The Colt M2012 rifle has been around a long time and is made by Cooper Firearms of Montana. This year Colt updated the line with several models that more resemble the M24 and M40 US service sniper rifles.
Colt Firearms http://www.colt.com
Colt’s Manufacturing has a long history of working with other gun companies for Colt-branded bolt action rifles. The Colt Sauer rifle was produced by J.P. Sauer & Son in Germany from 1973 to 1984, and the 27,189 rifles that came out of it are still highly sought after by collectors. These days, Colt has updated its game with an American company called Cooper Firearms of Montana. Cooper was started in 1990 by ex-Kimber employees and has beena staple in the custom rifle market for more than two decades. The first Colt/Cooper came out a couple years back, called the M2012. They still make it today, and as you can see from the picture here, it looks like what it is, a high-end tactical rifle meant to look tactical. Since the introduction of the M2012, a lot of high-end shooters, especially ex-military snipers, have said that they would love a Cooper rifle that says Colt on the side (who wouldn’t?), but that what they would have in mind was something more along the lines of a US Army issue M24 or USMC M40. Colt, and Cooper, have listened, and the result is a whole new version of the M2012 that more resembles those rifles, while sacrificing nothing in performance. These rifles aren’t cheap. Our test gun as you see it here retails for $3,195. But as you will see, it is well within the world class division when it comes to bolt guns. If you are a Colt fan who just loves to see that name on the side of your gun, like back in the old Sauer days, or you are just in the market for an extremely thoughtful and well-made long range rifle, look no further than the new Colt Model 2012.
The Colt/Cooper M2012 comes with a test target shot by one of the in-house expert marksmen using custom-tuned handloads. This rifle shipped with this target of a group only slightly over bore diameter.
Colt sent us the M2012MT308T, which if you decode it, means Model 2012, from Montana, in .308, with a T stock, whatever T means. The stock is made by Manners from aircraft-grade carbon fiber and fiberglass, making the stock much lighter than your standard solid polymer of the same look and feel. Our test rifle weighs barely over 10 lbs. without the scope. This tan-stocked model only comes in .308 Winchester, but the laminate-stock hunting rifle (the G model) also comes in .260 Remington, a favorite among long range varmint hunters right up to whitetails. The laminate-stock models are also a pound and a half lighter at 8.5 lbs. due to a slightly less heavy barrel, built for carrying in the field. All of the guns come with a single stage Timney adjustable trigger set at about 3 lbs., and all have 22” button-rifled barrels. The .308 guns have a 1/10 twist and the .260 is a 1/8. Our gun (and yes it is ours because we are buying it) has a stainless fluted barrel, as does the original M2012, and the laminate guns have a blued chome-moly steel fluted barrel. A five-round box magazine is included, and 10-rounders are available. The length of pull on our test rifle is 13 3/4” from the front of the trigger to the absolute back of the recoil pad. An optics rail comes mounted on the top of the receiver.
Our best ammo with the gun was Hornady Superformance 150gr. GMX. It isn’t as good as the test target, but with a casual shooter and factory ammo, not so bad.
Accuracy, or more of a correct term is precision, is of course what these guns are about. Our gun came with a hand-signed and laminated test target showing a three-shot group of .319 center to center. The bullet itself is .308. That should give you an idea of how precise your shooting can be with the right load and the right shooter. The test group was shot with a custom handload using a Sierra MatchKing 168 grain bullet and IMR 4064 powder, and it reflects the fact that few true long range accuracy shooters are using factory ammo. I don’t know if you call Cooper that they will tell you exactly how many grains of 4064 they use and the seating depth, but they might! The point is that you will eventually work up your own loads to shoot in the gun, and that these results are possible based purely on the precision manufacturing of the Colt/Cooper.
We tested the rifle with Hornady American Whitetail 150gr. lead-tipped deer hunting ammo and Hornady Superformance in the same weight, but with the 150 Hornady GMX bullet. My groups came in at .654” and .543” respectively. It would have been a shock if these groups were anywhere near as good as those shot by Cooper’s professional shooter using tuned handloads, and he used a 36x Leupold as compared to our 24x NightForce. Nonetheless, not bad! This rifle is a keeper and we’re keeping it.
The only problem that I had with the gun was this spear that sticks out the end of the bolt. If you hold your thumb there, it’ll ouch it!
As you can see from the pictures, the fit and finish on this rifle are flawless. The three lug bolt is as smooth as butter (without actually having to lube it with butter, or anything else), and the compensator on the front can be taken off to put on a suppressor. I personally am not a big fan of the fluted barrel look, but when in Rome… Fluted barrels are very popular in the high-end rifle community. I also would have preferred that the barrel be blued instead of the silver stainless color. It would make the rifle more homogenous and at unity with itself. (That last comment was for our new ex-hippy gun owners who have finally seen the light). The Timney trigger is crisp and light with zero creep, and there is really little else to say about the Colt M2012 except go buy one while the serial numbers are still low. It is a superb firearm, and while there is more to red-blooded American liberty loving life than an AR-15, it is always awesome when the side of the gun says Colt.
For inexpensive high end ammo, Hornady American Whitetail has performed stellarly in every rifle that we try it in.
The grip on this version of the M2012 is meant for prone shooting. There are also two sling studs on the front, one for a Harris/Caldwell-style bipod and one for a sling.
The Colt and Cooper names are both on the rifle.
The bolt is three lug and very smooth.
The M2012 guns all come with a five-round industry standard and Mil-Spec Accurate Arms magazine.
The Colt/Cooper compensator is removable for attachment of a suppressor.
The fluted barrels are free-floated from the front of the action.
The recoil pad is thick and squishy and eliminates nearly all recoil for good shot-to-shot recovery.
This is the original Model 2012. The new models are a welcome departure from the super tactical look.
It will be emotionally difficult to remove this NightForce 4-24x to use on another review gun. If you had one gun… I’m not saying only buy one gun of course. That would be loony right?
Now sadly I have come to the conclusion after reading this article below. Is that it is steel on target on.
Since it seems to me that if we had a Eisenhower, Patton, Smedley Butler or a Chesty Puller in charge of our troops over in the Sandbox.
Then we would have of had a Victory Parade down Pennsylvania Ave with the troops several years ago.
I just hope that a lot more high powered folks than I. Have read this article below.
YOUR FAVORITE ARMY GENERAL ACTUALLY SUCKS
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PHOTO: U.S. ARMY
THE U.S. ARMY only seems impressive. Yes, it’s got plenty of tactically competent and physically heroic enlisted soldiers and low-ranking officers. But its generals are, on the whole, crappy, according to a new book that’s sure to spark teeth-gnashing within the Army.
That book is The Generals, the third book about the post-9/11 military by Tom Ricks, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the *Washington Post’*s former chief military correspondent. Scheduled to be released on Tuesday, The Generals is a surprisingly scathing historical look into the unmaking of American generalship over six decades, culminating in what Ricks perceives as catastrophic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The basic problem is that no one gets fired. Ricks points back to a system that the revered General George Marshall put into place during World War II: unsuccessful officers – defined very, very liberally – were rapidly sacked, especially on the front lines of Europe. Just as importantly, though, getting relieved of command didn’t end a general’s career. Brig. Gen. “Hanging Sam” Williams, was removed as the assistant commander of the 90th Infantry Division in western France in 1944 for lacking “optimism and a calming nature” in the view of his superior. Six years later, Williams commanded the 25th Infantry Division in Korea and retired as a three-star. Marshall’s approach simultaneously held generals accountable for battlefield failures while avoiding a zero-defect culture that stifled experimentation.
Over the course of six decades, Ricks demonstrates at length, the Army abandoned Marshall’s system. It led to a culture of generalship where generals protected the Army from humiliation – including, in an infamous case, Maj. Gen. Samuel Koster covering up the massacre of civilians at My Lai – more than they focused on winning wars. On the eve of Vietnam, “becoming a general was now akin to winning a tenured professorship,” Ricks writes, “liable to be removed not for professional failure but only for embarrassing one’s institution with moral lapses.”
It’s not an airtight case. Ricks is sometimes at pains to explain why good generals who probably should have been fired under Marshall weren’t (George Patton) or why adaptive generals later on weren’t driven out of the Army (David Petraeus). And it’s overstated to blame dumb wars on dumb generals. But the fact is, the Army almost never fires generals for cause, unlike the Navy, to the point where a lieutenant colonel famously wrote in frustration during the Iraq war that a private who loses a rifle is more likely to be disciplined than a general who loses a war.
Ricks explains how it got to be that way. And it’s something the Army has to reckon with as it deals with its future now that its decade of perpetual warfare is ending, and ending inconclusively. He spoke with Danger Room right before The Generals dropped its bomb on the Army.
Danger Room: So how poor are today’s Army generals? What percentage of them would you say need to be fired outright? Is the public wrong for seeing the Army as an uber-competent institution, a learning organization and a meritocracy?
Tom Ricks: The U.S. Army is a great institution – tactically. Our soldiers today are well-trained, well-motivated, cohesive, and fairly well equipped.
But training is for the known. For the unknown, education is required. You need to teach your senior leaders how to address problems full of uncertainty and ambiguity, and from them, fashion a strategy. And then be able to tell whether it is working, and to adjust if it isn’t.
Gen. George C. Marshall, right, fired a ton of WWII-era generals – but also gave them second and third chances. Tom Ricks praises that forgotten system for cultivating the excellence of generals like Dwight D. Eisenhower, left.
PHOTO: U.S. ARMY
Our generals today are not particularly well-educated in strategy. Exhibit A is Tommy Franks, who thought it was a good idea to push Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda from Afghanistan into Pakistan, a larger country that also possesses nuclear weapons. Franks also thought that he had won when he took the enemy’s capital in Afghanistan and Iraq — when in fact that is when the wars really began.
When generals don’t know what to do strategically, they tend to regress back down to what they know, which is tactical. That’s one reason why in Vietnam you saw colonels and generals hovering over company commanders giving orders. It is also why our generals were so slow to adapt in Iraq. By the time they became operationally effective, it was 2007, and we had been fighting in Iraq for nearly four years, longer than we had during all of World War II.
What percentage of them need to be fired? All those who fail. That is how George Marshall ran the Army during World War II. Failures were sacked, which is why no one knows nowadays who Lloyd Fredendall was. Successful generals were promoted – which is why why we know names of younger officers of the time such as Eisenhower, Ridgway and Gavin. This was a tough-minded, Darwinian system that reinforced success. Mediocre wasn’t enough back then. It is now, apparently. Back in World War II, a certain percentage of generals were expected to be fired. It was seen as a sign that the system was working as expected.
DR: How would George Marshall’s system of relieving failing generals and placing them in remedial positions work today? Wouldn’t a relief inevitably be seen as an irredeemable black mark?
>’All those who fail need to be fired.’
TR: Relief today is indeed a black mark. The system only works if relief is so frequent that it isn’t seen as a career-ender. Of the 155 men who commanded Army divisions in combat during World War II, 16 were fired. Of those, five were given other divisions to command in combat later in the war. Many others who were fired got good staff jobs, or trained divisions back home.
That said, Marshall was pretty hardnosed about this. He didn’t run the Army for the benefit of its officers. In a war for democracy, he wrote, the needs of the enlisted came first. He believed that the Army owed its soldiers competent leadership. That was not the case with the Army in Vietnam, where officers were rotated in quickly to get some time in combat command and then rotated out.
DR: Isn’t it too simplistic to blame bad generalship for lost wars and good generalship for successful ones? Tommy Franks may have been “dull and arrogant,” as you write, but he didn’t decide to invade Iraq; David Petraeus may have been his polar opposite, but Afghanistan is in shambles.
TR: Yes, it would be too simplistic. That’s why the major second theme of the book is the need for good discourse between our top generals and their civilian overseers.
By good discourse, I don’t mean everyone getting along. I mean dialogue that welcomes candor, honesty, and clarity, and is guided so it does two key things: explore assumptions and dig into differences. For example, the Vietnam War was guided on the assumption that the enemy had a breaking point and that it would come before ours. Turns out that was wrong. Likewise, the 1991 Gulf War was run on the assumption that giving Saddam Hussein a good thumping would remove him from power. Didn’t happen.
I came away from the book thinking that the quality of civil-military discourse is one of the few leading indicators you have of how well a war will go. George Marshall was not the natural choice for Army chief of staff (Hugh Drum probably was) but FDR picked him in part because Marshall twice had stood up to Roosevelt in the Oval Office, respectfully but forcefully dissenting on key military issues.
DR: Isn’t relieving generals when they’re generals too late? Why shouldn’t the relieves and reassignments you describe in the book come earlier in their tenures as officers? Or can you really teach a general new tricks?
>’We shouldn’t fight our wars based on what the cool kids think.’
TR: Yes. And yes – if generals see that getting promoted requires some prudent risk-taking, some adaptation, they will do so and learn those tricks. But they won’t if they see that cautious mediocrity is rewarded equally.
DR: Can you make up your mind about Gen. Ray Odierno already? He was a villain in your first book about the Iraq war, a hero in your second, and now he’s a villain again, for giving one of his subordinate commanders a slap on the wrist for obstructing an inquiry into his soldiers’ abuse of Iraqis. Is Odierno fit to serve as Army chief of staff?
DR: I am of two minds about Gen. Odierno. I do think he screwed up when he commanded the 4th Infantry Division early in the Iraq war. But the bottom line is he adapted. You got to learn to live with a little ambiguity, Spencer!
DR: You write that “It seems a good bet that there will not be a ‘Petraeus generation’ of generals.” I took that to mean a more competent and far-sighted general officer corps, but you might also have meant one steeped in counterinsurgency. If you mean the former, why shouldn’t we expect one, since Petraeus remains a remarkably influential figure in the Army even to soldiers who never served under him? If you mean the latter, why is that something to lament? There’s an argument to be made that one of the reasons Afghanistan remains a mess is because the Army and Marines drank the counterinsurgency Kool-Aid too deeply.
TR: Nah, I mean competent, adaptive generals. But one aspect of being adaptive is being able to think critically. I think COIN worked for Petraeus during the surge, but it was a very tough-minded, violent COIN strategy. And it involved risk-taking – like Petraeus striking a private ceasefire with the Sunni insurgents and putting 100,000 of them on the American payroll, and doing it all without asking permission from President Bush.
An aside on COIN: It was in fashion a few years ago. It is out of fashion now. But we shouldn’t fight our wars based on what the cool kids think. We should use what works, and be willing to try other things if what we try doesn’t work. That’s my gripe with Petraeus’ predecessor in Iraq, George Casey [who later became Army chief of staff].
THE U.S. ARMY only seems impressive. Yes, it’s got plenty of tactically competent and physically heroic enlisted soldiers and low-ranking officers. But its generals are, on the whole, crappy, according to a new book that’s sure to spark teeth-gnashing within the Army.
That book is The Generals, the third book about the post-9/11 military by Tom Ricks, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the *Washington Post’*s former chief military correspondent. Scheduled to be released on Tuesday, The Generals is a surprisingly scathing historical look into the unmaking of American generalship over six decades, culminating in what Ricks perceives as catastrophic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The basic problem is that no one gets fired. Ricks points back to a system that the revered General George Marshall put into place during World War II: unsuccessful officers – defined very, very liberally – were rapidly sacked, especially on the front lines of Europe. Just as importantly, though, getting relieved of command didn’t end a general’s career. Brig. Gen. “Hanging Sam” Williams, was removed as the assistant commander of the 90th Infantry Division in western France in 1944 for lacking “optimism and a calming nature” in the view of his superior. Six years later, Williams commanded the 25th Infantry Division in Korea and retired as a three-star. Marshall’s approach simultaneously held generals accountable for battlefield failures while avoiding a zero-defect culture that stifled experimentation.
Over the course of six decades, Ricks demonstrates at length, the Army abandoned Marshall’s system. It led to a culture of generalship where generals protected the Army from humiliation – including, in an infamous case, Maj. Gen. Samuel Koster covering up the massacre of civilians at My Lai – more than they focused on winning wars. On the eve of Vietnam, “becoming a general was now akin to winning a tenured professorship,” Ricks writes, “liable to be removed not for professional failure but only for embarrassing one’s institution with moral lapses.”
It’s not an airtight case. Ricks is sometimes at pains to explain why good generals who probably should have been fired under Marshall weren’t (George Patton) or why adaptive generals later on weren’t driven out of the Army (David Petraeus). And it’s overstated to blame dumb wars on dumb generals. But the fact is, the Army almost never fires generals for cause, unlike the Navy, to the point where a lieutenant colonel famously wrote in frustration during the Iraq war that a private who loses a rifle is more likely to be disciplined than a general who loses a war.
Ricks explains how it got to be that way. And it’s something the Army has to reckon with as it deals with its future now that its decade of perpetual warfare is ending, and ending inconclusively. He spoke with Danger Room right before The Generals dropped its bomb on the Army.
Danger Room: So how poor are today’s Army generals? What percentage of them would you say need to be fired outright? Is the public wrong for seeing the Army as an uber-competent institution, a learning organization and a meritocracy?
Tom Ricks: The U.S. Army is a great institution – tactically. Our soldiers today are well-trained, well-motivated, cohesive, and fairly well equipped.
But training is for the known. For the unknown, education is required. You need to teach your senior leaders how to address problems full of uncertainty and ambiguity, and from them, fashion a strategy. And then be able to tell whether it is working, and to adjust if it isn’t.
Gen. George C. Marshall, right, fired a ton of WWII-era generals – but also gave them second and third chances. Tom Ricks praises that forgotten system for cultivating the excellence of generals like Dwight D. Eisenhower, left.
PHOTO: U.S. ARMY
Our generals today are not particularly well-educated in strategy. Exhibit A is Tommy Franks, who thought it was a good idea to push Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda from Afghanistan into Pakistan, a larger country that also possesses nuclear weapons. Franks also thought that he had won when he took the enemy’s capital in Afghanistan and Iraq — when in fact that is when the wars really began.
When generals don’t know what to do strategically, they tend to regress back down to what they know, which is tactical. That’s one reason why in Vietnam you saw colonels and generals hovering over company commanders giving orders. It is also why our generals were so slow to adapt in Iraq. By the time they became operationally effective, it was 2007, and we had been fighting in Iraq for nearly four years, longer than we had during all of World War II.
What percentage of them need to be fired? All those who fail. That is how George Marshall ran the Army during World War II. Failures were sacked, which is why no one knows nowadays who Lloyd Fredendall was. Successful generals were promoted – which is why why we know names of younger officers of the time such as Eisenhower, Ridgway and Gavin. This was a tough-minded, Darwinian system that reinforced success. Mediocre wasn’t enough back then. It is now, apparently. Back in World War II, a certain percentage of generals were expected to be fired. It was seen as a sign that the system was working as expected.
DR: How would George Marshall’s system of relieving failing generals and placing them in remedial positions work today? Wouldn’t a relief inevitably be seen as an irredeemable black mark?
>’All those who fail need to be fired.’
TR: Relief today is indeed a black mark. The system only works if relief is so frequent that it isn’t seen as a career-ender. Of the 155 men who commanded Army divisions in combat during World War II, 16 were fired. Of those, five were given other divisions to command in combat later in the war. Many others who were fired got good staff jobs, or trained divisions back home.
That said, Marshall was pretty hardnosed about this. He didn’t run the Army for the benefit of its officers. In a war for democracy, he wrote, the needs of the enlisted came first. He believed that the Army owed its soldiers competent leadership. That was not the case with the Army in Vietnam, where officers were rotated in quickly to get some time in combat command and then rotated out.
DR: Isn’t it too simplistic to blame bad generalship for lost wars and good generalship for successful ones? Tommy Franks may have been “dull and arrogant,” as you write, but he didn’t decide to invade Iraq; David Petraeus may have been his polar opposite, but Afghanistan is in shambles.
TR: Yes, it would be too simplistic. That’s why the major second theme of the book is the need for good discourse between our top generals and their civilian overseers.
By good discourse, I don’t mean everyone getting along. I mean dialogue that welcomes candor, honesty, and clarity, and is guided so it does two key things: explore assumptions and dig into differences. For example, the Vietnam War was guided on the assumption that the enemy had a breaking point and that it would come before ours. Turns out that was wrong. Likewise, the 1991 Gulf War was run on the assumption that giving Saddam Hussein a good thumping would remove him from power. Didn’t happen.
I came away from the book thinking that the quality of civil-military discourse is one of the few leading indicators you have of how well a war will go. George Marshall was not the natural choice for Army chief of staff (Hugh Drum probably was) but FDR picked him in part because Marshall twice had stood up to Roosevelt in the Oval Office, respectfully but forcefully dissenting on key military issues.
DR: Isn’t relieving generals when they’re generals too late? Why shouldn’t the relieves and reassignments you describe in the book come earlier in their tenures as officers? Or can you really teach a general new tricks?
>’We shouldn’t fight our wars based on what the cool kids think.’
TR: Yes. And yes – if generals see that getting promoted requires some prudent risk-taking, some adaptation, they will do so and learn those tricks. But they won’t if they see that cautious mediocrity is rewarded equally.
DR: Can you make up your mind about Gen. Ray Odierno already? He was a villain in your first book about the Iraq war, a hero in your second, and now he’s a villain again, for giving one of his subordinate commanders a slap on the wrist for obstructing an inquiry into his soldiers’ abuse of Iraqis. Is Odierno fit to serve as Army chief of staff?
DR: I am of two minds about Gen. Odierno. I do think he screwed up when he commanded the 4th Infantry Division early in the Iraq war. But the bottom line is he adapted. You got to learn to live with a little ambiguity, Spencer!
DR: You write that “It seems a good bet that there will not be a ‘Petraeus generation’ of generals.” I took that to mean a more competent and far-sighted general officer corps, but you might also have meant one steeped in counterinsurgency. If you mean the former, why shouldn’t we expect one, since Petraeus remains a remarkably influential figure in the Army even to soldiers who never served under him? If you mean the latter, why is that something to lament? There’s an argument to be made that one of the reasons Afghanistan remains a mess is because the Army and Marines drank the counterinsurgency Kool-Aid too deeply.
TR: Nah, I mean competent, adaptive generals. But one aspect of being adaptive is being able to think critically. I think COIN worked for Petraeus during the surge, but it was a very tough-minded, violent COIN strategy. And it involved risk-taking – like Petraeus striking a private ceasefire with the Sunni insurgents and putting 100,000 of them on the American payroll, an
The only problem that I could see with this big step forward looking rifle.
Is the fact that if all the chambers went off due to a mistake somewhere. Then the operator would very quickly become a one handed man.
Here is some more information about this interesting colt!
Revolving rifles were an attempt to increase the rate of fire of rifles by combining them with the revolving firing mechanism that had been developed earlier for revolving pistols.
Colt began experimenting with revolving rifles in the early 19th century, making them in a variety of calibers and barrel lengths.[1]
Colt revolving rifles were the first repeating rifles adopted by the U.S. Government, but they had their problems. They were officially given to soldiers because of their rate of fire.
But after firing six shots, the shooter had to take an excessive amount of time to reload. On occasion Colt rifles discharged all their rounds at once, endangering the shooter. Even so, an early model was used in the Seminole Wars in 1838.[2]
In March, 1836, Colt formed the Patent Arms Company and began operation in an unused silk mill along the banks of the Passaic River in Paterson, New Jersey.
His first product was a ring-lever revolving rifle, available in .34, .36, .38, .40, and .44 caliber, in which a ring located forward of the trigger served to cock the hammer and advance the cylinder for each shot.
This was soon followed with a revolving pistol. These five-shot “Paterson” revolvers featured folding triggers, and were available both with and without loading levers in .28, .31, and .36 caliber.
Patent Arms produced smoothbore revolving carbines and shotguns. The outbreak of war between the U.S. government and the Seminole tribe provided Colt with his first break.
Seminole warriors had learned that soldiers were vulnerable while reloading their single-shot firearms, and they developed a tactic of drawing fire, then rushing the temporarily defenseless soldiers and wiping them out before they could fire a second volley.
Colt’s revolving rifles were quite effective against this, and the army purchased his products for use by troops in the Florida campaign.[3]
In 1855, with his Model 1855 patent, Colt introduced a spur-trigger revolver that featured a fully enclosed cylinder.
These handguns were officially named Sidehammer revolvers, but they also were known as “Root” revolvers after Elisha K. Root, who at that time was employed as Colt’s factory superintendent and Chief Engineer.[4]
Based on the Sidehammer design, Colt produced the Sidehammer Model 1855 rifles and carbines for military and sporting use, as well as a revolving shotgun.
In failing health, Colt expanded his factory on the eve of the Civil War, and began production of a new, lightweight .44 caliber Army revolver, followed a year later by a .36 caliber Navy version.[5]
This was produced in a rifle version as well as a shortened carbine. In 1855 it became the first repeating rifle to be adopted for service by the U.S. Military, but problems with the design prevented its use until 1857.
The principal problem was that gunpowder would sometimes leak from the paper cartridges in field conditions, lodging in various recesses around the firing cylinder.
Hot gas leaking from the gap between the firing cylinder and the barrel would ignite this powder, which would in turn, ignite all of the powder in the chambers waiting to be fired.
This is known as a “chain fire” and was a relatively common failure with early percussion revolving firearms. When this happened with the Colt Revolving Rifle, a spray of metal would be sent forward into the left arm and hand of the user.[6]
A distrust in the weapon developed as a result. Commanders attempted to get around the problem in a number of ways.
The rifle had to be properly and thoroughly cleaned, since sloppy cleaning would leave residue behind that would increase the risk of a chain fire.
Some commanders instructed their men to fire the weapon only while supporting it directly in front of the trigger guard or by holding the lowered loading lever, which moved their left hand out of the path of danger during a chainfire.
Other commanders instructed their men to load only a single chamber, preventing any chain fires from occurring.
Loading a single chamber at a time also reduced the weapon to a single shot weapon, and effectively defeated the entire purpose of having a repeating rifle.[6]
Brevete Colt Dragoon revolving rifles were made in Belgium under license from Colt during the 1850s to 1860s.
Design and Features
Colt Model 1855 Carbine
The design of the Colt revolving rifle was essentially similar to revolver type pistols, with a rotating cylinder that held five or six rounds in a variety of calibers from .36 to .64 inches.[7]
The Model 1855, which was the most widely produced revolving rifle, was available in .36, .44 and .56 caliber. Four barrel lengths were available: 15, 18, 21 and 24 inches. A six shot cylinder was used if the caliber was .36 or the .44. If the caliber was .56, a five-shot cylinder was used.[8]
A revolving rifle used percussion caps, like revolving pistols of the time. A cartridge (consisting of powder and a lead ball) was loaded into the front of the chamber and then compressed with a plunger that was located beneath the barrel.
Once the cylinder’s chambers were loaded, percussion caps were placed over the vent nipples at the rear of the cylinder.
The weapon was now ready to fire. In addition to being susceptible to chain fire problems, the revolving cylinder design also tended to spray lead splinters into the wrist and hand of the user.[9]
Revolving pistols did not suffer from this problem since the user kept both hands behind the cylinder while firing a pistol.
Some models could be fitted with sword style bayonets. In these rifles, the front sight would double as the bayonet lug.
Use
A combination of Colt revolving pistols and revolving rifles were used on the Pony Express by the eight men who guarded the dangerous run between Independence, Missouri, and Santa Fe.
When doubts were expressed about the ability of these eight men to deliver the letters on this run reliably, the Missouri government declared that “these eight men are ready in case of attack to discharge 136 shots without having to reload. We have no fears for the safety of the mail.” All mail deliveries on this route were completed safely.[10]
The U.S. government had purchased 765 Colt revolving carbines and rifles prior to the Civil War. Many of these were shipped to southern locations and ended up being used by the Confederacy.[9]
After the war began, the Union purchased many more rifles and carbines. Sources disagree over the exact number purchased, but approximately 4,400 to 4,800 were purchased in total over the length of the war.
The weapon performed superbly in combat, seeing action with the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry Union forces at Snodgrass Hill during the Battle of Chickamauga during the American Civil War.[11][12]
The volume of fire from this weapon proved to be so useful that the Confederate forces were convinced that they were attacking an entire division, not just a single regiment, but still, the Ohioans ran out of ammunition, and surrendered.[7]
Despite these victories, the rifle’s faults would prove fatal for the weapon. A board of officers evaluated the evidence and decided to discontinue its use. The rifles were sold for 42 cents each, a fraction of the original purchase cost of 44 dollars.[6]
Use in film
In 3:10 to Yuma (2007) the Mexican sharpshooter Campos (Rio Alexander) carries a Colt Model 1855 fitted with a full length telescopic sight and converted to fire metallic cartridges.[13]
In The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly one of Angel Eyes’s killers uses a Remington revolving rifle.
In the John Wayne movie El Dorado, actor Arthur Hunnicut’s character, Bull Harris, carries a Model 1855 revolving carbine as his main weapon.[13]
In The Mask of Zorro, Captain Love carries an early revolving rifle. In the sequel, the Legend of Zorro, a cavalry captain carries one as well.
In the Quentin Tarantino film The Hateful Eight, the character John Ruth (played by Kurt Russell) carries a Remington revolving rifle as his main weapon.
So if it’s off to the Bachelor’s Officers Quarters my young F.N.G.*, As The New C.O. want his shit there ASAP!
Of course the saying of “If it looks stupid but it works, then it’s not stupid!” does comes to mind.
* Fucking New Guy – The worst Rank in any military unit
Catholic dissident Guy Fawkes and 12 co-conspirators spent months planning to blow up King James I of England during the opening of Parliament on November 5, 1605. But their assassination attempt was foiled the night before when Fawkes was discovered lurking in a cellar below the House of Lords next to 36 barrels of gunpowder. Londoners immediately began lighting bonfires in celebration that the plot had failed, and a few months later Parliament declared November 5 a public day of thanksgiving. Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Bonfire Night, has been around in one form or another ever since. Though originally anti-Catholic in tone, in recent times it has served mainly as an excuse to watch fireworks, make bonfires, drink mulled wine and burn Guy Fawkes effigies (along with the effigies of current politicians and celebrities).
Catholicism in England was heavily repressed under Queen Elizabeth I, particularly after the pope excommunicated her in 1570. During her reign, dozens of priests were put to death, and Catholics could not even legally celebrate Mass or be married according to their own rites. As a result, many Catholics had high hopes when King James I took the throne upon Elizabeth’s death in 1603. James’ wife, Anne, is believed to have previously converted to Catholicism, and his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was Elizabeth’s Catholic archrival prior to being executed. There were even rumors, inspired by his diplomatic overtures to the pope, that James himself would become Catholic.
It soon became clear, however, that James did not support religious tolerance for Catholics. In 1604 he publicly condemned Catholicism as a superstition, ordered all Catholic priests to leave England and expressed concern that the number of Catholics was increasing. He also largely continued with the repressive policies of his predecessor, such as fines for those refusing to attend Protestant services.
Portrait of James I.
English Catholics had organized several failed conspiracies against Elizabeth, and these continued under James. In 1603 a few priests and laymen hatched the so-called Bye Plot to kidnap James, only to be turned in by fellow Catholics. Another related conspiracy that year, known as the Main Plot, sought to kill James and install his cousin on the throne. Then, in May 1604, a handful of Catholic dissidents—Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby, Tom Wintour, Jack Wright and Thomas Percy—met at the Duck and Drake inn in London, where Catesby proposed a plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder. Afterwards, all five men purportedly swore an oath of secrecy upon a prayer book.
Eight other conspirators would later join what became known as the Gunpowder Plot. But although Catesby was the ringleader, Fawkes has garnered most of the publicity over the past 400-plus years. Born in 1570 in York, England, Fawkes spent about a decade fighting for Spain against Protestant rebels in the Spanish-controlled Netherlands. He also personally petitioned the king of Spain for help in starting an English rebellion against James. According to writings in the Spanish archives, Fawkes believed the English king was a heretic who would drive out his Catholic subjects. Fawkes also apparently expressed strong anti-Scottish prejudices.
By 1605 Fawkes was calling himself Guido rather than Guy. He also used the alias John Johnson while serving as caretaker of a cellar—located just below the House of Lords—that the plotters had leased in order to stockpile gunpowder. Under the plan, Fawkes would light a fuse on November 5, 1605, during the opening of a new session of Parliament. James, his eldest son, the House of Lords and the House of Commons would all be blown sky-high. In the meantime, as Fawkes escaped by boat across the River Thames, his fellow conspirators would start an uprising in the English Midlands, kidnap James’ daughter Elizabeth, install her as a puppet queen and eventually marry her off to a Catholic, thereby restoring the Catholic monarchy.
Nineteenth-century depiction of the Gunpowder Plot’s discovery.
On October 26, an anonymous letter advising a Catholic sympathizer to avoid the State Opening of Parliament alerted the authorities to the existence of a plot. To this day, no one knows for sure who wrote the letter. Some historians have even suggested that it was fabricated and that the authorities already knew of the Gunpowder Plot, only letting it progress as an excuse to further crack down on Catholicism. Either way, a search party found Fawkes skulking in his cellar around midnight on November 4, with matches in his pocket and 36 barrels of gunpowder stacked next to him. For Fawkes, the plot’s failure could be blamed on “the devil and not God.” He was taken to the Tower of London and tortured upon the special order of King James. Soon after, his co-conspirators were likewise arrested, except for four, including Catesby, who died in a shootout with English troops.
Fawkes and his surviving co-conspirators were all found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death in January 1606 by hanging, drawing and quartering. A Jesuit priest was also executed a few months later for his alleged involvement, even as new laws banned Catholics from voting in elections, practicing law or serving in the military. In fact, Catholics were not fully emancipated in England until the 19th century.
After the plot was revealed, Londoners began lighting celebratory bonfires, and in January 1606 an act of Parliament designated November 5 as a day of thanksgiving. Guy Fawkes Day festivities soon spread as far as the American colonies, where they became known as Pope Day. In keeping with the anti-Catholic sentiment of the time, British subjects on both sides of the Atlantic would burn an effigy of the pope. That tradition completely died out in the United States by the 19th century, whereas in Britain Guy Fawkes Day became a time to get together with friends and family, set off fireworks, light bonfires, attend parades and burn effigies of Fawkes. Children traditionally wheeled around their effigies demanding a “penny for the Guy” (a similar custom to Halloween trick-or-treating) and imploring crowds to “remember, remember the fifth of November.”
Guy Fawkes himself, meanwhile, has undergone something of a makeover. Once known as a notorious traitor, he is now portrayed in some circles as a revolutionary hero, largely due to the influence of the 1980s graphic novel “V for Vendetta” and the 2005 movie of the same name, which depicted a protagonist who wore a Guy Fawkes mask while battling a future fascist government in Britain. Guy Fawkes masks even cropped up at Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City and elsewhere. “Every generation reinvents Guy Fawkes to suit their needs,” explained historian William B. Robison of Southeastern Louisiana University. “But Fawkes was just one of the flunkies. It really should be Robert Catesby Day.”
Now just like our Children, a good parent should love their children the same. So it should be with our guns. But deep down we all know that this is just a lot of wishful thinking.
As for me, there have been a small group of rifles that have held this title for a while.
The usual problems with them being that either thru massive stupidity or economic need. They have passed from my possession.
(Hey college, beer, girls /ex wives are a very expensive group of hobby’s to have, Let me tell you brother!)
But that is for small minds to ponder upon and I like to think that we all have been there at one time or another in our lives.
So let us move on to the subject at hand. I.E. The current holder of this title in my gun safe.
It was few years ago when the Son & Heir was still in High School. On a cool crisp day that was such a relief from the Blast furnace of the receding summer of Los Angeles.
So what to do but take the Boy on some serious Father Son bonding time. (No not that kind of bonding ! I swear that some of you guys are some really sick puppies out there!)
No instead we went to one of the area’s big guns shows. We is the land of the strange and wonderful of our Fellow gun lovers.
As we peruse the long lines of tables and the huge crowds. I hear this faint whisper calling me. Psst! Dave over here! So I meander over to this table and lo and behold. There she is.
Now I know that this is going to be a disappointment. In that no it was not a H&H Double Rifle for $25 or a Pre-64 Winchester Model 70 in 257 Roberts Super Grade. (Yeah I know there is no such critter!)
No its was just a plain Jane sporterized 1903 Springfield Rifle. In f course 30-06. But there was something that just caught my eye about it.
In that it had a bulky no name sporterized stock with 1950’s inlaid rosewood diamonds on the foregrip, That and some halfway decent scope mounts on it.
But the recoil stock was so hard you could use it to break asphalt with it. As to the barrel, well does the term like a dirt road mean anything to you? But something kept tugging at me and so I asked to take a look at it.
This is kind of what I saw at the show.
So like anybody who has been around guns for a while. I checked to make sure that there was not a round in the chamber. It is at this point that my eyes opened up.
In that somebody had really spent some time squaring away the lugs on the bolt. As it was extremely stiff to open up the action.
So it was very obvious that all the lugs had a very large contact area with the receiver.
Always a good thing in a rifle as far as I am concerned. So I then started the dance of haggling with the owner over how much did he want for it.
Fortunately the Gods smiled on me as he was a very reasonable chap. So we quickly came to what I thought was a very reasonable price. (The princely sum of $350 USD. Which is not bad if I say myself.)
Then it was off the feed the bureaucracy. So that I may keep my property from their grubby paws & me from my potential cellmate named Bubba.
Now at this Time The Son & Heir is thinking that again I have reached the age of senility. “What another 03!?! What is it with you and them?” At which point I just told him that its a very long walk home. That and that he had left his cell phone in the car.
So after the usual hassles to gain control of my rifle. It was then introduced to the other members of the collection in the Guns safe. Where it was then promptly forgotten about.
Then fate intervened for once in my favor. As one day I stopped off at the local gun shops and talked to one of the new guy Gun smith.
Now this guy was an interest person. In that he had done a tour with the Airborne Infantry in Afghanistan. Then gotten out and had gone to the Gun School at Trinidad. Needless to say he did great work on some of my sick guns.
Anyways I shooting the breeze with him. When he ups and asks me a question. Would I like to buy a blank rifle barrel from him? Oh says I? What caliber is it? Says he 6mm. Huh & how much!? says I
Well there comes a time. When you can see that somebody is hurting and you want to help them out. Especially a man like this, Who is a real stand up guy. ( a very rare and growing breed by the way) He wants $350 but will take $300 if he has to.
Okay but I will only pay you $350. Since only a fool pisses off his gunsmith. right? So off to the bank I go.
Now I heard this term a very long time ago in Mr. Reagan’s Army. That of the Good Idea Fairy.
So if one is very lucky that Good Idea Fairy will sneak up on you & smack you in the back of the head.
If you are wise you will then listen very hard to what is being told you. This time the fairy said this to me. Hey remember that 03 that you bought a while ago?
Why do you not put this barrel on it and chamber it for 243 Win? Since you gave your other 243 to the Son &Heir for graduating from HS?
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!! That could be a great idea now that you mention it.
So off we go to the Gun shop and see what kind of mischief I can get into. Well lo and behold there is my good buddy the Junior Gunsmith. So I tell him of my idea and what did he think of it.
Amazingly he can not punch any serious holes in the idea. So I gave him his commission and off he went. Now frankly I was seriously thought that I was going to have to spend some serious cash on this project.
But it just goes to show that sometimes not all good deeds go unpunished. As it seems that the kid on his lunch time and so I was charged a very modest fee for the chambering and mounting of the barrel to the receiver.
Then a few paychecks later. I had a Timney trigger and a new recoil pad was added on for around $200. I also had a nice BSA Scope slapped on and bore sighted.
So far I guess that I was in for about a grand more or less.
as with a bit of nervousness that I took it to the range.
Now I am not going to try and BS you about how I had to use a ruler. In order to see if I had put a series of 5 rounds thru the same hole at 1000 yds. That’s not my pattern for sure!
As seriously I do not think that many folks can do that. But I will say that it did give me some really good patterns at a 100 yards. say a quarter could easily cover a group of 5 shots. Which for this old duffer is pretty good. When he is on the bench rest.
Needless to say the Son & Heir did a lot better with it. Like above this paragraph.
But then he is a lot younger and in a hell of a lot better shape than I am. He is also always trying to talk me out of this rifle . But it is going to be a while before that happens.
A Parker from Remington – 1934 marked the year that Remington took over production of Parker shotguns, moving the plant in 1938 to Ilion, NY. Then came WWII, which ended production. In a 1987 project intended to bring back the classic Parker side-by-side shotgun, the Remington Custom shop made up prototypes that included updated features like screw-in chokes. Only a handful of these 20 ga. shotguns were to be produced.
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Now I make no bones about this subject. As I am basically a Bolt Action Rifle kind of guy. But I do have a couple of Shotguns hidden around the place.
So here is some of the better looking Smoothbores out there on the Internet. I hope that you like this one!
Grumpy
Parker Hale
Another parker Hale V grade
Westley Richards
The 5.56 M249S from FN America is a semi-auto version of the battle-proven M249 SAW light machine gun.
FN America announced Friday the mandatory recall of its M249S rifles, both the standard and PARA configurations.
“A recently identified design issue within the hammer group of the rifle may adversely affect the rifle’s reliability,” stated the Virginia-based company in a press release.
“Under certain circumstances, a reset failure within the hammer group may cause the M249S to cease to function, causing an unsafe firing event,” it continued.
Not all rifles are affected by the recall. FN urges purchasers to visit the FN M249S Safety Recall webpage and input the serial number on their rifle to determine if it is subject to the safety recall.
If the rifle does have the issue, FN will replace the hammer group at no cost.
FN told customers, “Please do not ship any affected product to FN until a FedEx label has been generated and sent. If the firearm is not affected, a message stating such will be displayed. In the interim, FN asks that customers not operate their FN M249S standard or PARA until the hammer group has been replaced.”
The company urges purchasers to be patient with the process. But it will work to fix and return the rifles back to customers within 30 days of receipt.
If you have questions about the recall or need assistance, contact the FN M249S Recall Support team at 1-800-635-1321, extension 145. Or by email at M249Srecall@fnamerica.com . Hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday.
Now I most sincerely hope that you never have to be in such a scary & horrible situation. But I always think. That it is better to be prepared & then nothing ever happens. As opposed to Vice Versa.
So here is what I think is some good advice on the subject.
All the Best!
Grumpy
That’s not my pattern for sure!
