What is Mami's weapon?

Is tomoe_mami's gun called a musket or a rifle? How do I distinguish these two?

Muskets have smooth-bored barrels, while rifles have rifled barrels (hence, why they're called rifles). Example: post #847090

Strictly speaking, the weapon should be a rifle, but I had been playing it safe and only tagged it there, where the rifling was obvious. The "Unlimited Musket Works" meme also played into that decision.

And this doesn't go into the concept of the rifle musket.

The key difference between a rifle and a musket is whether or not the barrel has been rifled (hence the name). Unless you're looking down the barrel itself, there's no way to tell whether one of those antique guns are rifles or not.
edit: beaten.

Usually, a musket is an old version of rifle that uses flintlock mechanism, flintlocks are rifles start during 17th century that uses gunpowder.

About rifles, there are lots of types of it, to gunpowder to modern assault rifles.

No. See the previous two comments. Flintlock is the ignition mechanism, rifle is the barrel type.

sgcdonmai said:
No. See the previous two comments. Flintlock is the ignition mechanism, rifle is the barrel type.

I didn't say that they are the same, I said that the muskets came before the rifles.

I would say that they are rifles.

Of course, considering that they're magic, it doesn't really matter.

Lunatic6 said:
I didn't say that they are the same, I said that the muskets came before the rifles.

Your choice of words threw me off.

Fencedude said:
Of course, considering that they're magic, it doesn't really matter.

A valid point.

Okay, then should I always tag her gun as rifle? If so I'll clean the musket tag up.

I would think that if someone wants Muskets, they probably do not want 500 images of Mami's magical guns.

Yeah, I've always tagged it as rifle and then just noticed a different trend with musket. At least now we have a consensus tag.

just for clarification, based on the discussion above mami's weapon is strictly a rifle because it has a rifled barrel. the series support this actually upon a close-up shot.

however, is it still ok to tag mami's weapon as musket instead if the artist drew the weapon with clearly a smooth bore like the post #857765 and post #865727?

and how about if the barrel can't be seen like post #884387 but the physical construction of the weapon resembles pretty much like a musket displayed in post #565248 (only a hardwood stock) and post #770023 (just without a bayonet)?

i'm asking this because there is still no musket entry in the wiki; yet musket (empty link) is mentioned in the flintlock definition; and the musket is not even listed yet in antique firearms list_of_weapons.

my confusion primarily stemmed from post #836786 where the weapon of interest is really far from view. i checked the tag history and the 4 tags: cap, screencap, rifle, musket are always deleted then reinserted again by different users. my only concern here is the terms, rifle and musket. based on the actions of more senior members, the terms seem to cannot co-exist. is that really our stand here?

i'm volunteering to update the wiki entries and the list of weapons myself but i still need the community's confirmation because there are many posts involved. thank you.

Any firearm that was originally a smoothbore musket and refitted with a rifled barrel was called a rifle musket. Before long that term was expanded to rifles that were built as such from the start but otherwise used the same basic design as the muskets they replaced. After all, it's usually not immediately obvious when looking at one of those old muzzleloading rifles whether it was built with a rifled barrel or got upgraded with one later.

tl;dr version: Mami's gun is a rifle musket. So using both the rifle and musket tags would be appropriate.

yes, thank you very much. i actually tag some both since while rifle is the more correct term, some people (taggers and users) are actually more familiar with musket. add the confusion of many blogs using 'unlimited musket works' and 'mami's musket replica' as mentioned above.

i only started to doubt my actions after seeing senior members deleting/replacing each other's tag.

and i'll update the wiki for musket. tnx.

Coulda swore it was a flintlock rifle.

i wouldn't mind adding flintlock tag too, especially when the mechanism of firing is very well illustrated.

done that actually on post #938900 almost a week ago, and no one seemed to mind me adding all three tags.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Puella_Magi_Madoka_Magica#Rifles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flintlock

ghostrigger said:
no one seemed to mind me adding all three tags.

Personally I'd say give musket tag only for posts shown clear smooth bore, but nvm.

thanks for the links. i think i have sufficient info now to add to the wiki entries.

however, it's still unclear on what "legitimate" tags should be used to mami's weapon. i'm planning to modify her wiki entry because it mentions simply a rifle. theodoricblood and magus' explanation make it valid to add musket. not one of us and rantuyetmai's make it valid to add flintlock as well.

i understand, that the musket posts undergone a cleaning before. i don't want to waste the effort of the senior members who did it. would the tagging be left to the discretion of the tagger? or we can place the 3 tags equally? or is the musket will be reserved for those "realistic" antique weapons like in the american revolution and the likes?

i'm saying this because some art of mami's weapon don't have a rifled bore or quite unclear or simply not visible (like the post examples i mentioned above they look like muskets).

and don't worry, i only tagged one post with all 3 at the moment. that's why i stopped and reopened the discussion because it appears to involve a lot of posts. especially after seeing a post edited repeatedly by senior members.

My opinion seems to be that of the majority here that muskets should be smooth bore muzzle-loaded long guns, and that long guns with rifled barrels should be rifles.

Both muskets and rifles can feature flintlock actions, and Mami's guns visually do, so that tag at the very least should apply.

The tricky bit comes from the fact that her guns do canonically feature rifling and hence should be rifles, but have the outward appearance of muskets. The rifling isn't typically visible in an image, so by the "tag what you see" policy musket seems justifiable, but by "tag what you know" rifle should be used instead.

There is very little visual distinction between muskets, retrofit musket-rifles, and early but intentionally designed flintlock rifles.

Mami's guns being magical, sort of make both the action and the barrel type sort of moot with regards to function though. Also, being summoned, the intentional design and/or potential retrofitting sort of becomes meaningless too.

My personal opinion would be that because the gun is visually identical to a flintlock rifle, and is canonically known to have rifling, to simply use those two tags. (It may also be visually identical to a musket, but that tag contradicts with canonical fact)

What about situations in where the flintlock mechanism is not seen? Going by what you see, wouldn't it be better to place the images under musket then? Using rifle works best when the firing mechanism is seen, but not all images will depict the mechanism and thus will be lost in a rather large tag that contains weapons that will widely vary in appearance then.

edit: Instead of tagging Mami's weapons flintlock, perhaps it be better to use a more general name like "firelock." A flintlock is a very specific mechanism, but firelock is a more general term for the variety of lock mechanisms that use sparks to ignite a charge.