Surfing around the intertubes this morning, I come across this video about an interesting bit of kit. The American 180.. It was a shoulder fire, blowback submachinegun chambered in .22LR. It fed from a complex pan-style magazine that sat atop the receiver.
It was designed in the 1960s by Richard J. Casull and produced by the Voere Co. With a cyclic rate of 1200 rounds per minute, that gave you 20 per second. The magazine held 180 rounds. With a weight of just under 6 lbs, that gave you a whole lot of hate in a small, easily controlled package.
At any rate, it's an interesting footnotein American firearms design. Enjoy the video.
If memory serves, mid 1970's Utah Prison Guards has a few.
ReplyDeleteVery cool, but IIRC, finicky about loading and ammo.
ReplyDeleteI always wanted a Calico Arms .22RF rifle.
https://calicofirearms.com/product/22lr-m-100fs-carbine-rifle/
There was a guy in my small town here in Michigan who had one. He was friends with my oldest brother, and my brother shot it once. He said it was "cool".
ReplyDeleteI don't know his real name, but everyone called him Wolfman. He was supposed to be the area pot dealer at the time.
When he fought to get full custody of his kids, to make a point that he was paying too much in child support, he walked from our town, around half way up the lower peninsula, on the west coast, all the way to the Detroit/Ann Arbor area for the court date.
If I can recall correctly that far back, the judge was not impressed with his walking stunt, and he lost his case for custody. Of course, this would have been in the late 60's or early 70's, when things were pretty much, unless the mother was a drug addicted murderer, who ran a brothel out of her garden shed, the woman always got full custody.
I do remember that gun, though. I remember thinking that I wanted one, someday. Then I realized that there was no real use for one, at least for me. And now, with my .22 LR Mossberg 720 Plinkster, with a straight 4 power 1" scope on it, I am just about as deadly from 100 yards in, perhaps 50 yards for sure, as the 5.56 or .223 round. It is all about bullet placement, at short distances. And the .22LR round, especially the new and made for self defense ammo, is no slouch, even more so I have to think when fired from a rifle.
I know that I heard Roy Huntington say that the infamous Hollywood shootout could have been stopped much earlier with a cop shooting a Ruger 10/22 with a scope on it. And I suspect that he was correct. My .22 rifle is not my only defensive long gun, but it is a part of my defensive plan, if something serious should happen to breakout in my part of the country. I do hope that it never comes to that, God willing.
I've heard interesting things about it.
ReplyDeleteMost were made overseas in the 70s and 80s, so most are dealer samples and not civilian legal, but a few are.