Colt Sues Bushmaster & H&K

[c_yeager]

and a purchase of the entire design from Armalite.

ahhh yes, but who did Bushmaster buy it from?

And in other news, Honda is suing Toyota for making midsized, affordable, reliable sedans...

If Toyota made a line of cars that was so IDENTICAL to the Civic that you could interchange EVERY SINGLE part between the two wouldnt that be a tad different? You could mix a selection of parts from EVERY ONE of the big AR makers in a big bucket and just pull them out at random and build a servicable rifle.

 

[madmike]

Wildalaska, I'd match the 1989 Oly against any standard config (because that's how I have it) lower you care to name. It cost $68 for the receiver, $50 for the parts, $150 for the hard chrome bolt carrier group and $250 for the heavy, match grade upper.

Likewise, I'm told Bushie are good, but I've yet to handle one that wasn't a misaligned, POS jamomatic. To each his own.

And Colt's military receivers are UGLY. Barely good enough to function. They DO function, no doubt. But they ain't nice.

And to me, it's the "AR." IF it is select fire and from the armory, it's an M16 or weapon. But a civvy one is an AR.

Because there ARE people around here who have select fire. We don't like to get confused.

 

[Daniel Watters]

FWIW: I once saw a listing of USAF small arms reference a M4E2: NSN# 1005-01-383-2835.

 

[Jeff White]

Daniel,
I'll have to call a friend who's still on active duty and have him look up that NSN on FEDLOG. Here are the NSNs for all the M16 variants in the system:
M16 1005-00-856-6885
M16A1 1005-00-073-9421
M16A2 1005-01-128-9936
M16A3 1005-01-357-5112
M16A4 1005-01-383-2872
M4 1005-01-231-0973
M4A1 1005-01-382-0953
M231 1005-01-081-4582

HTH
Jeff

 

[Daniel Watters]

The source document is:

AIR FORCE INSTRUCTION 36-2226
PACIFIC AIR FORCES
Supplement 1
9 JUNE 2000
Personnel
COMBAT ARMS TRAINING AND
MAINTENANCE PROGRAM

And just to make the active NSN list complete:

GAU-5P or GUU-5P (1005-01-042-9820)

NSN for Obsolete variants include:

XM177 (1005-00-933-7672)
XM177E1 (1005-00-930-5595)
XM177E2 (1005-00-021-2429)

GAU-5A/A (1005-00-973-5685)

 

[Patent Works]

I am an available and qualified IP attorney/litigator. I will barter for my services.

Hey! No fair cutting in on the action!

 

[Henry Bowman]

Cutting in? I was here and called "shotgun" first!

 

[Black92LX]

Henry when you get some barter work set up don't forget to share the wealth

 

[Kharn]

I took Patent & Trademark Law for Engineers last semester (got an A, too ). I will do research for either side, payable in gun goodies. I prefer to do research searching for proof that a trademark has entered the common vernacular, such as reading www.thehighroad.com and other gun boards all day long.

Kharn

 

[madmike]

Yup, I know of at least two Air Guard wings who STILL have original 1968 M-16s and steel pot helmets. Scary.

The J&T catalog seems to have "Original Colt M4 barrels," "Colt 16" M4 style barrels," "Original Colt M4 handguards" and "M4-style uppers" with the above referenced parts by Colt.

"M4-style" is NOT claiming they're M4, and they sell beau coup Colt parts. So I'd think they're in the clear.

 

[Tamara]

madmike,

FWIW, the brand new, greasy, shorty det.-carry-handle Colt on our shelf is priced pretty much the same as the equally brand new, greasy shorty Bushies and Armalites. I'll peek at the pin sizes at work tomorrow...

 

[madmike]

Well, there's a lesson for Colt there.

Sell out to the Forces of Evil(tm) for a few years and price arrogantly and get a whole bunch of customers to write you off without even a glance.

I usually mix (currently) Armalite lowers, Shaw barrels, generic milspec parts and Sherluk's hard chrome bolts and carriers, plus Badger and GGG accessories.

But yes, I would like to know if they're interchangeable again. It was 20 years? That they weren't. 1980ish to 2000ish.

I still think it's hysterical that with the capacity ban, more sales of weapons that could take pre-ban mags that exist by the million took place. They actually INCREASED the number of "assault weapons" out there severalfold.

And assuming the ban expires, all those millions of weapons and magazines all add to the "pre-ban" quantity if they try to do this again, even with some labeled as "gov't only."

And yes, Clinton will have as his legacy short, ugly, impotent.....magazines that run out too fast.

 

[Tamara]

madmike,

Sell out to the Forces of Evil(tm) for a few years

Please tell me you're not referring to the "Colt's Not Selling To Civilians" internet urban legend of a few years back. I thought you kept up with the gun business better than that.

 

[madmike]

No, but they did deliberately reconfigure their ARs to make it much harder to add military parts. It may have been liability, it may have been appeasement, but it was silly and cut interchangeability.

Am I wrong?

 

[Tamara]

madmike,

Just checkin'.

It may have been liability...

Threats of getting sued into receivership after the "No New Machinegun" ban, back when they were pretty much the only civilian AR manufacturer. Yup, that's what happened.

At the time, I would've rather had "AR's with weird pin sizes" than "No AR's a't'all." Some victories are far too pyrrhic for my tastes.

 

[Jeff White]

Colt's changes to the AR15 for civilian sales:

The following is excerpted from the new book from Collector Grade Publications; Black rifle II The M16 Into The 21st Century by Christopher R Bartocci

Chapter 10 is The Civilian AR-15

From pages 233, 234:

Colt's began the process of seeking approval to produce a semi-automatic only variation of their AR-15 rifle for commercial sale by submitting a prototype semi-automatic only version, serial no. GX4968 (Gun Experimantal no. 4968) to the Treasury Department on October 23, 1963. A selective fire rifle was also provided for comparison purposes.

Colt listed the following nine changes which they had made to the semi-auto version to prevent the re-conversion to full auto fire:
1. Removal of the automatic sear.
2. Elimination of the automatic sear hole in the lower receiver.
3. Elimination of the automatic sear well in the lower receiver.
4. Removal of the automatic sear hook on the hammer.
5. Removal of the automatic sear trip notch from the bottom rear portion of the bolt carrier.
6. Modification of the selector to eliminate the automatic setting.
7. Elimination of the "AUTO" position identification marking on the lower receiver.
8. Mechanical restriction of selector lever movement to two positions only: SAFE and FIRE.
9. Enlargement of the front pivot pin holes in both upper and lower receivers, and use of a larger-diameter front pivot pin.

On October 25, 1963, the Treasury Department adivsed Colt that in addition to these nine changes, they wanted the upper and lower receiver pin lugs relocated, in order to further prevent the interchangeability between semi-auto-only and selective-fire receivers. This was done by moving the enlarged pivot pin holes in the upper and lower receivers down and rearward.

Permission was granted on December 10, 1963 for Colt to commence production of the semi-automatic only AR-15 embodying the above ten changes. On January 2, 1964 the initial "Original First Issue" Colt AR-15 Sporter rifles were released for sale.

Colt's (apparently even back then they built rifles out of what they had on hand and never recorded a serial number when they made a change) made a couple other changes to the early AR-15 Sporter. From page 235:

A change was made at an unspecified time to a new bolt carrier, with the length from the rear to the sear trip area reduced to approximately 1.079", which was not sufficient to trip the auto sear.

My guess is that they wanted to reduce machine time to produce AR-15 bolt carriers. So in this instance they actually went back towards what the full auto carrier would have looked like. The author goes on to state;

For reasons of component standardization, and the comparitive innocence of the time time fram in which these original Sporter models were released, it had been decided that these rifles would not be capable of re-conversion to selective-fire even when fitted with two standard military components, the trigger and disconnector.

Aside from utilizing the larger pivot pin, the semi-auto upper receiver was slightly modified on the bottom rear. On selective-fire upper receivers, there is a small cut out on the underside to accomodate the automatic sear and give it room to work properly. Without this cutout the receiver might not close on a selective-fire lower, and if forced it could damage the automatic sear.

These were the differences from 1964 until 1969. In 1969, there were more changes made to the rifle to keep it from being converted to full auto. From page 236:

The sear trip area was further cut back over that of teh Original First Issue bolt carriers. The area around the rear of the firing pin was also removed, exposing the second head of the firing pin. This modification was implemented on April 14, 1969 for safety reasons, as discussed below.

Colt's also changed the entire fire control group to a new semi-automatic-only configuration, eliminating all fully-automatic components. The new components were made easy to identify, and designed to increase the safety of the rifle should anyone attempt to convert it to function as a "slam-fire" automatic or if the disconnector were to malfunction.

Colt's AR-15s kept these features until 1990 when the ban the evil black rifle movement started in earnest nation wide. From page 248:

In early 1990, due to extreme pressure from the anti-gun coalition, Colt Industries/Colt Firearms Division made the decision to restrict all sales of AR-15 rifles, as well as the new Colt Sporter rifles, to law enforcement and military agencies only.

This was an extremely unpopular move in the eyes of civilian gun owners of the United States who were fighting to keep the right of ownership of military-style semi-automatic-only rifles, and after the restructuring of the firm in 1991, Colt's Manufacturing Company resumed the commercial sale of Sporter seires rifles and carbines, with the addition of a further modification intended to make these arms incapable of being converted to selective fire.

These further modifications were the auto sear block, the large pin hammer and trigger and a new bolt carrier with the bottom rear enirely milled off. Colt later omitted the auto-sear block due to cost.

Economy is driving the train at Colt's now and as stocks of the large hole upper and lowers have been depleted, new Match Targets have been hitting the dealers shelves with small hole upper and lowers, military production uppers and push pin front pins. The author states on page 264:

Eventually, when existing stocks of large hammer and trigger pins are exhausted, Colt will be going back to the .155" diameter hammer and trigger pins, in order to standardize on one single version of these parts. The new-styoe receiver will retain the same locations for the hammer and trigger pins in the lower receiver, but with restrictions in the width and depth machining so that full-auto parts will not fit.

So it looks like the new Match Targets are going to look a lot like the old Sporters.

Jeff

 

[Tamara]

I'm not buyin' a sellout HK-91 because the trigger group has a shelf instead of a push-pin!



Oh, wait... I already did. Damn BATF!

 

[Zedicus]

If you still think colt is sueing puirely because the mention of "M4" why arent they suing knights as well ?

http://www.knightarmco.com/sr15m4car.htm

 

[Nightcrawler]

Probably because Knight's advertises theirs as the "SR-15 M-4" instead of just the "M4 Carbine". Aslo, in the literature, it's referred to as the "Stoner Rifle" or "SR-15", instead of "AR-15" or "M4", both of which are trademarks of the Colt Patent Firearms Company. Colt's does not own the trademark for the letter "M" and the number "4". But, building an AR-15 clone rifle patterned after an M4 carbine, calling it and referring to it as an M4 carbine, and marketing it as an M4 Carbine..yeah, you're probably going to get sued.

Read something in Bushmaster's literature once that made me chuckle. They referred to their AR-15 clones as the "Bushmaster Weapons System" or somesuch...I mean, gee whiz, you'd actually think they'd invented it or something!

That's not to say that Bushmaster doesn't have any original designs. They have their bullpup, and those bullpup pistols from years ago. And, they build (I think) the 30mm chain gun on the Apache helicopter (at least, in Jane's Apache Longbow flight sim, they referred to it as a Bushmaster chain gun...might just be the name, not the manufacturer, though...).

So yeah, Bushmaster does have original designs. The AR-15 (excuse me...Bushmaster Weapons System) isn't one of them. Doesn't mean they don't make a good product; you don't have to be original to do something well. Look at DS Arms!