How to Choose The Correct Rifle for You

First, determine your current level of experience. If you are brand new to shooting, and just want a rifle to learn with, a .22 caliber is probably the best. And it comes with much recommendation that you make that .22 a Ruger 10/22, as it is very user friendly, easy to field strip, and is extremely modular with aftermarket parts.

Second:

Determine what you will be using the rifle for. Hunting rifles come in many calibers. And there is an old saying from colonial days that ".30 is a squirrel gun, .40 is a rabbit gun, .50 is a deer gun and .60 is a bear gun." Of course, weapons have become a lot more powerful since then, so that formula doesn’t really apply. But on a similar format, here is a good standard for today. A .22 is a squirrel gun, .22 magnum is a rabbit gun, .30 or 7.62 is a deer gun and .300 magnum is a elk, moose and bear gun

If the rifle you are looking for is for defensive purposes, there are also many options. The most obvious of these being the assault type weapons. Although these are not true assault weapons, A good place to start is the AR-15 layout. It is very user friendly, and very accurate. But it tends to be unreliable when irregularly maintained and the .223 cartridge can be too much over penetration for too little stopping power. They also tend to be expensive.

Another choice is the AK-47. It is much cheaper, it's 7.62x39 cartridge packs more punch, and it is much more reliable. But it is much less accurate, and many of the features are difficult to manipulate when compared to the AR-15 series, most notably the safety and magazine release.

 For apartment defense or other situations where you anticipate a lot of potential for collateral damage, some great choices are the Beretta Cx4 Storm chambered for 9mm and the FN P90 chambered for 5.7x28mm. Both of these are good choices, as they are very short and easy to handle indoors, and the rounds are much less powerful, and when using hollow point or frangible ammo, they will most likely not go through walls.

Third:

Decide how much you want to spend. Sporting rifles come in many prices depending on the manufacturer, caliber, and quality of wood, barrel and engraving if desired.  The best way to find a good rifle that fits your needs is to find a reliable professional gun shop. They should know the differences and guide you to the right affordable choice.

Before you buy a rifle, get a professional opinion. Sportsmans Gun Room is that professional. Click HERE to get connected.

What is Gun Caliber?

In the gun industry, including firearms, caliber (sometimes spelled calibre) is the approximate internal diameter of the barrel in relation to the diameter of the projectile (bullet or shell) used in it.

In a rifled barrel, the distance is measured between opposing lands or grooves; groove measurements are common in cartridge designations originating in the United States, while land measurements are more common elsewhere in the world. It is important to performance that a bullet should closely match the groove diameter of a barrel to ensure a good seal. When the barrel diameter is given in inches, the abbreviation "cal" is used in place of "inches." For example, a small bore rifle with a diameter of 0.22 inch is a .22 cal; however, the decimal point is generally dropped when spoken, making it "twenty-two caliber" or a "two-two caliber". Calibers of firearms can be referred to in millimeters, as in a "caliber of eighty-eight millimeters" (88 mm) or "a hundred and five-millimeter caliber gun" (often abbreviated as "105 mm gun").

While modern cartridges and cartridge firearms are generally referred to by the cartridge name, they are still lumped together based on bore diameter. For example, a firearm might be described as a ".30 caliber rifle", which could be any of a wide range of cartridges using a roughly .30 inch projectile; or a ".22 rimfire", referring to any rimfire cartridge using a .22 caliber projectile.

In some contexts, e.g. guns aboard a warship, "caliber" is used to describe the barrel length as multiples of the bore diameter. A "5-inch 50 caliber" gun has a bore diameter of 5 inches (127 mm) and a barrel length of 50 times 5 inches = 250 inches (6.35 m).

What about Shotguns?

Shotguns are classed according to gauge, a related expression. The gauge of a shotgun refers to how many lead spheres the diameter of the bore would equal a pound. In the case of a 12-gauge shotgun, it would take twelve spheres the size of the shotgun's bore to equal a pound. A numerically larger gauge indicates a smaller barrel: a 20-gauge shotgun requires more spheres to equal a pound; therefore, its barrel is smaller than the 12 gauge. This metric is used in Russia as "caliber number": e.g., "shotgun of the twelve caliber." The sixteenth caliber is known as "lordly" (Russian: барский). While shotgun bores can be expressed in calibers (the .410 bore shotgun is in fact a caliber measure of .41 caliber [11 mm]), the nature of shotshells is such that the barrel diameter often varies significantly down the length of the shotgun barrel, with various levels of choke and backboring.

Information taken from Wikipedia