#Mannlicher

Sometimes the purpose of TFB’s Photo Of The Day is to share the latest news with our readers, sometimes we present interesting firearms from the pre-digital age like this Mannlicher 1897/1901 carbine with its lovely wooden forend.

This pistol is a Mannlicher M1899 in 7.65mm. The elaborately engraved and inlaid gun was one of approximately 350 units made for special presentation. This particular gun was made for Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941) while he was still German’s ruler and the King of Prussia. It features extensive engraving and silver inlay on the frame and ivory inserts in the grips, including the Kaiser’s coat of arms.

In March of 1963, a man named Lee Harvey Oswald purchased an M38 Carcano rifle and some quantity of ammunition from Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago. Oswald would later use this rifle and ammunition (or so the official narrative goes) to assassinate the then- President of the United States John F. Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

I had the opportunity to examine the brand new Steyr-Mannlicher RS556.

Steyr has introduced a new rimfire pistol to the European shooting market at IWA 2016. The pistol, aptly dubbed the “RFP” (which I imagine stands for Rim Fire Pistol), shares similar styling and its polymer framed construction with Steyr’s M9 and M40 centerfire handgun, but differs in some significant features. Unlike the M9 series, it features a magazine safety which blocks movement of the trigger if the magazine is removed. Also unlike its centerfire stablemates, the RFP is external hammer fired not striker-fired and features an ambidextrous safety-decocker, which may be a hint that US importation of the RFP is imminent.

I recently gushed on what I consider one of the best YouTube channels out there *that is not guns-only, but is highly correlated. The Great War is a fantastic project documenting World War 1 week by week exactly as it happened 100 years later.

Now that all the guns of Ian’s educational videos have been auctioned off, it is time for a more traditional Forgotten Weapons post, of the kind he’s been doing for several years now. The subject of his latest is the Mannlicher 1885 self-loading rifle, an extremely special example of a semiautomatic hand weapon designed around blackpowder cartridges. Without some practical experience with blackpowder weapons, the ambition of Mannlicher’s goal cannot be fully understood; blackpowder is a nasty, corrosive substance that fouls even simple single-shot weapons to the point of hopeless inaccuracy and uselessness without regular cleaning and attention. To attempt to design a practical self-loading weapon is approaching an exercise in total futility, but it was a challenge that Ferdinand von Mannlicher felt he was nevertheless up to:

As reported here at TFB back in December 2013, Steyr Arms was moving to a new manufacturing facility in Bessemer, AL.  Tactical-Life.com, as well as several other publications are now reporting the grand opening of the new Steyr Arms facility in Bessemer, AL.  On  on April 4, 2014 Steyr through a grand opening party and on hand was Ernst Reichmayer, owner of Steyr Mannlicher as well as the Mayor Kenneth Gulley, Mayor of Bessemer, AL and Allan Cors, Vice President of the NRA