“What is Recoil?” Guide

By way of review, let’s step back and really look at the process of a bullet firing. So your bullet cartridge is just sitting there in the chamber of your gun minding its own business. Although he’d never admit it, that bullet is bored out of his mind*. His job, though, is to plug the hole at the end of the cartridge and not let anything out. At least that’s what we told the bullet. Bullets are gullible.

Laying right behind that bullet is some gun power that’s fast asleep. Sitting WAAAY back in the back is a little bit of primer. Primer, much like a 2 year old that’s had too much soda, is a volatile little thing indeed. All it takes is a good enough nudge and it goes crazy. As I said, the bullet is just sitting there. Nothing is going to move that bullet. It’s not just going to get up and fly away. Short of yanking it out with some pliers and throwing it across the range, it’s staying right there in its boring life. Then, something magical happens. A firing pin hits that primer. The primer itself isn’t enough to move the bullet. In fact, the bullet would laugh at the primer if it tried. The primer, however, has a friend: the gunpowder. The primer explodes and that wakes the gun powder up. Gun powder is grumpy when it gets woken up. The gun powder explodes in an amazingly violent fashion. As I said before though, the bullet doesn’t move easily. Pressure keeps building and building behind the bullet. Eventually, it doesn’t matter how well that bullet is wedged into the brass, the gun powder will win. When it does, well, ever shake up a soda before you open it? Yeah, it’s like that except with smoke, fire and molten metal.

The bullet moves a bit to release some of the pressure but it’s not enough. It builds more and more until the bullet is out of the barrel completely and the results of the gun powder’s temper tantrum are finally expelled. By then, the bullet is travelling as incredible speed and making its way to the target.

All of this happens in a split second. In fact, by the time the slide starts to move back and you feel the recoil, the bullet is already 10-20 feet away.

*”he” is being used as an impersonal pronoun. GunNoob.com in no way wishes to infer the gender of a bullet.  

Right, back to the now. According to Newton’s laws, something has got to push that bullet out, right? The force that’s required to push it forward is also, according to law #3, going to be pushing backwards as well. On top of that, once the gas escapes it’s like a jet engine pushing the gun back more. This is exactly where recoil comes from. It’s the equal but opposite force that’s pushing the bullet out.

This leads us to a fun fact: you know how in movies you always see the shot bad guys flying backwards? Anyone who understands Newton’s laws could tell you that was impossible. If the bullet had enough velocity to knock the bad guy back 10 feet when he got hit with it, then the shooter would also have to be blown back just as much. There isn’t a recoil reduction system in the world that could stop that kind of force in a handgun. I should also mention that the force you feel in the recoil is about the same force that a person getting shot would feel. It’s more of a punch than anything else (at least that’s my understanding. I’ve never been shot nor would I want to. Accounts of shooting victims tend to back up that claim).

So the short answer as to what recoil is? It’s the force of the bullet being sent away. As I said before: by the time you even start to feel it, the danger is loooong gone.

So what can you do to get rid of it? Sorry to break this to you but you’re never going to completely eliminate it. Another law in physics is the Law of Conservation of Energy which, to paraphrase, says that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred or changed. The energy from the powder is converted to recoil. From there the recoil must be transferred to something else. There’s no stopping it all together.

Especially in a handgun. There are, however, ways of reducing the perceived recoil of a gun. Perceived recoil, by the way, is the recoil that you actually feel. The most important thing right off the bat is proper grip. Holding the gun the right way will go a long way towards managing the recoil and directing it the way it’s supposed to go.

What else can you do?

Well, for starters, a semi-automatic will have less perceived recoil than a revolver of the same caliber. Why? Because the slide absorbs a great deal of force. With a revolver, it’s just a heavy chunk of steel with some rubber on the handle. The only thing that really absorbs the force is your wrist, in that case.

Some semi-auto handguns, like Gen4 Glocks, have a dual spring that reduces the recoil a bit. It does this by slowing down the force as it moves into the slide. You can also get your barrel ported. What this does is directs the gasses upwards into the opposite direction of the recoil. It acts like the reverse thrusters on an airplane. The gasses from the exploding powder will counteract the muzzle rise from Newton’s Third Law.

As far as rifles go, there’s a few more options because you have more space to work with. There’s muzzle breaks that, like porting on handguns, will redirect the gasses. There are also special stocks you can get that have a spring/piston assembly inside of them that absorbs and slows down the force. There’s also super squishy padding you can put on the back.

Again, none of these are actually getting rid of the recoil, it’s just making it a bit less….recoil-ish.

There is an interesting development that came out of the last SHOT show, however. It’s a recoil reduction system for the Barrett .50 BMG rifle. What this system does is convert the force of the massive (and I do mean MASSIVE) recoil of the .50 bullet into heat. From there the heat is dissipated using a series of heat sinks and cooling devices. According to the manufacturers, it’s an incredibly significant reduction when all is said and done. I’ll be interested to see if they adapt it to other rifles for civilian use.

So what can we take from this? Well, recoil is always going to be there. The thing to remember is that it’s not dangerous by any stretch of the imagination. It won’t hurt you. Well, ok the recoil from a .44 magnum, .50 Desert Eagle and a Magnum 500 stings like the dickens but still, as long as you’re not starting out with one of those monsters you’ll be fine. If it really really terrifies you no matter what, try moving down to a smaller sized gun for a while. A .22 has barely any recoil. Once you get used to that you can move your way up to, say, a 9mm. Just don’t start yourself out on a Desert Eagle and you’ll be fine.