Gun Stories : The Sharps Rifle

By G&A Staff

There is something quintessentially American about the Sharps rifle. A direct line back to the civil war and the opening of the west. More importantly, Christian Sharps’ invention is quite simply a better mouse trap, and the world did indeed beat a path to his door.

Christian Sharps apprenticed under John Hall, who designed a breech-loading flintlock in 1824. Sharps was obsessed with speeding up the loading process, and the result was his first patent of the Sharps breech-loader in 1848. But it was in the Civil war that the sharps proved its metal. One of the great advantages of the breech-loading Sharps that might not stand out to modern shooters, is that it could be loaded with relative ease from a prone or covered position.

A question we’ve often considered here at Gun Stories, is which gun truly won the West? I think we can make a strong case that the most important gun in the opening of the American frontier was neither Mr. Colt’s revolver nor Mr. Winchester’s repeater, but rather Mr. Sharps’ amazing single shot rifle.

The Sharps Big .50 caliber buffalo rifles probably accounted for more buffalo than all the other guns put together. At 12-16 plus pounds, the …Read the Rest

Source:: Guns and Ammo