Over a barrel

I understand that the first breech-loading double guns were over-and-unders but fairly quickly the side-by-side became the predominant design and remained so for more than 100 years. Why was this?

Robert says: Since firearms were conceived, the desire for a quick second shot has prevailed. Because it was more logical in the gunmaker’s eyes to build a firearm that pointed in the same direction as the shooter was looking, when second barrels were added it seemed appropriate to have them above or below the existing barrel. The major concern in those days was weight, which is why early doublebarrelled wheellocks are so small in the bore. The Wender ‘turnover’ system alleviated this by only using one lock and ‘turning over’ the barrels for the second shot, but this slowed down the firing by having to reprime the single lock.

Side-by-side shotguns started to appear towards the middle of the 18th century, again because of weight issues and the need for accuracy was not as acute as with a rifle. Side-by-side rifles were of larger bore and designed for bigger animals where shot placement was not as critical.

The first successful breechloading gun was the French Lefaucheux, which were built in single and side-by-side variations. By the time centrefire came in, the side-byside dominated. Breechloading over-andunders first appeared in Germany around 1880 but, again, despite the apparent superiority of a single sighting plane failed to find much favour in the UK.

English gunmakers did start making over-and-unders but until the appearance of the Woodward and Boss types, tended to be heavy clunky things. The side-by-side continued to dominate to the 1950s until shotguns like the Browning B25 started winning major clay pigeon events.

Even then people were reluctant to relinquish the side-by-side, giving them bigger fore-ends and raised ribs. In the end, the single sighting plane coupled with the strength of the over-and-under won the day for clay shooting. Now the weight and recoil reducing properties of the over-and-unders start to dominate on the game shoot, where the trend is for higher birds and more distant shots. But it was the breechloading side-by-side that came first, not the over-and-under.