The bewitched gun: the introduction of the firearm in the Far East by the Portuguese, by Rainer Daehnhardt 1994. Mayers (1876). "Chinese explorations of the Indian Ocean during the fifteenth century". The China Review. IV: p. 178.

Against all this are families whose lives will never be the same because of gun violence. Who must mourn children and adults lost in domestic violence, accidental killings and mass shootings that are so common, we are still grieving one when the next one occurs.Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. Create Account Chase 2003:1 "The Europeans certainly had firearms by the first half of the 14th century. The Arabs obtained firearms in the 14th century too, and the Turks, Iranians, and Indians all got them no later than the 15th century, in each case directly or indirectly from the Europeans. The Koreans adopted firearms from the Chinese in the 14th century, but the Japanese did not acquire them until the 16th century, and then from the Portuguese rather than the Chinese." Gwei-Djen, Lu; Needham, Joseph; Chi-Hsing, Phan (July 1988). "The Oldest Representation of a Bombard". Technology and Culture. 29 (3): 594–605. doi: 10.2307/3105275. JSTOR 3105275. S2CID 112733319. Editor’s Note (5/24/23): One year ago, on May 24, 2022, 19 students and two teachers were fatally shot at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex. This piece by Scientific American's editors presents the case that simple gun laws can prevent future tragedies. Crosby, Alfred W. (2002), Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-79158-8

Firearms appeared in the Middle East between the late 13th [11] [12] [13] and early 14th century. [14] Ahmad Y. al-Hassan claimed that the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 pitted the Mamluks against the Mongols. "The first cannon in history" used gunpowder almost identical with the ideal composition for explosive gunpowder. [15] [16] However, Iqtidar Alam Khan argued that it was invading Mongols who introduced gunpowder to the Islamic world [17] and cites Mamluk antagonism towards early riflemen as an example of how gunpowder weapons were not always accepted. [18] Around the late 14th century in Italy, smaller, portable hand-cannons or schioppi were developed, creating in effect the first smoothbore personal firearm. The earliest surviving firearm in Europe was found in Otepää, Estonia. It dates to at least 1396. [44] Chase, Kenneth (2003), Firearms: A Global History to 1700, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-82274-9 Pyhrr, Stuart W. (1985). Firearms from the collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 9780870994258. Brett D. Steele (2005). The Heirs of Archimedes: Science and the Art of War Through the Age of Enlightenment. MIT Press. p.120. ISBN 9780262195164.a b "Anjan Mukherjee in Evolution of Indian Artillery and its Impact on India's Comprehensive Military Power, chapter II" (PDF) . Retrieved 2021-05-26. a b "Guns and the British Empire | Center for South Asia". southasia.stanford.edu . Retrieved 2022-12-27. The first successful self-loader was the Gatling gun, a hand-cranked revolver. It was invented by Richard Jordan Gatling and fielded by the Union forces during the American Civil War. Self-loaders use energy to reload. The first successful self-loading rifle was the Mondragón rifle. The world's first machine gun was the Maxim gun, developed by British inventor Sir Hiram Maxim in 1884.

A study comparing gun deaths the U.S. to other high-income countries in Europe and Asia tells us that our homicide rate in teens and young adults is 49 times higher. Our firearm suicide rate is eight times higher. The U.S. has more guns than any of the countries in the comparison. Tarling, Nicholas (1992). The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia: Volume 1, From Early Times to C.1800. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521355056. Eaton, Richard M. (2013). Expanding Frontiers in South Asian and World History: Essays in Honour of John F. Richards. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107034280. Andaya, L. Y. 1999. Interaction with the outside world and adaptation in Southeast Asian society 1500–1800. In The Cambridge history of southeast Asia. ed. Nicholas Tarling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 345–401. While cars have become increasingly safer (it’s one of the auto industry’s main talking points in marketing these days), the gun lobby has thwarted nearly all attempts to make it harder to fire a weapon. With federal protection against some lawsuits, the financial incentive of a giant tort payout to make guns safer is virtually nonexistent.

Crawfurd, John (1856). A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands and Adjacent Countries. Bradbury and Evans. The first mention of firearms in Russia is found in the Sofiiskii vremennik chronicle, which stated that during the 1382 defense of Moscow from Tokhtamysh's Golden Horde, Muscovites used firearms called tyufyaki ( Russian: тюфяки), which were of Eastern origin; this word derives from Turkic tüfäk "gun". [42] [43] Ayalon, David (2013). Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom: A Challenge to Medieval Society (1956). Routledge. p.126. ISBN 9781136277320. One theory of how gunpowder came to Europe is via the Silk Road; another holds that it arrived during the Mongol invasion in the first half of the 13th century. [39] [40] English Privy Wardrobe accounts list ribaldis, a type of cannon, in the 1340s, and siege guns were used by the English at the Siege of Calais (1346–47). [41] Science points to laws that would work to reduce shootings, to lower death. Among the simplest would be better permitting laws with fewer loopholes. When Missouri repealed its permit law, gun-related killings increased by 25 percent. Another would be to ban people who are convicted of violent crime from buying a gun. In California, before the state passed such a law, people convicted of crimes were almost 30 percent more likely to be arrested again for a gun or violent crime than those who, after the law, couldn’t buy a gun.