Blunderbuss

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Image:English flintlock blunderbuss.jpeg A blunderbuss is a muzzle-loading firearm with a flared, trumpet-like barrel and is the predecessor to the shotgun. The blunderbuss was in use in the 17th century, and is the weapon most commonly pictured in the arms of the Pilgrims. Flintlock blunderbusses were used by Catherine the Great's forces during foreign wars to expand Russia's territory.

The funnel-shaped barrel is not designed to enhance the ballistics of the weapon, but serves to facilitate loading ammunition into the muzzle. This makes it much easier to refill a blunderbuss with shot in situations where this would not normally be possible (as when riding shotgun on a stagecoach speeding down a bumpy road). While there is no physical reason that a blunderbuss cannot fire projectiles such as gravel or nails instead of lead shot (as is often claimed) this would be a foolhardy action as it would result in the barrel's ruin. A blunderbuss can fire multiple balls simultaneously, and generally discharges its entire load at once. This made the blunderbuss the ideal weapon for boarding ships.

By its nature, the blunderbuss is not a very precise weapon. Although it was sometimes used in a military setting, it was more effective when the goal was not to hit a specific target, but rather any one of multiple targets, such as for crowd control. During combat, the blunderbuss was a very unpredictable weapon; it could hit an entire group of enemy soldiers or miss all of them. The blunderbuss thus became a byword for inaccurate marksmanship in any field. As well, the word itself came to mean "a clumsy or stupid person".

The term blunderbuss is of uncertain origin, but a folk etymology points toward the Dutch term donderbus, a combination of the Dutch terms donder (thunder) and bus (gun).fr:Tromblon