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48 free Firearms trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
44 free firearm trivia questions with answers. This firearm trivia quiz traces guns from the bamboo fire lances of 10th-century China through hand cannons, matchlocks, wheellocks and flintlocks to the percussion cap, the Minié ball and the metallic cartridge. Then come the names everyone knows: Samuel Colt and the Peacemaker, the Henry and Winchester repeaters, the Gatling and Maxim guns, John Browning's M1911, the Tommy gun, the Garand, the Lee-Enfield, the AK-47, the M16, the Uzi, the Glock and the Desert Eagle. The questions cover who designed what, when and where, how the mechanisms actually work (rifling, revolvers, telescoping bolts, polymer frames), and the odd stories along the way, from a 1718 gun that fired square bullets at Turks to the misspelling that gave us 'derringer'. About a third are easy, a third medium and the rest are for collectors, shooters and military-history buffs. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's articles on the weapons, designers and manufacturers, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The first firearms, bamboo fire lances mounted on spears, originated in which country?
China
China: fire lances, bamboo tubes packed with gunpowder and lashed to spears, were used at the siege of De'an in 1132 during the Song dynasty; metal-barrelled hand cannons followed in the 13th century.
Q 02Traditional gunpowder is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal and which oxidiser?
Potassium nitrate (saltpetre)
Potassium nitrate (saltpetre) supplies the oxygen, letting the sulfur and charcoal burn without air; black powder is classed as a low explosive because it deflagrates at subsonic speed rather than detonating.
Q 03Which early European firearm was the first to have a trigger?
The matchlock arquebus
The matchlock arquebus, from the 15th century, was the first gun with a trigger: a lever dropped a smouldering cord into the priming pan, freeing the shooter from touching a match to the powder by hand.
Q 04A wheellock, developed around 1500, made its spark by spinning a steel wheel against a piece of what?
Pyrite
Pyrite: a spring-driven serrated wheel spun against a lump of iron pyrite held in the dog's jaws, showering sparks into the pan; it was the first self-igniting firearm but too costly and complex for most soldiers.
Q 05A percussion cap contains a small amount of which shock-sensitive explosive?
Mercury fulminate
Mercury fulminate, discovered by Edward Howard in 1800, is the shock-sensitive priming compound; the hammer crushes the copper cap against a hollow nipple that acts as an anvil, firing the main charge in any weather.
Q 06Which company's Gewehr 98 bolt-action became the standard rifle of the Imperial German Army?
Mauser
Mauser's Gewehr 98, adopted in 1898, used a controlled-feed bolt action with a five-round internal magazine; its design was copied in rifles from the US Springfield M1903 to the Czech vz. 24.
Q 07What is a gun barrel without rifling grooves called?
Smoothbore
Smoothbore describes a barrel with no rifling, as in muskets and most shotguns; without spiral grooves to spin the projectile, accuracy fell off sharply beyond short range.
Q 08Which inventor patented a "revolving gun" in 1836 and made mass-produced revolvers commercially viable?
Samuel Colt
Samuel Colt patented his revolving-cylinder design in February 1836 and opened a factory in Paterson, New Jersey; the business took off in 1847 with a government order for 1,000 Walker revolvers for the Mexican-American War.
Q 09The Colt Single Action Army revolver, standard US Army issue from 1873 to 1892, is famous under what nickname?
The Peacemaker
The Peacemaker was the civilian name Colt used for the Single Action Army; adopted by the US Army in 1873, it has been offered in more than 30 calibres over a production run that was revived twice.
Q 10The 1860 Henry rifle, a sixteen-shot lever-action repeater, was the basis for which iconic Wild West rifle?
The Winchester
The Winchester Model 1866 'Yellow Boy' was a direct improvement on the Henry, adding a loading gate and wooden forearm; Henrys themselves were carried by some Sioux and Cheyenne warriors at the Little Bighorn in 1876.
Q 11Which army's standard musket for over a century was nicknamed 'Brown Bess'?
The British Army
The British Army's Land Pattern Musket, nicknamed Brown Bess, served as its standard infantry arm from the 1720s until the 1830s; a .75-calibre flintlock, it was carried at Culloden, Bunker Hill and Waterloo.
Q 12Smith & Wesson's earlier Volcanic Repeating Arms was sold to which man, whose name became a rifle brand?
Oliver Winchester
Oliver Winchester, a New Haven shirt manufacturer and investor, bought the assets of the bankrupt Volcanic Repeating Arms in 1857 and reorganised it as the New Haven Arms Company, which later bore his own name.
Q 13The Gatling gun, an early hand-cranked machine gun, was invented in 1861 by a man from which US state?
Q 21Which US general called the M1 Garand 'the greatest battle implement ever devised'?
George S. Patton
George S. Patton wrote the line in a January 1945 letter to the Army's Ordnance Department; the Garand, adopted in 1936 to replace the bolt-action Springfield, was America's first standard-issue autoloading rifle.
Q 22The M1 Garand was named after its designer, John Garand, who was born in which country?
Canada
Canada: Jean Cantius Garand was born in St. Rémi, Quebec, in 1888 and moved to Connecticut as a boy; he spent his career at the Springfield Armory, where he designed the M1 in the 1930s.
Q 23The Lee-Enfield was the standard British service rifle from 1895 until which year?
1957
North Carolina
North Carolina: Richard Jordan Gatling was born in Hertford County in 1818 and patented the gun in 1862 while living in Indianapolis; its rotating barrels solved overheating, but the Union Army used it only occasionally.
Q 14Which 1884 weapon was the world's first fully automatic machine gun?
The Maxim gun
The Maxim gun, patented by Hiram Maxim in 1884, harnessed the energy of each shot to eject the spent case and chamber the next round, firing about 600 rounds a minute; colonial armies used it ruthlessly across Africa.
Q 15The Puckle gun, patented in 1718, was designed to fire round shot at Christians and what at Muslim Turks?
Square bullets
Square bullets, which James Puckle's patent claimed would convince the Turks of the benefits of Christian civilisation; the flintlock revolver-cannon was called a 'machine gun' in a 1722 shipping manifest, and perhaps only two were made.
Q 16The M1911 pistol was the standard-issue US military sidearm from 1911 until which year?
1985
1985 was when the US armed forces adopted the 9mm M9 as the new standard sidearm, ending 74 years of the M1911; John Browning's design has changed remarkably little across more than a century of production.
Q 17The M1911 is chambered primarily for which cartridge?
.45 ACP
.45 ACP, the Automatic Colt Pistol round Browning designed for it in 1905; the Army adopted the pistol in 1911 after trials to replace the .38 revolvers whose stopping power had disappointed in the Philippines.
Q 18How many firearm patents was John Browning awarded in his life?
128
128 firearm patents: Browning built his first gun at 13 in his father's Ogden, Utah, shop and received his first patent, for a single-shot rifle, in 1879 at age 24; his designs include the M1911 and the Auto-5 shotgun.
Q 19The Thompson submachine gun was invented in 1918 by an officer of which rank?
Brigadier General
Brigadier General John T. Thompson, who retired from the Army in 1918, meant his 'trench broom' to break the stalemate of the trenches; it arrived too late for the war and found fame with Prohibition-era gangsters instead.
Q 20Which US agency adopted the Thompson submachine gun after the Kansas City massacre?
The FBI
The FBI: after four officers and their prisoner were killed in the June 1933 Kansas City massacre, Congress armed federal agents and the Bureau adopted the Thompson, which had been sold openly to civilians in the 1920s.
1957, when the L1A1 self-loading rifle replaced it; the Lee-Enfield's ten-round magazine of .303 British could be loaded with five-round chargers, and it armed the Empire through both world wars.
Q 24The AK-47 assault rifle was developed in the late 1940s in which country?
The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union adopted the AK-47 in 1949 after Mikhail Kalashnikov's design, begun in 1945, won the army's assault-rifle trials; tens of millions were made at Izhevsk and under licence across the Eastern bloc.
Q 25As of 2004, roughly what share of the world's 500 million firearms belonged to the Kalashnikov family?
About one fifth
About one fifth: of the estimated 500 million firearms in the world in 2004, roughly 100 million were Kalashnikov-pattern rifles, and about three-quarters of those were AK-47s, prized for reliability in harsh conditions and low cost.
Q 26The AK-47 fires which cartridge?
7.62×39mm
7.62×39mm, the intermediate M43 cartridge the Soviets developed in 1943 as a lighter round than the full-power 7.62×54mmR; the AK's American rival, the M16, fires the smaller 5.56×45mm.
Q 27Which engineer designed the ArmaLite AR-15, the rifle the US military adapted into the M16?
Eugene Stoner
Eugene Stoner designed the AR-15 at ArmaLite in the mid-1950s, with an aluminium receiver and a direct-gas system; the M16A1 derived from it replaced the M14 as the US standard service rifle in 1969.
Q 28An army major from which country designed the Uzi submachine gun in the late 1940s?
Israel
Israel: Major Uziel Gal of the new Israel Defense Forces began the design in 1948; it was adopted in 1951, entered service in 1954 and went on to be exported to over 90 countries.
Q 29The Glock, adopted by the Austrian military in 1982, was the first commercially successful pistol to use what?
A polymer frame
A polymer frame: the Glock 17's nylon-based polymer grip frame drew ridicule as a 'plastic gun' and airport-security fears, though the slide and barrel are steel; its Safe Action trigger uses three internal safeties instead of a manual one.
Q 30Which company, founded no later than 1526, is the oldest active firearm manufacturer in the world?
Beretta
Beretta: a 1526 receipt records the Venetian Republic paying Bartolomeo Beretta of Gardone Val Trompia for 185 arquebus barrels, the earliest document of a firm run by the same family for almost five centuries.