A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, peppergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge known as a shot-shell, which discharges numerous small spherical projectiles called shot, or a single solid projectile called a slug. Shotguns are most commonly used as smooth-bore firearms, meaning that their gun barrels have no rifling on the inner wall, but rifled barrels for shooting sabot slugs (slug barrels) are also available.
