A few weeks back Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons released a teaser photo of him shooting the Walther WA2000 semi-auto sniper rifle. When we posted about it many of you were upset because the WA2000 video wasn’t done quite yet, and if I admit, I was disappointed as well.

Thankfully the video was released today and Ian goes into great detail about the development of the WA 2000, shooting impressions, and what caused the rifle’s ultimate demise. As always Ian drops some serious knowledge about the subject matter at hand and covers the two patterns of WA 2000 and what makes them different.

The rare close look at the rifle made from pure unobtainium taught me several things about the rifle that can only be taught by someone with the rifle in front of them. For example, the stock being designed to lay in the crook of the elbow instead of being supported by your off hand was interesting and was clearly taken from the target shooting world.

A couple of points rather disappointed me about the WA2000. The insane process needed to take the rifle down for cleaning makes the soldier in me a bit angry, it isn’t hard to see why they weren’t widely adopted if cost was no factor. The stovepipe malfunctions were a bit disheartening as well as the 3″ group that Ian shot at 100 Meters. Over on the In Range TV channel, Karl shot the WA 2000 and only managed a 2″ group at that same 100 meter target. They did post a much better time with the WA 2000 over the SVD Dragunov on their PRS style timed stage.

Check out both the In Range TV YouTube channel as well as Forgotten Weapons YouTube channel for more overviews of hard to find guns as well as head to head shootouts with Karl.