NRA Blog has an entry this week that is showing the last donation to the NRA Museum in Fairfax, VA of 2015. It is an absurdly looking contraption of a prototype rifle that was designed along the same lines as the AN 94, with the aim of reducing felt recoil. The inventor is a certain Fredric D. Ducolon, Jr who was the person who donated the firearm to the National Firearms Museum. He has a patent for it in 1991, and had some interest in the design by the U.S. Army and General Dynamics. Essentially the action and barrel are encased in a G11 like one piece stock that I can’t see where a magazine is inserted. Via a complex system of pulley’s and springs, the barrel uses a Browning short recoil system when fired, and thus moves back to a certain point, wherein the system of pulley’s and springs comes into play, working against the recoil of the firearm so overall felt recoil is reduced to the shooter. The prototype is a working model and does fire, but the enormous complexity in it really hinders any practical military or civilian use of the firearm. Still, it is an interesting look into the extreme of what we do to reduce felt recoil in a rifle. This is the abstract for the official patent–

The present invention provides a recoil-redirecting mechanism for a gun which includes a frame, a gun barrel assembly having a barrel and a receiver with a bolt therein. The gun barrel assembly is slidably mounted to longitudinally reciprocate on the frame between a forwardmost position and a rearwardmost position. Means for firing the gun when the gun barrel assembly is substantially at its forwardmost position is provided. The recoil-redirecting mechanism includes a recoil-absorbing spring, a fixed pulley mounted on the frame, and a travelling pulley mounted on a longtudinally-reciprocating block which is longitudinally slidable relative to the frame substantially parallel to and independent from the gun barrel assembly. A cable having a first end fixed relative to the frame operably extends over and is reversed in direction by the travelling pulley, further extends over and is reversed in direction by the fixed pulley, and has a second end fixed to the gun barrel assembly. The spring biases the gun barrel assembly and reciprocating block so that, when the gun is fired, the gun barrel assembly recoils rearwardly exerting rearwardly-directed force on the spring and the second end of the cable means. The cable means, in turn, exerts force on the pulleys to thereby cause the block to slide forwardly and to exert forwardly-directed force on the spring. An alternative embodiment provides a fixed gun barrel assembly with a blow-back bolt.