Components of a Round of Ammo:Target Shooting Practice Tips for the Gun Range

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Chad. We’re talking about rifle and pistol shooting, and in this segment we’re going to talk a little bit about what a bullet is - what people generally call bullets or ammunition. Bullets are basically made up of three parts, and we’re going to actually start calling them ammunition because a bullet is actually one of the parts. This is a loaded round, and it is made up of the actual bullet, which is the tip; the case, which is what holds the powder; the powder itself, of course, which is inside; and a primer, which is the little round circle on the end. We’ll go through each of those parts here in turn. The first part - this is a larger case so you can see it, is the case. It’s made of brass, usually. It’s empty, where you could fill with powder, and it has a hole in the end where you could put a primer, and there’s a small hole in the middle called the flash hold. The case is, of course, the skeleton, or the main part of any cartridge. It’s what everything else goes into and it’s held off on, and it determines what the gun’s going to feel like, what it’s going to shoot like, what it’s going to be used for. The second part that’s kind of important, is the bullet itself, this is a 375 caliber bullet, and that number refers to the diameter of the base- how wide it is. And this of course goes inside here on the top. It sits down inside like this. You can see in this bullet that’s put together- this is a live round. And bullets are designed to do different things. Some of them are made for extreme accuracy, some of them are made for hunting, some of them are made for inexpensive, cheap shooting. That’s a rifle bullet I just held there. This is a pistol bullet. And, you can see here, a pistol case. Much smaller, much shorter, holds a lot less powder. Bullet goes on the top. It’s got the same sort of thing in the end. This one has a used primer in it with a little, round hole in the end. And inside is powder. Inside the case, underneath the bullet is powder. And this is a bag full of powder. It’s called smokeless powder- it’s not black powder, even though the color’s black powder. Black powder is actually made of different substance- it acts differently. Powder’s actually an explosive. Powder that is in modern ammunition is not an explosive- it just burns very quickly and very hot, but it does not explode. It’s very, very stable, and if you were to light this out here, it really wouldn’t do anything but burn, unlike black powder which can actually explode. This is what is inside of a round. When you pull the trigger on a firearm, a pin comes out and hits one of these. This is called a primer. Very, very small, little round. This is an explosive; it’s a tiny, little explosive. Inside is a mixture that when hit, is crushed and it explodes and sends out a white hot jet of gas-or flame, rather- that goes up through the hole, lights this powder which burns almost instantaneously and then that expanding gas pushes this bullet out of the cartridge- pushes the bullet down the barrel- and that gas continues pushing the bullet out of the barrel until it exits and then it expands. But that’s the basics of most ammunition. Pistol ammunition, rifle ammunition all generally work on the same principle. There is only one exception- what is called the rim fire, and this is the most popular round in the world- they sell more of these than anything else. These are used for hunting, target-shooting, clinking- just kind of having fun with. And the only difference is, they, too, have a cartridge- a case, rather- they have a bullet, and inside is a very small amount of powder. But instead of a separate primer, the primers made into the case- it’s one piece- so when the firing pin hits this case, it crushes it, and that lights the powder inside and pushes the bullet on out. These are not what’s called reloadable. This 22 rifle rim fire is not reloadable- once you shoot them, the case gets thrown away. As you can see I have these empty cases here because with most guns- with most ammunition- once you fire it, you can take the cases, put them through a machine and resize them- put them back to their original size because they expand a bit- put a new primer in, put new powder in, put a new bullet in, and shoot it again, and the main purpose of doing that- or one of the purposes is it saves you an awful lot of money, because shooting is actually an expensive sport. It saves you a lot of money, and you can tailor the round to exactly what you want, so you can buy different kinds of bullets- ones that shoot better out of your gun, ones that are made just exactly to do what you want them to do. So reloading is a completely different hobby on its own, but it’s closely tied to the shooting sports. But basically, that’s how ammunition is made- that’s what it’s made up of, what it is, and how it works. "