US SAAMI "8mm Mauser" is the ca 1920 8mm Remington Special, greatly underloaded for 1888s very early 1898s, and commercial guns like Haenel with 1888 type actions. I would not have thought there were so many being sold here as to frighten US ammunition companies. One conspiracy theory is that what they really meant to do was avoid showing the true capability of a funny furrin rifle and possibly hurting sales of domestic products.
Got to talk this year at a Regional to an Engineer who has "consulted" for a major arms importer and a major firearms manufacturer on product liability cases. Now the talk was between target changes and scoring, so I did not have a lot of time to pump for details. But he had consulted on a Gewehr 1888 accident. This Gewehr 1888 was made in Germany, sold to Turkey (I assume WW1) and yet was one of the rare Gewehr 1888's that had not been converted from 0.318 to 0.323. There is an extensive section on the conversions in
German Military Rifles 88 and 91 Firearms V.2 by Deeter Storz The Germans made a good faith effort to convert all of them, but apparently a few stayed in the original caliber. The major arms importer did not check all their inventory for barrel diameter, sold one to some unfortunate, who shot standard .323 8 mm ammunition through it. I don't know if the ammunition was surplus (full power) or commercial. What did happen was the bolt shed its lugs, went through the shooters jaw bone, and through his shoulder. And I mean, all the way though. Obviously the shooter was angry, the rifle was sold as "8mm Mauser" and he had fired 8mm Mauser, and he was injured, and he sued.
I was more interested in the technical aspects of the investigation, which were big bucks the consultant paid for a rare and an all original 0.318 rifle for investigation and testing. And he said they did multiple tests, including crystallography. I wish I had a recorder, or a better memory, but this is all I remember. I do remember asking "So you have data?". Because I wanted to know the metallurgy, strength, etc of a GEW 1888. What bud said was interesting: "The lawyer has the information" . You want to work for a lawyer, you are going to sign non disclosure agreements.
I run into deniers all the time, these deniers claim old rifles are made from materials just as strong, if not superior to today's steels, and demand I prove them wrong. And the same people demand all the reports of these things blowing up, and since there are very few on the internet, claim worries about old action strength is a nothing burger. Well, there might be a very good reason why no one is putting information out in the public domain on the number of old gun blowups, and the injuries. Firstly, the people making money on this, are only making money out of potential Darwin award candidates and winners. They are
actively waiting for people to injure themselves, or kill themselves. They have
"their line in the water" so to say, and they only make money when something bites, and surprisingly, they get bites. They have absolutely no financial incentive to warn anyone about anything, not that the 50% of the nation who did not take their COVID shots would listen anyway. And of course, those selling these things, they also don't want bad information out there, they don't want to encourage lawsuits, and they sure don't want potential damage seekers learning from previous. I am confident that the defendants get the all court records sealed, and by design, the public has no idea of the frequency and severity of blowups.
The American public is ignorant by design, and by inclination.
