Forgotten Weapons – Winchester Thumb Trigger Rifle
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RIA has some lovely old rifles shotguns in their catalog.
Great, I have been a fan of Ian “Gun Jesus” McCollum for years. There are almost no politics on his site, just history and discussion of the technology as in this video. https://www.forgottenweapons.com/ and https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/gun-jesus-posters.371295/
I dunno about this thing…other than for people with some type of disability in their trigger finger it strikes me as horribly unsafe. Once loaded and cocked there is no safety, and the usual “keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot” doesn’t even apply. I’m guessing that the center of balance for the thing is probably muzzle-forward, but there is still going to be a natural tendency for people to pick it up by the stock right on top of the trigger resulting in an unanticipated “bang”. With no safety you’d have to carry it in the woods (say, for squirrel hunting) either with the striker not cocked (be sure not to bash it around then), or unloaded, and there doesn’t even appear to be a good ramp built into the feed area so loading is going to be very slow and awkward.
It’s interesting but since he didn’t perform a range test I’m left curious as to how accurate it is. I’m also guessing that with the metallurgy of that era it probably would not handle high-velocity .22 ammo, and you’d be limited to shorts or “standard” (low) velocity .22 LR which is pretty spendy. I had a Marlin 39 made in 1926 in which you couldn’t shoot high-velocity .22 since it tended to cause the bolt to break. I donated it to a museum since I didn’t want to stock “standard” low-velocity ammo for it.
The first rifle I ever shot was my grandfather’s old single-shot bolt action, which also had a pull-back type striker arrangement, but it was a standard type with a trigger. For an ancient old .22 it was extremely accurate (squirrel’s head at 25 yards), and it taught good shooting (sight alignment, sight picture, move the trigger back without disturbing the first two).
Ian usually has separate videos of him shooting the weapon. Sometimes though, it’s the property of a museum or individual who doesn’t want it shot. For other good sites see Bloke on the Range https://www.youtube.com/c/BlokeontheRange/videos and The Royal Armouries https://www.youtube.com/user/RoyalArmouries – especially Jonathan, the Curator of Firearms (They also have pre-gunpowder weapons and armour)
Cool!