Firearms Trivia
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96 free Firearms trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 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 96 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The first firearms, bamboo fire lances mounted on spears, originated in which country?
China
China: Song dynasty fire lances began as short-range flamethrowers, and once soldiers packed shards and pellets in with the powder and swapped bamboo for metal, the tube had become the first hand cannon.
Q 02Traditional gunpowder is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal and which oxidiser?
Potassium nitrate (saltpetre)
Potassium nitrate (saltpetre) breaks down in the heat and gives off oxygen, so the sulfur and charcoal can burn inside a sealed barrel with no air; it makes up about three-quarters of the mix.
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 04Unlike the later flintlock, the wheellock of about 1500 struck sparks by spinning a steel wheel against which mineral?
Pyrite
Pyrite: a spring-driven wheel ground against a lump of it and showered sparks into the pan, so for the first time a loaded gun needed no burning match and could be carried ready, though the lock cost too much for most soldiers.
Q 05Which company's Gewehr 98 bolt-action became the standard rifle of the Imperial German Army?
Mauser
Mauser: the Gewehr 98's bolt action was copied around the world, and America's Springfield M1903 followed it so closely that the US government ended up paying the German firm royalties.
Q 06Rifling, the grooves cut inside a gun barrel, makes a shot more accurate by forcing the bullet to do what?
Spin
Spin: the grooves spiral down the barrel and grip the bullet, and the spin steadies it in flight the way a gyroscope holds its axis; a ball from a smooth musket barrel had nothing to keep it on line.
Q 07Which inventor patented a "revolving gun" in 1836 and made mass-produced revolvers commercially viable?
Samuel Colt
Samuel Colt's first factory, in Paterson, New Jersey, failed and left him out of the gun trade until 1847, when Texas Ranger Samuel Walker asked for a bigger revolver and an order for 1,000 put him back in business.
Q 08The Single Action Army, the US Army's standard revolver of the Wild West era, is famous under what nickname?
The Peacemaker
The Peacemaker: its maker stopped building the old six-shooter for World War II and meant to leave it retired, but TV westerns made buyers want one again and it went back into production in 1956.
Q 09The 1860 Henry rifle, a sixteen-shot lever-action repeater, was the basis for which iconic Wild West rifle?
The Winchester
The Winchester of 1866 was the Henry improved and renamed; Confederates who met the original in battle are said to have cursed it as the Yankee rifle you could load on Sunday and fire all week.
Q 10Which army's standard musket for over a century was nicknamed 'Brown Bess'?
The British Army
The British Army carried its Brown Bess from 1722 into the 1830s, and American rebels fired plenty of them straight back at the redcoats; how the musket got its name is still uncertain.
Q 11Which sharpshooter out-shot touring marksman Frank Butler in a match, married him, and became the star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West?
Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley beat Butler and married him; they joined Buffalo Bill in 1885, and as she became the star attraction the famous marksman stepped back to work as her manager.
Q 12A trained doctor invented which hand-cranked gun of 1862, hoping it would shrink armies and spare soldiers from disease?
The Gatling gun
The Gatling gun's inventor had studied medicine, and wrote that one man doing a hundred men's battle duty would shrink armies and cut deaths from disease; the Union barely used it, and the Army adopted it only in 1866.
Q 13Which 1884 weapon was the world's first fully automatic machine gun?
Q 21The M1 Garand was named after its designer, John Garand, who was born in which country?
Canada
Canada: born in Quebec in 1888, John Garand moved to New England as a boy, gave his rifle to the US government royalty-free and never profited from the millions made; a bill in Congress to award him $100,000 failed.
Q 22Which British rifle let trained soldiers fire 20 to 30 aimed shots in a 'mad minute'?
Lee-Enfield
Lee-Enfield: a slick bolt and a ten-round magazine made it the fastest military bolt-action of its day and kept it in front-line service from 1895 through both world wars.
Q 23The AK-47 assault rifle was developed in the late 1940s in which country?
The Soviet Union
The Maxim gun
The Maxim gun fired for as long as the trigger was held, about 600 rounds a minute; at the Shangani river in 1893, some 700 colonial troops with a handful of them drove off 5,000 Matabele warriors.
Q 14The Puckle gun, patented in 1718, was designed to fire round shot at Christians and what at Muslim Turks?
Square bullets
Square bullets were reserved for Turks in James Puckle's 1718 design; at a public trial his gun got off 63 shots in seven minutes, yet the only known sale was of two guns.
Q 15The M1911 pistol was developed after Army revolvers failed against Moro warriors where?
The Philippines
The Philippines: in the Moro Rebellion, soldiers' revolvers often failed to drop charging attackers, so the Army hurriedly reissued its retired Wild West six-shooters while it hunted for a harder-hitting pistol.
Q 16The M1911 is chambered primarily for which cartridge?
.45 ACP
.45 ACP won out after 1904 Army tests, which meant shooting live cattle and human cadavers, found nothing smaller would do; one tester, John T. Thompson, later gave his name to the Tommy gun.
Q 17Which gunsmith earned 128 firearm patents, including the M1911 pistol's?
John Browning
John Browning tinkered in his Mormon father's Ogden workshop from boyhood; when his main buyer refused him royalties he took his designs elsewhere, and Colt and Belgium's FN gladly built them.
Q 18Besides 'Tommy gun', which nickname did the Thompson submachine gun earn in the hands of Prohibition-era gangsters?
The Chicago Typewriter
The Chicago Typewriter was meant to sweep the trenches of World War I, but the war ended before it could ship and armies mostly passed; Prohibition's gangsters made its name instead.
Q 19Which US agency adopted the Thompson submachine gun after the Kansas City massacre?
The FBI
The FBI bought its Thompsons in 1933, after machine-gun fire outside Kansas City's Union Station killed an agent, three other lawmen and the very prisoner the gunmen had come to free.
Q 20Which US general called the M1 Garand 'the greatest battle implement ever devised'?
George S. Patton
George S. Patton was praising a rifle that let American infantry fire eight shots as fast as they could squeeze the trigger, while most of their enemies still had to work a bolt between every round.
The Soviet Union adopted it in 1949; designer Mikhail Kalashnikov was a tank sergeant wounded in 1941 who, by his own account, began sketching guns in hospital after hearing soldiers curse their rifles.
Q 24Roughly how many Kalashnikov-pattern rifles are estimated to have been built worldwide?
About 100 million
About 100 million is the usual estimate, enough to make the Kalashnikov the most abundant firearm on earth, and its Russian maker says most of the copies built abroad were never licensed.
Q 25The AK-47 fires which cartridge?
7.62×39mm
7.62×39mm is an 'intermediate' round, deliberately weaker than a full-size rifle cartridge: a soldier could carry far more of it, and its gentler kick kept a light rifle controllable in automatic fire.
Q 26Which engineer designed the ArmaLite AR-15, the rifle the US military adapted into the M16?
Eugene Stoner
Eugene Stoner worked for an aircraft company's small-arms division, so he built his rifle around lightweight aircraft aluminium; short of money, ArmaLite sold the rights to Colt in 1959, and Colt reaped the military orders.
Q 27An army officer from which country designed the Uzi submachine gun in the late 1940s?
Israel
Israel: Uziel Gal finished his prototype in 1950 and asked that the gun not be named after him, but the request was refused and the army called it the Uzi anyway.
Q 28The Glock, adopted by the Austrian military in 1982, was the first commercially successful pistol to use what?
A polymer frame
A polymer frame came naturally to Gaston Glock, an Austrian who made curtain rods and army knives and had never designed a gun; his first pistol beat the established makers in the army's trials anyway.
Q 29Which 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.
Q 30Which compact German pistol is James Bond's signature sidearm in the novels and films?
Walther PPK
Walther PPK: a gun-loving fan, Geoffrey Boothroyd, wrote to Ian Fleming that Bond's pistol was wrong for the job; Fleming took the advice in Dr. No and named the armourer who became Q after him.