Rimfire ammunition
type of firearm cartridge where the firing pin crushes the primer located in the rim of the cartridge to fire it
Rimfire ammunition (also rim-fire) is a type of metallic cartridge used in firearms where the primer is located within a hollow circumferential rim protruding from the base of its casing. When fired, the gun's firing pin strikes and crushes the rim against the edge of the barrel breech, sparking the primer compound within the rim and igniting the propellant within the case. Invented in 1845 by Louis-Nicolas Flobert, the first rimfire metallic cartridge was the .22 BB Cap (also known as the 6 mm Flobert) cartridge, which consisted of a percussion cap with a bullet attached to the top. While many other different cartridge priming methods have been tried since the early 19th century, such as teat-fire and pinfire, only small caliber rimfire (.22 caliber (5.6 mm) or less) cartridges have survived to the present day with regular use. The .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridge, introduced in 1887, is by far the most common ammunition found in the world today in terms of units manufactured and sold.
Characteristics
It is named rimfire ammunition as the firing pin strikes and crushes the base's rim to ignite the primer. The rim of such a cartridge is essentially an expanded and flattened end section of the case, and the priming compound is filled from inside into the trough cavity inside the rim. The case is then filled with propellant (gunpowder) and sealed off by the projectile (bullet).
Rimfire cartridges are limited to low chamber pressures because the case must be thin enough to allow the firing pin to crush the rim and ignite the primer. Rimfire cartridges of up to .58 caliber were once common when black powder was used as a propellant.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Rimfire ammunition” is type of firearm cartridge where the firing pin crushes the primer located in the rim of the cartridge to fire it. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Rimfire, ammunition and type, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1289462. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1845 and 1887.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rimfire ammunition” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.