The Citizen's Rifle

[JShirley]

JShirley, who said anything about big game?

Note the too.

a weapon such as this would help improve our chances

1. This is (your) opinion only.

2. Convincing everyone to buy your rifle will be at least as great a challenge as designing and making it. Making the design useful for other things will assist in this greatly. Combat rifle? Eh. Useful and handy hunting carbine for a bargain price? Sold. AS I MENTIONED, having several useful designs available in several different configurations and price points is a better strategy. Then the riot nerds can have their dedicated When-The-Robot-Ninja Bears-Come rifle for $2500, and others can have a neat little rifle for $290.

John

 

[Nolo]

1. This is (your) opinion only.

2. Convincing everyone to buy your rifle will be at least as great a challenge as designing and making it. Making the design useful for other things will assist in this greatly. Combat rifle? Eh. Useful and handy hunting carbine for a bargain price? Sold. AS I MENTIONED, having several useful designs available in several different configurations and price points is a better strategy. Then the riot nerds can have their dedicated When-The-Robot-Ninja Bears-Come rifle for $2500, and others can have a neat little rifle for $290.

Uhhh... I think it would help our chances. There's a reason modern militaries don't use bolt guns anymore...

Also, recall:

Such a weapon could be continuously marketed as a standard bolt action rifle in the $300-$400 dollar range (2008 USD) with the ability to easily change calibers.

Tell me that isn't attractive.
Someone who is determined enough and wealthy enough would certainly be able to take a profit loss on the rifles. Costs $500 to make one? Sell for $350 anyway.

Making the design useful for other things will assist in this greatly.

Where'd you get that it wouldn't be useful for anything else? It's disguised as a "sporting rifle" anyway.

AS I MENTIONED, having several useful designs available in several different configurations and price points is a better strategy.

I don't see how that strategy is any different than the one that I am proposing. The only parts I am witholding are the ones that make it "evil", all the caliber configuration parts would be marketed.

 

[Prod]

Honestly, I think the M1 Garand is about the best rifle to own. It's semi, doesn't really have any evil features, looks like a hunting rifle, and .30-06 is a very common and useful round. Reloading a Garand is faster than reloading a detachable mag as well.

 

[goon]

So...
If a patriotic gun company is going to be hanging on to the conversion parts and keeping them squirreled away in a secret location from which they will only be released in the event of open war or totalitarian regime, why not use that effort to just lock away a bunch of "real" guns?
Why not manufacture individual gun parts in your production facilities and then have committed patriots assemble them in secret, then store those now finished firearms in your bunkers?
I don't know about the costs associated with converting a bolt action to semi-auto but I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper and easier to just come up with some sort of polymer and stamped PDW type weapon that can accept a suppressor and optics and has an effective range of about 200 yard.
The P-90 uses a straight blowback system, doesn't it? (been awhile since I've read about them), Maybe come up with something along those lines only utterly, crudely, spot-welded and pinned together simple.
Think of a Liberator on steroids and maybe you'll get a mental image of what I'm picturing.

It does have couple strong points:
1. Could be made utterly simply. Look to the Sten or Soviet SMG's for inspiration. It should be simpler to produce than something firing a more powerful cartridge because you can omit a locking mechanism and engineer it to fire from an open bolt with the firing pin just machined into the bolt face.
2. No foresight on the part of the owner is necessary. For the current idea to work, a bunch of guys who would actually potentially use their rifles to oppose a dictator have to buy one of your rifles. No special rifle made by your company = no easily converted weapon. And since they're sitting around planning to keep their AK's and AR's, why would they buy your bolt action? So they can convert it later... But not if no one is telling them that there is a plan in the works to allow these rifles to be converted to military style weapons later.
Seems like kind of a Catch 22.
3. More immune to any law or confiscation. Your secret bunkers are secret and so is what's in them. Just seems that if your going to go to such lengths to keep your conversion parts a secret, why not hide a whole gun? Then if a total ban ever were passed, all the sporting rifles in the nation could be confiscated and destroyed and you'd still have something.
4. Angry populace needs weapons - OK, great!
Now what do we arm them with?
Well... These guys were OK with the gov't. right up until the "agents of the state can rape you, your wife, and your kids any time they want" act. As such, they didn't feel the need to own a gun so they didn't buy one of your rifles. Now, they're willing to take up arms.
Would you rather be passing out conversion kits to guns they don't own or simple little SMG's or carbines that any buffoon can learn to use in ten minutes or less?

Don't get me wrong here - your reasons for trying to work this out are admirable. I actually kind of hope there are some extremely wealthy patriots out there stashing weapons right now in case the need for them should ever arise.
And my points might not even make much sense at all when I read this thread again in the morning.
Just some random thoughts...
Hope you can think of a way past them.

 

[Nolo]

So...

If a patriotic gun company is going to be hanging on to the conversion parts and keeping them squirreled away in a secret location from which they will only be released in the event of open war or totalitarian regime, why not use that effort to just lock away a bunch of "real" guns?

I have thought the very same thing myself. I have proceeded with the design despite a satisfying answer either way. The best rationale I have is that this method is less likely to get me thrown in jail.

Why not manufacture individual gun parts in your production facilities and then have committed patriots assemble them in secret, then store those now finished firearms in your bunkers?

See above.

I don't know about the costs associated with converting a bolt action to semi-auto but I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper and easier to just come up with some sort of polymer and stamped PDW type weapon that can accept a suppressor and optics and has an effective range of about 200 yard.
The P-90 uses a straight blowback system, doesn't it? (been awhile since I've read about them), Maybe come up with something along those lines only utterly, crudely, spot-welded and pinned together simple.
Think of a Liberator on steroids and maybe you'll get a mental image of what I'm picturing.

I am not sure that, once all the development is done, it will be all that complex.

It does have couple strong points:
1. Could be made utterly simply. Look to the Sten or Soviet SMG's for inspiration. It should be simpler to produce than something firing a more powerful cartridge because you can omit a locking mechanism and engineer it to fire from an open bolt with the firing pin just machined into the bolt face.
2. No foresight on the part of the owner is necessary.

You could do that with a space-delayed blowback gun in, say, 5.56 NATO. No need for a PDW. Of course, you couldn't do it in the standard cartridge, a new cartridge would be needed.

For the current idea to work, a bunch of guys who would actually potentially use their rifles to oppose a dictator have to buy one of your rifles. No special rifle made by your company = no easily converted weapon. And since they're sitting around planning to keep their AK's and AR's, why would they buy your bolt action? So they can convert it later... But not if no one is telling them that there is a plan in the works to allow these rifles to be converted to military style weapons later.
Seems like kind of a Catch 22.

Millions of people own Mosins. Why? They are a great value. Same principle applies here. The market can distribute these rifles much better than I ever could.

3. More immune to any law or confiscation. Your secret bunkers are secret and so is what's in them. Those weapons don't exist on any paperwork anywhere so presumably, even if there were a mass confiscation, no one would know to look for them. For the other idea to work, the rifles would have to slide past any ban. Personally, I don't think a totalitarian regime would want any of us armed with anything, even if it is only a bolt action.
4. Angry populace needs weapons - OK, great!
Now what do we arm them with?
Well... These guys were OK with the gov't. right up until the "agents of the state can rape you, your wife, and your kids any time they want" act. As such, they didn't feel the need to own a gun so they didn't buy one of your rifles. Now, they're willing to take up arms.
Would you rather be passing out conversion kits to guns they don't own or simple little SMG's or carbines that any buffoon can learn to hose down the street with in ten minutes or less?

Both. You assume the plans are exclusive. Another project of mine, the "Partisan" is exactly what you described. It has since gone from an SMG to an assault rifle.

Don't get me wrong here - your reasons for trying to work this out are admirable. I actually kind of hope there are some extremely wealthy patriots out there stashing weapons right now in case the need for them should ever arise.
And my points might not even make much sense at all when I read this thread again in the morning.
Just some random thoughts...
Hope you can think of a way past them.

Your points are very good, and I was waiting for someone to bring them up.
Maybe Ronnie Barrett is...

 

[JImbothefiveth]

The 'civilian' populace IS the 'Militia'!

Kind of like gvnwst said, by "civilian use" I meant hunting, target shooting, and home defense. The militia may be the civilian populace, but fighting against foreign invaders is not what I consider "civilian purposes".

Combat rifle? Eh. Useful and handy hunting carbine for a bargain price? Sold.

Exactly! I wouldn't buy the bolt-action version(not a big bolt action fan) but an inexpensive, semi-auto that can easily and cheaply change calibers, with reliable 20-30 round magazines to be had for each caliber,(Well, now it's starting to sound like an AR.) that doesn't have that "tacticool evil black rifle" look?
Sold!
I myself had sort of been wanting something along those lines for awhile now, but the best I could come up with was maybe an AR-15 with wood furniture, or the right paint job.

 

[goon]

Another project of mine, the "Partisan" is exactly what you described. It has since gone from an SMG to an assault rifle.

Aha!
In that case, I think the AR-18 was originally designed to be a 5.56mm rifle that could be put into production with a minimum of machining necessary.
Maybe with a little updating...

 

[Nolo]

Aha!
In that case, I think the AR-18 was originally designed to be a 5.56mm rifle that could be put into production with a minimum of machining necessary.
Maybe with a little updating...

Actually, I was going along the lines of a STEN in a modified 5.56mm.
Or what would essentially end up as an HK33.

 

[Deer Hunter]

Wouldn't a "citizen" rifle be a rifle owned by a citizen?

 

[Renwyn]

If any of these ideas get out of the design phase, you let me know, alright? BTW, that 'Lynx' carbine looks awesome! I wish that the muzzle end was a suppressor, but that wouldn't exactly survive numerous bans.