SHOULDER-FIRED FLASH BANG

It’s interesting to observe what garners attention within firearms development … and what doesn’t. Flashback to 1957 — the design of the rifle hadn’t changed much for a century. Certainly, technology has advanced, with the percussion ignition-rifled musket leading to self-contained cartridge-fed repeating actions and ultimately semi-automatic battle rifles. But the rifle throughout all of the evolution was still recognizable as a rifle: wood and steel.

There were many key developments in World War II; the advent of stamped sheetmetal receivers and the intermediate cartridge were two of the biggest. Those evolutionary steps were the desperate products of two authoritarian regimes across the pond attempting to out-produce one another, with easily mass-produced weapons not just in flesh in blood. But Americans still had a semi-automatic battle rifle, a wood and steel creation that fired the full-sized .30-06 cartridge. We had the resources and capability to produce the M1 in large numbers without modern, mass production methods. Nor was there much impetus to consider