Plausibility checks

Whether a firearm's figures could all be true at once. The integrity checks find data that was invented; these find real data put in the wrong place: a loaded weight in the empty field, a barrel in inches, a figure copied from a sibling model, a gun dated before its cartridge existed, or the same gun filed twice. Which of two figures is wrong takes a source, so every finding here is a review task, never an automatic change.

What it asks

Loaded against empty: a loaded weight is the empty weight plus a magazine of rounds. A loaded weight no heavier than the empty one is impossible, and a difference far from what the rounds and the magazine weigh says one figure is the other measurement. The AK-47's empty weight was its loaded weight for a year before a reader caught it; this check exists so the next one is caught first.

Older than its cartridge: no firearm is introduced before the cartridge it fires existed. Either year may be the wrong one, or the record names a later designation of the round.

Figures in the wrong unit: a barrel, length, weight or velocity far from its category's median, where a unit mistake explains the distance (a pound figure read as grams, inches read as millimetres). A figure far off that no unit explains is questioned too, and is often a gun filed in the wrong category.

Energy against velocity: a muzzle energy that half the cartridge's typical bullet mass times the velocity squared cannot reach.

Variants against their family: variants of one platform share most figures. A variant whose barrel, capacity or weight sits far from its family's median is usually another gun's figure, or a real difference that deserves a note.

The same gun twice: two ids under one maker whose names reduce to the same model once punctuation and the maker's name are taken out. They are one gun to merge, or two whose difference is written down.

Bounds no gun breaks: a maximum range beyond what its muzzle velocity reaches with no air, recoil from the bullet's momentum alone faster than any gun a person holds, a sight radius longer than the gun, and a variant dated before the gun it is filed under.

How it is calculated

A full magazine's weight is worked out from the cartridge, not guessed: one round from its bullet and case, times the capacity, plus the magazine. A record's loaded weight minus its empty weight must fall in that band. A Glock 17 worked through:

n m_{r}^{-} + M_{\min} \leq W_{L} - W_{E} \leq n m_{r}^{+} + M_{\max}

A Glock 17's full magazine should add

187 g657 grecorded: 238 g

Answer: 238 g lies inside 187 to 657 g, so the loaded and empty weights agree.

Methods this page rests on

Cartridge massThe mass of one loaded round from its bullet and its case, fitted to cartridges whose mass a source states.
Loaded weightHow much a full magazine should add to a gun's empty weight, and the test a record's two weights must pass.
Physical boundsLimits no gun can break: how far a projectile can fly with no air, how fast a gun is pushed back by its bullet, and the order things happen in.
Check thresholdsThe thresholds the record and source checks judge by: plausibility, integrity, manufacturers against Wikidata, corroboration and links. What each measures, where the line is, and what crossing it means.

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What happens to a finding

Every run is published here as it happened, failures included, before anyone has looked at it.
Each run is also kept as a report that lists what was fixed since the run before, what is new and what is still open, so progress is measured finding by finding rather than claimed.
No check edits the catalogue. A finding goes to a person, who corrects the record by hand and cites what the correction rests on; the next run confirms it.
A check id is never renamed, so a link to one keeps meaning the same question.