Throughout the years, it has been considered desirable to provide guns with great accuracy. When rifles are used for aiming at a target a very long distance away, the stability of a gun is extremely important for hitting the target. Very minor movements of the marksmen's hands or body can cause the bullet to miss the target by a wide margin. In order to correct for such minor movements, it is often necessary to place the gun on a stable surface. In certain applications in the past, tripods have been developed for stabilizing the gun. Such stabilizing can also occur by placing the gun on an adjacent fixed object.
It is often a fact that when such stabilizing devices are utilized, the minor movements in the marksmen's hands and body will still cause the target to be missed. In addition, the stabilizing devices are often cumbersome and heavy to carry. Large rocks, buildings, or other objects, often cannot be found upon which to rest the gun for firing.
In a general sense, the term "gyroscope" can be applied to any solid object rotating about a fixed point. For practical purposes, a gyroscope consists of an axially symmetrical rotating body. It has certain rotational momentum ("spin") which depends upon the mass of the gyroscope, the square of the distance of the individual particles of mass to the axis of rotation, and on the speed of rotation. To increase the rotational momentum, the gyroscope can advantageously be constructed as a disk with a thickened rim, so that most of its mass is concentrated as far from the axis as possible. The significant feature of a gyroscope is that the momentum and the rotational axis preserve their direction so long as no external forces act upon the gyroscope. Because of this tendency to keep the direction of its axis constant in space, the gyroscope can suitably be used for the stabilization of movements.
In the past, it is believed that gyroscopes have been attached to rifles for the purpose of stabilization. Unfortunately, these experiments failed dramatically. It was found that the shock and recoil of firing a gun would quickly destroy the gyroscope fixed to the gun. It was found that the practical life of the gyroscope was very small when the gyroscope was fixed to a gun.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a stabilizer for a gun.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an assembly which resiliently mounts a gyroscope to a gun.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a stabilizer for a gun that has a long life, minimal weight, and easy use.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from a reading of the attached specification and appended claims.