Guns are a major component of American culture, along with Automobiles, otherwise known as cars, trucks or SUV's. Engines as in piston engines, a 2L 4-cylinder the most common example, aluminum alloy block and head, liquid cooled, fuel injected, turbocharged, naturally aspirated, emission controlled, in passenger cars, mass produced.
Guns and engines operate in a similar way, a chemical reactions shoves metal down a tube, in the engine this is gasoline reacting with oxygen's electrons making CO2 and Water Vapor although some side reactions with nitrogen create trace emissions of exhaust pollutants, which are largely converted to safer emissions after passing over a hot aluminum ceramic honeycomb coated in slurry of catalytic metals known as a catalytic converter.
Emissions controls along with upstream and downstream O2 EGT voltage sensors, works with the ECU, crank case vapor into intake oily funk, EGR takes some exhaust gas into intake to lower combustion temperature, while ethylene glycol in water with some corrosion inhibitors forms coolant pumped through the engine block to keep the alloy cool, waste heat moved to the radiator where air moving across it by electric fan or by air forced through it when the vehicle traveling to speed, takes the waste heat of the engine and transfers it to the air, effectively increasing entropy or the slow heat death of the world.
55-75% of gasolines chemical energy content lost as exhaust heat, radiator head ejection, friction in parts that rub in the engine, head, or transaxle that moves engine power to the wheels via tires to the road. Road tire friction allows propulsion as the engine power output to translates into acceleration, often through an automatic transmission, because the engine only produces peak torque or efficiency or power at a specific range of RPM, while the vehicle itself has to travel from zero speed stopped to as fast as 85 MPH in some freeway or highway locations in the USA or even faster on the Autobahn of Germany.
Why does an ICE powered vehicle need a transmission, CVT, DCT, Manual, Automatic, or Sequential, because the vehicle has to vary it's speed from zero to very high speeds, while the engine only makes good power at a narrow range of RPM or revolution speeds, known as a power band, its the range of revolutions per second where peak torque, peak horsepower, or peak thermal efficiency achieved.
Back to guns, in a bullet a pressure sensitive explosive in the primer cap struck by a metal pin, such that the anvil inside the cap compresses the explosive, causing it to detonate blowing a hot jet of burning gas into the nitrocellulose smokeless powder, which though combustion of the powder produces tens of thousands of PSI of pressure behind the bullet, which imparts expansion pressure to shove the bullet down the rifled barrel with spiral groves cut along its length like a screw with few threads, to impart spin stabilization which improves bullet trajectory, improving accuracy of the weapon, so when you aim and fire the bullet goes approximately at exactly what you were aiming at as the shooter.
In the engine, after gasoline combusts in air, the expanding hot combustion gas in the work stroke 3rd of 4 strokes in an Otto cycle engine, forces the piston with ring sealing down the cylinder of the block, though its wrist pin and connector rod translates work to the crank shaft in a way that your legs apply power to the pedals of a bicycle, & by combining multiple pistons firing at offsets, a more continual power output created, thus 1 cylinder engines are thumpy, 2 can be much more stable, 3 can be even more stable, 4 even better, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, there are many engine configurations.
In all ICE engine examples work performed by gasoline combustion happens after the engine 1st sucks in air, 2nd squeezes the air, 3rd after piston reaches top dead center, the spark plug makes a hot welding like arc of electric plasma which provides the energy of activation to ignite the fuel and air mix, which hot expanding combustion forces the pistons down the tubes, the way a gun uses chemical combustion pressure to shove a bullet down a tube, do you see the analogy between guns and piston engines now?
Both Cars and Guns are wildly popular in America, which is a very large and very spread out relative low population density country overall. Guns are essential for hunting, EDC, home protection, law enforcement, military, and ICE engines running on gasoline or diesel, especially in Class 8 trucks that move containers, but also diesel electric railroads that move mega mass of containers around America, and in Ships that move containers, while in most suburbs, rural areas, outside of perhaps NY, NY, a working American needs a car, tuck or SUV of some kind, as a privately owned passenger vehicle the only practical way of getting around in a time efficient manner, noting that public bus can work if you live on the route and a stop near your workplace also on that same route and does not require a time vampire transfer.
The bus probably also, even if Hybrid, fueled by diesel, noting large displacement industrial diesel engines with gear camshafts and common rail direct injection, make enormous torque at lower RPM, in mining machines, in vehicles of all kind, noting there is not enough lithium in the world to build new versions of every vehicle battery electric like a Tesla model whatever, and that Battery Electric cars require 5X more copper, and produces 10x more tire tread erosion products, noting that BEV's are not eco-friendly, cars are industrial and producing vehicles requires broad global industrialization which through air, & water pollution ends up killing millions of people with preventable diseases, making pollution of all kinds like a global chemical holocaust, so in other words, there is no free lunch in physics.
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