Thread: legaly speaking....... mini canons?

So what differentiates a cannon from a rifle?
What If you had a rifled barrel on your cannon

Originally Posted by Spanners

So what differentiates a cannon from a rifle?
What If you had a rifled barrel on your cannon

It's still a cannon. Typically a cannon is not hand-held by the user, the scale of it's bore, projectiles and power being more than someone could physically handle. Though these days we're packing hand-helds that would once have been classed as cannons.

Ray.

Originally Posted by Spanners

So what differentiates a cannon from a rifle?
What If you had a rifled barrel on your cannon

Thats a hard one, to be honest I don't think there is a set definition. If we look at the military conventions as a starting point you have Gun fire and small arms fire. Small arms fire being individual weapons and guns being artillery from machineguns upwards. If you want to get more specific you can look at calibre, in modern terms it seems that anything from 20mm and upwards are called canons, while .50cal, 12.5mm and 14.5mm are still considered machineguns.

Not much help but the technology has changed so much over the centuries that its hard to be specific. In NZ law I don't think the word canon is defined.