cocking gun

Cocking or racking a gun to chamber ammunition in it before firing. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Manually pulling back the hammer of a revolver
• Racking the slide of a semi-automatic handgun or pump action shotgun
• Racking the charging handle of a rifle
• Cycling the bolt of a bolt action rifle

Cocking may result in a casing ejection, especially for pump and bolt actions.

Examples

Racking handgun slide

Racking shotgun slide

Racking rifle charging handle

Cycling bolt action bolt

See also

• locked slide
• reloading

The following tags are aliased to this tag: racking_slide (learn more).