A bolt action has fewer moving parts during the firing sequence than any other repeating action, which is why it dominates precision. Lock time (the delay between trigger release and primer ignition) is short, lockup is positive, and there’s no gas system to deal with.

The two big families are push-feed (round picked up by the bolt face) and controlled-round-feed (round held by the extractor from the magazine). Both work for precision; choice is mostly habit.

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