h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I do too. Once I get off this medication, I can have a stout again!

tonsil, I hope you're able to appreciate a nice by now!

They took most of the stitches out last Wednesday, but I've just barely gotten off the drugs.
Thanks for the interest.
I think I'll try functioning at full steam for a bit.
But I'm starting to wonder if I can find any Young's Old Ram around this mudhole.

Let's see if we can stay awake for this...

A rifle has rifling...a spiral groove, sometimes two or three...in it's barrel.
A rifle without rifling is a musket, a smoothbore.
Now, technically speaking, there is such a thing as a rifled musket and a musketoon, but we won't deal with that as I don't understand it.

There are basically two kinds of rifles:

1. The ones you can reasonably expect to hit something with.

2. The ones you can't hit the broad side of a barn with.

A reasonable marksman with a bipod and a piece of junk rifle can make your life miserable.

An expert with a precision-made rifle can write his name at 500 yards.
At a thousand, you're getting into gambling and silliness.

Now, if you have an idiot with no training and you give him a rifle of any kind, it's not going to make much of a difference. He's going to waste ammunition. So, the difference between various bolt and automatic actions becomes moot at this point, because an idiot with an AK-47 uses more ammunition than an idiot with a #4 mk I Enfield.

To be continued.