartridge that was gone in less than a decade. More

In 1950 Remington introduced the .222, a completely original cartridge with a new case that took the shooting world by storm. It exhibited none of the problems of the Swift; it was quiet and docile and extremely accurate. About that time, benchrest shooting became formalized, and the .222 dominated the game. More

The .25-35 Winchester, along with the .30-30 Winchester, was introduced in the Model 94 lever-action rifle in August 1895. Those were the first two sporting cartridges of American design to be loaded with smokeless powder. The Model 94 had been introduced the previous year, but only in .32-40 and .38-55, both loaded with black powder at the time.

The .30-30 case is basically the .38-55 necked down for a .30-caliber bullet, and the .25-35 is a necked-down version of it. Other members of the same family are the .32 Winchester, .22 Savage High-Power, .219 Zipper and .375 Winchester. More

Like many great cartridges, the .260 Remington is the product of wildcatters who saw the value of the short .308 Winchester case necked down to accept those long, pointy 6.5mm bullets for long-range shooting. And 6.5-08 wildcats enjoyed an excellent reputation among target shooters for many years, but this fine cartridge was not really "discovered" by hunters until it was legitimized by Remington in 1997. More

The .32 Special is merely the .30-30 necked up from .308 to .321 diameter. Rifles for the .32 have a twist of 1:16—slower than the .30-30's 1:12—and this supports the explanation that the .32 was intended in 1902 to allow people to use up their stocks of black powder. As well, .32-caliber rifles were popular, shooters had stocks of bullets and a variety of bullet molds and the slower twist is more friendly to cast bullets. More

The .405 Winchester was developed for the Model 1895 Winchester in 1904. Firing a 300-grain bullet at the original velocity of 2,200 fps, it's the most powerful rimmed cartridge ever developed for a lever-action rifle. Actually, the Model 95 rifle was not particularly popular. More

The .44 Magnum cartridge, as introduced by Remington a half-century ago, was, at the time, the most powerful handgun cartridge in the world. More

The .44 Special was introduced in about 1907 and is an extremely accurate cartridge. However, as factory loaded with a 246-grain lead roundnose bullet at approximately 750 fps muzzle velocity, the .44 Spl. does not engender a reputation as a “hot” cartridge.

That changed when Elmer Keith and the other .44 Associates of the 1920s and 1930s began handloading it to its maximum potential; then, the .44 Spl. could legitimately claim top gun performance. Even the potent .357 Magnum delivers less muzzle energy than a 240/250-grain cast SWC on top of a case full of 2400 or 4227. More

The .45-70 Government cartridge was developed at the U.S. Army's Springfield Armory for its Springfield Model 1873 .45- caliber rifle, commonly known as the Trapdoor Springfield.

The traditional .45-70 load put a 405-grain, .458-caliber lead bullet over 70 grains of blackpowder, hence the .45-70 designation, sometimes rendered .45-70/405. More

The 5.7x28 was developed by FN in the 1990s, and there is some pretty good evidence that it was originally developed for some real or proposed military application. At one time (perhaps still) there were four loadings with bullet weights ranging from 28 grains to 55 grains that included a tracer and a subsonic loading.

These loadings aren't available for civilian retail sale. They do suggest that FN has certainly considered other uses, other than just a simple pistol cartridge. More

The 6.8mm SPC was developed by members of the 5th Special Forces Group and the Army Marksmanship Unit for use in the M4 and Mk12 combat rifles. It's important to understand that this cartridge is not in existence due to a directive from military brass or some high-ranking government official. It did not come from the top down as do most military cartridges. Rather, its development came from the bottom up. More

Development of the cartridge we know as the .22 Hornet is usually credited to Grosvenor Wotkyns, who at the time was a member of the Ordnance Department at Benecia Arsenal in California. Inspired by Wotkyns's work with the then-new cartridge, Townsend Whelen and a couple of his Army buddies, G. A. Woody and Al Woodworth, decided to convert three Model 1922 Springfield rifles to handle it. More

The .357 Magnum caused quite a stir when introduced in 1935, but it took several decades for it to gain wide acceptance. A 158-grain lead semiwadcutter bullet was the only load available from the major ammo makers until the 1960s and was the culprit of fouling many bores with a heavy coat of lead. Once better ammo and components were available, and gunmakers introduced less expensive revolvers, the .357 Mag. was on its way to becoming one of the great handgun cartridges. More

Describes the number of times a case can be reloaded and fired More

A constriction in the barrel of a shotgun that controls the spread of pellets. More

The Colt Match Target Woodsman was a stylish piece of shooting machinery, its unique barrel/frame silhouette and exaggerated "elephant ear" grips indelibly marking it as a product of the Art Deco 1930s. Stamped on the right side of the barrel with a target logo, the gun soon achieved the nickname "Bullseye." More