#MilSurp

The Model 1903A4 is a very desirable collectible U.S. military rifle, but beware of fakes. Read on to find out more about this intriguing rifle and how a true sample can be told from a fake.

There are a few guns that I think everyone should own at least once. Of them, the British Enfield, or more proper, the “Lee-Enfield,” is one of the most distinctive. I thought that maybe this week dragging out my Enfields would be a great way to start a new regular series on military surplus firearms.

Most of us think of the Mosin-Nagant as a cheap gun. The rifles are still relatively cheap. The ammo is, again, “cheap” relative to other calibers. And it is a rare day that you go to the range and someone is not there shooting a Mosin just for fun. What many people never realize is that in the world of firearms, it is rare that a gun both **never breaks** and is cheap. But when it comes to using the Mosin outside of the range, for real world applications, there are four problems with the Mosin.

Kingston Armory had a couple of intriguing rifles at SHOT Show this year. How does a .22 LR Garand or M14/M1A style rifle suite you? Well Kingston Armory is in the process of making them. These guns look and feel almost exactly like the real thing, but the rimfire chamberings will be much easier to shoot.

Military Arms Channel has some fun with an M1 Garand, H&K MR762A1 LRP and a Sig 556 DMR.

From CMP, “There is an $1,800 fee for the class and includes the CMP Special Rifle that participants will build in the class and three lunches that are provided. The class fee of $800.00 will be charged to the credit card provided approximately 4-5 weeks prior to the class.”

General George S. Patton once called the M1 Garand the “best battle implement ever devised.” But was he correct? The run up to World War II saw a giant leap forward in technology for weapons of war. The jet airplane was invented for WWII. Of course the atomic bomb was invented for WWII. But more importantly, the weapons that saw the most combat, the infantry battle rifles of the war, changed considerably as well, worldwide. The SVT-40 never really got out of the gate due to the later popularity of the AK-47, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was an influential rifle on the Eastern front during the war, or the fact that it totally rocks. We got to test an actual 1943 SVT-40 side by side with an M1 Garand, and the results may surprise you.

The Swiss are know for two things, neutrality and precision. There is a lot more going on over there than just those two things, but if you look at history, the Swiss are known for being a neutral country during both World Wars, and for their meticulous precision in things like watches. Swiss neutrality, in fact, could not have been achieved without the precision of the Swiss rifle, called the Schmidt Rubin. There is a famous question: “Why was Switzerland never invaded by the Germans?” The answer is simple. In 1912, the German Kaiser asked a Swiss soldier what Switzerland would do if Germany invaded with 500,000 troops, while the Swiss could only muster 250,000. The soldier answered: “Shoot twice and go home.”

One of the best war movies ever made was “Enemy at the Gates.” It is about the WWII Battle of Stalingrad, and a Soviet sniper named Vasily Zaytsev. In the movie Vasily becomes a national war celebrity, and is then pitted against a top German sniper. The victor will, seemingly, carry the hearts and minds of the soldiers in the field, thereby swinging the war in the favor of the victor. Yes there are some stupid relationship and love triangle moments, but the movie doesn’t stray too far from the brutality of a war that was literally about survival.