Among the first breech-loading rifles was one invented by Major Patrick Ferguson, an officer in Washington's Revolutionary Army. It was one of the first to be loaded at the breech and could be loaded and fired six times in a minute. Ferguson, a Scotsman, demonstrated the rifle that bore his name in June, 1776. Four years later he was killed at the Battle of King's Mountain in North Carolina.
Firearms began to change dramatically by the mid-nineteenth century. In 1848, Christian Sharps invente
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