Bullpup Rifles, A Long Strange Trip It’s Been ~ VIDEO

By John Farnam

Opinion

Ft Collins, CO –-(Ammoland.com)- The “bullpup” design for military rifles places the action and magazine behind the firearm’s trigger.

The term was first used to describe embellished target pistols, so I’m not sure how, nor when, it first came to describe this particular design for rifles.

The first example of the “bullpup” rifle pattern was the obscure British bolt-action Thorneycroft Rifle, and the similar Godsal Rifle (also British), both dating from the early 1900s. Both represented attempts to make a short military rifle, owing to the unhappy British experience with long, clumsy rifles during the Second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa.

Neither was adopted nor ever referred to by the term, ‘bullpup.”

In 1951, the British briefly adopted the optical-sighted EM2 (Janson Rifle), which was an innovative bullpup autoloader in 280 British caliber. However, it was quickly swept aside by the FAL in 7.62×51, at the insistence of the Churchill Administration, bowing to pressure from the USA, and the balance of NATO, to standardize on 7.62×51 caliber (308).

The term, “bullpup” was used to describe the EM2.

Modern “bullpup” military rifles, originally attractive because of their compactness (they were imagined to combine …Read the Rest

Source:: AmmoLand