History and terminology

On of the older guns (Chineese of course)

This is my first blog, so pardon the errors. The primary aim of this is to enlighten people of similar interest (guns in this case) about of course guns . The term gun may refer to any sort of projectile weapon from large cannons to small firearms including those that are usually hand-held. The use of the term "cannon" is interchangeable with "gun" as words borrowed from the French language during the early 15th century, from Old French canon, itself a borrowing from the Italian cannone. The earliest recorded use of the term "gonne" was in a Latin document circa 1339. Other names for guns during this era were "schioppi" (Italian translation-"thunderers"), and "donrebusse" (Dutch translation-"thunder gun") which was incorporated into the English language as "blunderbuss".  Early guns and the men who used them were often associated with the devil and the gunner's craft was considered a black art, a point reinforced by the smell of sulfur on battlefields created from the firing of guns along with the muzzle blast and accompanying flash. The word cannon is retained in some cases for the actual gun tube but not the weapon system. The title gunner is applied to the member of the team charged with operating, aiming, and firing a gun. That being said, early firearms evolved from simple bambo – and later metal tubes – with powder and shot in them, to craftily made weapons of improved accuracy. The first designs of mass produced early firearms were the matchlocks.