手枪
shǒuqiāng · HSK 7
pistol
🔫 手枪 = 手 hand + 枪 gun, a gun small enough for one hand
枪 alone is any gun or spear-like weapon; prefixing 手 (hand) narrows it to the handheld kind, so 手枪 is literally a hand-gun = pistol. The sound qiāng also names the rifle 步枪 (step-gun).
手 — pictograph of a hand with five fingers
手 is a pictograph showing an open hand with fingers and a wrist. Early bronze and oracle bone forms clearly depict five splayed fingers, which simplified over time into the modern shape. It keeps its original meaning of 'hand' and also serves as a radical in many characters related to hand actions.
枪 — wood 木 + 仓 cāng (phonetic)
枪 is a semantic-phonetic compound: the wood radical 木 indicates the original meaning—a wooden spear or staff—while 仓 supplies the sound. It first referred to spears and later extended to firearms (guns, rifles) once such weapons appeared, keeping the same character.