What is the most cool, obscure or rare gun you have ever fired?

[Jeff OTMG]

H&K MP5
H&K MP5 PDW with suppressor
1928 Thompson
M79 40mm grenade launcher

 

[SDC]

There have been more than a few, but some of the ones that stand out for me are:
FN P90 and FiveSeven
M203 grenade launcher
Powell Knife Pistol
full-auto G23
full-auto AUG
Liberator
MG34 and MG42
Carl Gustaf anti-tank launcher
and Ma Deuce (if you get tired of shooting .50, check your pulse)

 

[Detritus]

Full Auto Bromhandle, made in Guernica Spain (the place the germans bombed on market day)

 

[1badmagnum]

440 corbon

 

[shermacman]

The first firearm I ever fired was the coolest. Of course I built it. When I was a kid tennis balls came in metal tubes. Cut the tops and bottoms off of two of them, cut the top off of the bottom one. Duct tape them together to form a three foot tall mortar. Poke a hole in the bottom tube, squirt charcoal lighter, drop in tennis ball, light match...Whump! The tennis ball would emerge in flames and soar up to what looked like a mile high. I have never had as much fun with anything since! Well, actually there was a propane fired potato gun I built. And there was a girl friend who, well, nevermind.

 

[Joe Demko]

The caseless ammo .22 that Daisy briefly manufactured. Obscure, rather than all that cool. It was like shooting a pellet gun.

 

[williamcrane]

Coolest gun

Stoner 63A
M3
Swedish K
S&W Model 39 with silencer
All in Vietnam

 

[Nightcrawler]

UMP45 was pretty cool. M249 SAW is pretty cool. M60 was pretty cool, but rattles you like mad. AT-4 rocket launcher with 9mm (Parabellum) tracer round was...well, weird.

 

[Hank Zudd]

my nickles worth,,,

155mm sp howitzer, priority fire mission, 3 rounds in 45 seconds,,, and M60D huey doorgun under NVG's. thanks for paying your taxes to fund my fun!

 

[Ivanimal]

I rented an MP5 once tyhat was too cool, fully auto, what a rush.

The funnest gun I own is the 5mm Remington Magnum, squirrels shutter at the mention of its name.

 

[Johnny Guest]

One shooter's exotica is another's ho-hum - - -

Thousands of soldiers and sailors have shot kazillions of rounds in weapons which I consider really far out, I know - - -

M2 cal .50 HMG
MG42
M60
Jeff Cooper's "Baby," in .460 G&A
Sterling SMG
LAW subcaliber device
MP5SD
CAR16, with .22 LR conversion and a suppressor


Bigjake - - A lot of Johnson (semi)auto rifles were made in 7x57 mm Mauser caliber, as were the FN49. You can go WAY back to same cartridge in the Mexican Mondragon autoloading rifle. IIRC, the assassins of Doroteo Arrango, aka Pancho Villa, were armed with the latter.

Best,
Johnny

 

[Matt G]

1928 Thompson, when I could finally let myself just hold the trigger down to kill the whole 50 rd mag.

M-60 MG with tracers across a wide canyon at twilight.


American 180 (.22 LR full-auto SMG), when it actually functioned.

Bullpup .50 sniper rifle.

.300 Whisper sniper rifle, shooting subsonic 220g loads at 150 yards. "Pop... plunk."

1870's era .41 rimfire Colt derringer (Okay, just kind of obscure)

MP-5 suppressed (surprisingly accurate, nice to leave the muffs off)

The OLD Schutzen-style .22 single-shot iron-sighted target rifle of one of our moderators, with which I shot a hundred yard 1" group, standing on his porch. (Okay, I'm not typically that good. That's why I loved that experience.)

 

[Topgun]

What Shermacman said

Only we called it a "Norwegian Goose Gun" with tennis balls. Had a hangfire that dented the stucco on the house after setting it down with the fluid still cooking unnoticed in the chamber.

But..........for a REAL....firearm, I would have to say.

Remington double derringer .41 Rimfire. Shot a rotted fencepost and then walked over to it and pulled the bullet out of the rotted wood where the base was still sticking out. Still have the fired round with the bullet put back in the case.

Needless to say, I never again believed the TV shows where the guy was knocked off his barstool/horse/wagon by a derringer totin gunman.

 

[Harold Mayo]

Didn't fire it but got to hold a double rifle that was valued at about $125K. I would LOVE to say that I fired it, though...

 

[Billll]

An excellent replica 14th century pike gun chambered in billiard ball. 6 feet long, no sights, and no lock. I suppose if you're firing into a charging mass of 10,000 bloodthirsty Huns, accuraccy is a luxury.

 

[Kobun]

Defining rare is kind of hard, and depends on where you live I guess.

Bren gun, HK 51, SIG 552, Neostead...

Probably more that would be rare in the US, but common here.

 

[Hand_Rifle_Guy]

Rarest? Gotta be The Monster, my ADC 8" -barrel double derringer chambered in 7.62 x 39. I had to custom-order it, ADC had to get a reamer to chamber it, and they informed me that NO-ONE else had ever ordered a gun like it.

It's the only one on the planet, and it's MINE. (Like anyone else would want the silly thing...)

Rarest/coolest is probably the Shansei Arsenal .45 ACP Broomhandle Mauser. Mine's #19xx of about 8500 total produced in the early 30's. Obscure by virtue of caliber, as everyone's heard of Broomhandles.

Gotta pair of Colt Lightning rifles from 1884 and '91, these are pretty rare, and mighty obscure.

A pretty obscure 9mm is the blowback-action Astra 600. Cool appearance, too, although most folks would call it 'fugly'.

Not particularly rare, but fairly obscure and over-the-top in coolness is my pair of Remington M-81 autoloading rifles. They just look really cool, very "artillerish", to coin a word. Cool design, too, a long-recoil action from John Browning's fertile brain.

Obscure to the point of ridiculous: a 1912 Steyr-Hahn auto pistol from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Loads with stripper clips, no less.

Plenty rare and very cool is the Automag V, a factory-ported stainless longslide auto pistol from AMT. The lightest of the .50 A.E.-pistols, I have seen 2, ever, in 8-9 years of doing this gun collecting thing. I bought the first one.

 

[crawfordew]

Ithaca Auto & Burgler Gun. 20 ga., 10" barrels.
Gene

 

[Detritus]

the Mexican Mondragon autoloading rifle. IIRC, the assassins of Doroteo Arrango, aka Pancho Villa, were armed with the latter.

Possible but VERY unlikely, only 400 ever reached Mexico, in 1911. whereupon the reservations of the SIG productyion engineers were borne out and the concept of giving a HIGHLY ammo sensitive, rifle that ONLY worked reliably when freshly cleaned (this thing would make a M-16 look like Mikey from the LIFE ceral commercial), to an army operating in conditions and with the training, prevalent in mexico at that time, was seen as NOT a good idea.

after that first small batch mexico canceled their order with SIG and stayed with mausers.

the remaining 3,000 examples were bought by Germany and her allies at or near the begining of hostilities of WW1. where it was used as an "air observer's carbine" and cussed and maligned soundly (two per plane were carried b/c teh first WOULD jam at some point)


if the Men who killed Villa DID use (or simply carry) mondragons on that "errand" i would love to see evidence, esp if there is phot evidence, of it b/c it would be the first incident of it's actual USE in mexico that i've ever heard of (albeit i'm absolutely NOT an expert) and it would just absolutely be "cool" that, that gun was used to preform that task


Edited to add this note..... i am not saying that those men did not have mondragons, just that in light of the guns history i find the likelihood toi be low, but would of course LOVE to see more info one way or the other.

 

[Preacherman]

I've taken this from a post I made in this thread on The Firing Line (recommended reading, BTW - same subject as this thread):

My "coolest" (and most painful!) shooting experience was with a 4-bore muzzle-loading flint-lock elephant gun! This thing was made sometime in the middle third of the 19th century, IIRC. The soft lead ball weighed a full 4 ounces, and was powered by a powder charge measured in drachms rather than grains! The idiot - er, sorry, venerable old gentleman - who owns this beast offered me the chance to shoot it, and like a fool I accepted! He loaded it up, sat down in his rocker on the porch, and asked me to stand next to an oak tree in his front garden and fire at a target he had set up on a tree stump about 30 yards away. Unfortunately, I didn't look behind me before firing... next thing I remember was going base-over-tip into his cactus garden, to the sound of his triumphant cackling from the porch!

After digging myself out of the cactus garden (and digging the thorns out of my backside and sundry other portions of anatomy), I did some calculation of the recoil impulse of this beast (all the while rubbing my very sore shoulder, which still recalls the impact in rainy weather!). Turns out the recoil momentum is something over 220 foot-pounds, or somewhere between 7 and 8 times that of a typical .30-06! I've fired .577 and .600 Nitro Express rifles since then, but nothing has ever come close to that kick!

(If any of you ever plan to go hunting in South Africa, and will find yourselves in the vicinity of the town of George in the southern Cape, please contact me before you leave - I'll give you a letter of introduction to the owner of the beast, and invite you to have a go with it. He needs his light entertainment, after all!)

 

[Sarge111]

Original Commercial Thompson...

late 20's production- with 50 round drums & stick mags.

This one had the good (Lyman?) sights and was surprisingly accurate out to 200 yards or so with the sight properly adjusted. Not minute of angle, mind you, but a man exposing his head and shoulders at that distance would have been deep in the hurt locker.

Close second to the Uzi- still the best 9mm SMG going for my money.

 

[280PLUS]

grisley .50 bmg,,,

one shot,,,got the 8 ring at 200 yds first and last time shooting it,,,

something like $2.50 a round?

 

[BluesBear]

Hand_Rifle_Guy

How do you like your .45 Broomhandle? I have toyed with the idea of getting one for plinking. Are they good shooters?

 

[Amegatek]

Don't know if they are very rare (my buddy owns 2) but they are definitely cool. My buddy brought one along on a recent range trip. It was a Colt Army Special. Excellent trigger action, considering when it was made, and the Colt Fire-Blued finish was awesome! Definitely a cool gun.

 

[Johnny Guest]

Detritus - - -

I do not contest anything you say in your post, sir - - Indeed, I am in agreement with your observations as to the rarity of this rifle, esp. in Mexico - - Though I didn't have the production and shipping figures you mention. Thank you.

That was one of those odd bits of information one picks up during a life of voracious reading, especially about firearms and armed conflict. I am desperately wracking my memory, trying to come up with the source of that tidbit. I fear you've now assigned me yet another research project. I've already run the index of Phillip Sharpe's The Rifle in America while I should have been getting ready to go to the office.

I grew up in El Paso, and I may have gotten this during a conversation with one of the old timers sitting around San Jacinto Plaza on a weekend afternoon. (Anyone else remember the big alligator pond there?) The danger there is that some ancient gun crank might have been running a windy at an enthusiastic high school kid . . . .

I BELIEVE, though, that I read it somewhere. I have an image in my mind of a photograph of a huge old open car, pretty well shot up, and a fair amount of text mentioning something about the "unusual" weapon(s?) used by the assassins. Oh, well, the internet is a rich and broad key to all kindsa obscure information.


Best,
Johnny