An elephant gun is a large caliber gun, rifled or otherwise, so named because they were originally developed for use by big-game hunters for elephants and other large dangerous game. They used black powder cartridges at first but later started using smokeless powder. They were sometimes used in wars.
Read more about Elephant Gun: Early Use, Features, Use in War
Famous quotes containing the words elephant and/or gun:
“I asked my mother for fifty cents
To see the elephant jump the fence.
He jumped so high he reached the sky,
And didn’t get back till the Fourth of July.”
—Unknown. I Asked My Mother (l. 1–4)
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969)