Sandbox / Cool Guns Rifles

The only real power comes out of a long rifle.

— Joseph Stalin

The many service rifles issued to many military forces all over the world, and other rifles worth mentioning.

Back to Cool Guns.

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Anti-tank rifles

Big guns; and they aren't fucking around^note From top to bottom: 1918 Mauser Tankgehwer, Soviet PTRD, British Boys Anti-Tank Rifle, and Type 97

The big guns! Anti-tank rifles originated sometime during World War I, alongside the first tanks. The very first anti-tank rifle was the German Mauser Mod. 1918 Tankgewehr (pictured on the top), which fired a massive 13.2x92mm cartridge. It was used against British armour and was the only weapon of its kind deployed in that conflict.

Unlike the modern concept of "anti-tank" weaponry being based around a rocket delivering a high-explosive payload, the anti-tank rifle was just that. A high-calibre, high-velocity bullet would be fired towards enemy armour, which would hopefully penetrate and kill/injure the crew or damage the working parts of the tank itself. Many of the large calibers used were comparable to the .50 BMG round used in the M2 Browning.

Just about all the European powers were equipped with their own version of an anti-tank rifle just in time for World War II. Some were single-shot rifles, while others were fed with a clip or a box magazine, most commonly holding 5 rounds. Some well known models included the British .55 Boys Rifle (third rifle pictured), the German Panzerbücase 39 in 7.92x94mm Patronen, the Soviet semi-auto PTRS-41 and single-shot PTRD-41 (second rifle pictured) in 14.5x114mm, the Finnish Lahti L-39 in 20x138mmB, and the Japanese Type 97 in 20x125mm (pictured at the bottom). Most anti-tank rifles operated by bolt-action but a rare few, like the aforementioned PTRS, L-39, and Type 97, were semi-automatic.

Although effective against World War I- and early World War II-era tanks, advances in armor thickness and quality meant that by mid-war, their bullets would not be able to pierce through unless the user landed a lucky shot. At that point, many militaries quickly moved on to better anti-tank weaponry, mostly by way of recoilless rifles and rocket-propelled grenades such as the Bazooka, PIAT, Panzershreck or Panzerfaust.

While obsolete for their original role, they were still effective against "softer" targets like lightly armored cars, trucks, aircraft, and entrenched personnel, where more "punch" was needed than a conventional rifle could deliver. During the Korean War, the US Marine Raiders experimented with the Boys rifle by attaching a scope to be used as a sniper rifle with a max range of over 2000 yards. Their legacy paved the way for modern anti-materiel rifles and even some high-powered sniper rifles, where larger calibers would maintain their accuracy at longer distances.

Some have found their way into the civilian sector, most notably the British Boys model and the Finnish Lahti L39. Most have been converted to .50 caliber, both to use the cheaper .50 BMG round and so that they are not considered destructive devices in the United States.

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• The Disney wartime film Stop That Tank that was commissioned by The Department of National Defence and the National Film Board of Canada heavily features the Boys Anti-Tank Rifle. The film is essentially a training video explaining the operation of the rifle.
• The Tiger Ace campaign in Company of Heroes has British Sappers using these rifles against you, in a Tiger tank. Of course it's not very effective. The second game has the Soviets and Germans use their respective rifles and a dedicated British sniper uses the Boys Rifle for anti-personal and anti-vehicle roles.
• The Call of Duty series has the Soviets use the PTRS-41 against German armour in the first game and World at War. In the first title, it's a stationary weapon with infinite, exploding rounds. World at War has it portable and functions more as an overpowered sniper rifle, with a scope included. However the weight of the weapon would make it difficult for a soldier in reality to lift the rifle to aim, let alone firing the weapon and dealing with the recoil.
• The first Anti-Tank unit (from the Industrial Age) available in Rise of Nations uses the Mauser Mod. 1918. It's inaccurately depicted with a box magazine.
• The first game in the Red Orchestra series has the Soviets use the PTRD-41 as their anti-tank weapon, as the Germans use a Panzerfaust. Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad had both the Germans and Soviets use the PTRS-41 rifle, with the Germans using their designation of "PZB 784(K)". The rifles needed to be deployed first in order to aim, fire, and reload the weapon.
• You can find and use a Boys Rifle in Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, it functions as a turret as you need to deploy the weapon before you can use it. Truth in Television; the Marine Corps used the Canadian-made Boys rifle as their anti-tank weapon before the Bazooka, as they often receive new equipment much later than the Army (for example, they were still using the Springfield as standard until long after the Army had all but entirely replaced it with the M1 Garand).
• One of the guns available in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening is a Lahti L-39, modified with a much shorter barrel and a chainsaw-like handle just ahead of the magazine, called the "Spiral". In perhaps the best demonstration of the series' contempt for realistic physics, one of Dante's special moves with the "Gunslinger" style allows him to fire bullets which ricochet off of surfaces, somehow making them go faster.
• The Mauser 1918 Tankgewehr has been given to the German forces in the Horrors of War expansion for Verdun. Odd since there are no operational tanks in this game, and the rifle is pretty much overkill for infantry.
• The Tankgewehr appears in Battlefield 1 in the hands of the Tank Hunter elite class.
• A wide variety of Anti-Tank Rifles unique to each faction's Anti-Tank riflemen appears in Men of War using generic "Anti-Tank Rifle Rounds''. Realistically, they are only useful when hitting critical components of an armored vehicle like its tracks or really thin armor plating.
• The Tankgewehr appears in GURPS High-Tech (as the "Mauser Tank-Gewehr 18"); the book is after all (partly) an extensive catalog of real-world firearms for this generic tabletop system. GURPS Steampunk 2: Steam and Shellfire, a catalog of gear for steampunk games, then repeats these game stats for a generic "Anti-Tank Rifle", noting that it is the kind of thing that would appear in steampunk settings in response to the invention of armored fighting vehicles, and could also be useful against "lost world" monsters in such games.
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker allows the player to develop the PTRD-41 and PTRS-41. Fitted with scopes, they fall under the Sniper Rifle category. Due to their size, both weapons are rather unwieldy and, as a result, are slow to bring to bear and reload. It's possible to break helicopter canopies with these weapons, allowing for earlier exposure of pilots, but due to the aforementioned drawbacks, this is a difficult strategy to implement.
• Strike Witches features several anti-tank rifles depending on the nationality of the witch in question, useful for one-shotting a Neuroi once their core is discovered; rifles used include the Boys rifle (by Lynette in the main series), the Panzerbüchse 39 (by Constantia Cantacuzino of the 505th), the L-39 (Hanna Wind of the Suomus Air Force's 24th), and the Solothurn S-18/100 (Hikari and Takami Karibuchi of the 502nd).
• Deadfall Adventures has a 1939 Panzerbüchse 39 mixed up with the name of the earlier Panzerbüchse 38 in its 1938 setting, with Granatbüchse 39 side mounted sights.
• Anti-Tank Rifles are prominently featured in Izetta: The Last Witch, where they are the broom and weapon of the title character Izetta.
• In Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Team SHINC's secret weapon during Squad Jam 2 turns out to be a PTRD-41, the heaviest weapon they can find that will batter down M's folding shield made out of space battleship armor, as well as being a weapon that outclasses M's already-strong anti-materiel rifle. Even so, the PTRD still can't scratch the shield's metal plates, but it does break the hinges and support bars holding it in place, making it useless as cover if it can't stay in a deployed position.
• Both PTRD-41 and Panzerbüchse 39 feature as 4-star Rifle T-Dolls in Girls' Frontline.
• The PTRS-41 is the standard-issue Anti-Armor and Anti-Vehicle weapon for the Soviet Anti-Tank class in Hell Let Loose.
• The Gauss Rifle of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas heavily resembles the Lahti L-39 in appearance, including the weapon's distinct rotating crank lever, though with a side-mounted magazine instead of the real L-39's top mounted one.

Arisaka rifle

A World War II infantryman can never forget the sound of a Japanese rifle. Unlike our M1s, with their husky, semiautomatic, bam-bam-bam!, the Japanese .25 has a sharp, cracking pow! It is followed by a pause while the bolt is pulled back, the spent cartridge ejected, another round shoved into the firing chamber and then another pow!

—Nelson Peery, in his memoir Black Fire

Top: Type 38 Arisaka, Middle: Type 99 Arisaka Bottom: Last ditch rifleDesigned by and named after its creator, Colonel Arisaka Nariakira, the Arisaka bolt-action rifle series was the primary service rifle family of the Japanese Empire from its creation in 1897 until the end of the Second World War in 1945.

The Type 30 was the first model in the series, chambered in 6.5x50mmSR. Later, famed Japanese gunsmith Kijiro Nambu worked with Colonel Arisaka to create the Type 35 and 38 versions, which featured a number of improvements. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Type 38 was found to be cumbersome in urban warfare due to its overall length and the perceived inferiority of the 6.5x50mmSR round compared to the 7.92x57mm round used by the Chinese. The later Type 99 design rechambered the weapon to the larger 7.7x58mm round, which was more powerful, but the early long rifle variants were just as unwieldy as their predecessors (and slightly heavier). The length was changed and the Type 99 short rifle was formally adopted in 1939 as the main service rifle, though it never managed to completely replace the Type 38. In total there were over six million Arisaka rifles made, with the Type 38 rifle and Type 99 short rifle being the most common.

The Arisaka is incredibly sturdy, moreso than the Lee-Enfield, Mosin-Nagant and Mauser rifles. It features a straight bolt handle with a distinctive "plum-shaped" knob (although the Type 97 and Type 99 Sniper Rifles have down-turned bolt handles for the sake of clearing the scope). It utilizes a cock-on-closing striker like the Lee-Enfield, which improved rate of fire and made for a very comfortable bolt-stroke. The bolt has its locking lugs at the front, like those on the Mauser's bolt, making production much easier. All rifles in the Arisaka family have vent holes in the top of the chamber to prevent receiver explosion should a faulty cartridge be discharged, making the action much safer whenever munition factories happened to produce low quality cartridge casings. From the Type 38 until the last ditch rifle series, all standard Arisaka rifles were given precision-fitted bolt covers to keep mud out of their receivers. Unlike most other rifles of the 1930s, the Type 99 had a chrome-lined barrel bore to prevent corrosion (a big problem with the Pacific theatre was corrosion due to the moist and salty environment). Production quality of the rifles deteriorated as the war neared its end as factories made changes to simplify the rifles' construction, mostly because of Allied bombing raids on the factories and their resources.

Almost all rifles can be fitted with the Type 30 sword bayonet (the Type 44 Cavalry Rifle has a folding bayonet permanently attached to the stock) which was (to some degree) a symbol of Japan's feudal past, and used in the notorious (and suicidal) Banzai charges as well as bayonet practice on whomever got in their way. The Type 30 bayonet, when combined with the Type 38 rifle, turned the latter into a spear long enough to keep cavalry at bay (as Japanese bayonet fencing is comparable to aggressive spear fighting, this put unwary enemy cavalry at a disadvantage in saber-against-bayonet encounters). Some Arisakas have a peculiar monopod (such as the Type 99 pictured) that can be used to make aiming steadier or at the very least keep the stock and barrel from getting damaged by non-ideal terrain. The rear sights for some early production Type 99s are also unique as they can be used to aim at aircraft (Japanese soldiers were frequently attacked by Chinese military aircraft during the Second Sino-Japanese War; with very few machine guns on hand, Japanese soldiers in such a scenario resorted to firing massed volleys at the low-flying Chinese planes).

Throughout Imperial Japan's wars and bloody conquests of the 20th century, Arisakas were the staple weapon of the Japanese infantryman. As all Arisaka production was controlled by the army, practically all Type 99 rifles were sent to army units, serving directly alongside the Type 38. The army's bitter rival, the navy, continued to use the Type 38, even contracting the Italians to make the Type I rifle in 6.5mm Arisaka when there weren't enough Type 38 rifles to go around. It also saw use with the Chinese Communists and Nationalist/KMT forces (who used anything and everything they could get their hands on) converted to 7.92x57mm Mauser, Viet Minh guerillas in Vietnam (same reason as the Chinese), Koreans (though they were rapidly replaced by Mosin-Nagants in the North and M1 Garands in the South), Indonesian revolutionaries (before the SMLE became more common), Russians (who had far too many men under arms for Mosin-Nagant production to keep up and were happy enough to buy Type-30s and their ammo in bulk from their former enemies), and the British (who found it cheaper during World War I to arm their forces in the Far East with weapons purchased from the then-allied Japanese than ship SML Es from the opposite side of the globe).

All rifles had a chrysanthemum marking etched into their receivers to symbolize the Japanese Royal Family; many captured rifles at the end of the war had the flower scratched out by either the Americans (to symbolize the Emperor stepping down from power) or by the Japanese themselves (who had already made it a practice to decommission rifles by defacing the chrysanthemum anyway); as a result, rifles with intact flowers (likely battlefield trophies shipped to America before the Japanese surrender) command a significantly higher price on the collector market than defaced Arisakas.

• Cool Accessory: The Type 97 Sniper rifle, a specialized version of the Type 38, was produced with a lightened stock, a turned-down bolt handle, a much crisper trigger, and a nonadjustable 2.5X magnification power scope mounted on the left side of the receiver (the scope is offset to allow loading of cartridges by stripper clip and so that the sniper can use the iron sights if needed). Unfortunately, the coolness was wasted in practice. Many people (including several who are otherwise experts on firearms history) claim that the Type 97 is simply a random production rifle with a scope forced onto it because all postwar trophy rifles of this kind never seem to shoot to the points indicated on the scope. In reality, the Type 97 and its scope were mated to perfection before leaving the factory, the lenses of the scope getting hand-ground by expert craftsmen and marked to perfectly match the ballistic performance of the rifle during test-firing. The problem came with transporting the sniper rifles. The Japanese high command, paranoid for no particularly good reason that bandits or guerrilla fighters just might steal the boxes of scoped rifles as they were carted to the front line units, ordered that the scopes and the rifles be shipped out on separate cargo vessels. As a result, whenever the Type 97s and the scopes got to the front, the soldiers who received them often had a rifle and scope of different serial numbers (meaning that they didn't go together well), which necessitated that any sniper compensate for the differences in points of aim.
  • Interestingly, marksmen using the Type 97 tended to compete with Type 96 machine gunners over "Genso" cartridges, which were given a special powder loading to reduce muzzle flash without sacrificing performance. The cartridges produced very little flash through the machine gun barrels, and through the longer barrel of the Type 97 Sniper rifle, produced practically no flash at all, giving a camouflaged sniper more concealment from his intended victims and one less distraction for said sniper.
• Health-hazardous Feature: All variants of the Arisaka rifle (including the last ditch rifles) have a traditional Japanese lacquer finish applied to the stock. That said, it is best not to try refinishing any of them without any expertise in Japanese lacquer. Several American veterans tried sanding the finish off their trophy rifles and got skin rash because Japanese lacquer has urushiol, the chemical that's best known for causing poison ivy rash. The lacquer is dangerous to human skin when in liquid form and whenever it's sanded off wooden surfaces, but when cured, it forms a weather-proof finish that prevents moisture damage.

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• Almost ten times out of ten, you will find a Japanese soldier in fiction armed with this rifle. With a major exception being The Bridge on the River Kwai which has the Japanese guards using Lee-Enfields, possibly captured weapons to send more Arisakas to front-line units.
• The Scorpio Killer from Dirty Harry used a sporterized rifle to assassinate a victim in the beginning of the movie. The rifle was a very rare Type 2 Paratrooper Rifle. By having it sporterized, it had ruined its collector's value when interest in Arisaka rifles skyrocketed in the 1990s.
• A Type 100 Paratrooper Rifle shows up in The Manchurian Candidate. It is presented to the cast (and audience) as a Soviet special assassination rifle and a commercially available hunter's scope has been forced onto it.
• You can find the Arisaka in Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. Comes in Type 38, Type 99 Sniper, and Type 44 Carbine flavours. Japanese troops are also seen using the rifle in Rising Sun, but not usable to the player.
• The Japanese troops in Rising Storm are obviously armed with these rifles. The Type 99 almost always kills in one hit but has very bulky sights, while the Type 38 has better sights as a slight cost of stopping power. Which one is better mostly comes down to player preference.
• A Type 99 Sniper Rifle can be acquired via DLC in Sniper Elite V2. It has the slowest rate of fire, but is the most powerful. Its presence in Europe during the war can be explained as a custom rifle Karl chose to take with him, but it still doesn't explain why every other German he kills will have 7.7mm Arisaka ammo on his person, short of the rifle being converted to 8x57 IS. It returns in Sniper Elite III as a DLC item, which is set in Africa, so it's even less properly placed than Europe. Karl must have some really good connections to the OSS if he is able to acquire such a rifle.
• Men of War features the common Type 99 Arisaka issued to IJA riflemen and banzai chargers, while the rarer Type 2 is only issued to paratroopers, SNLF elite troops and specialized last-ditch infantry.
• IJA soldiers and banzai chargers have this rifle in Call of Duty: World at War. It's also available in multiplayer, the second bolt-action rifle and unlocked at the same time as Create-a-Class. It's tied with the Mosin-Nagant for having the slowest bolt-cycling time in the game, and it has to unlock the sniper scope instead of starting with it like the Springfield, but once it does get the scope, it has the least amount of scope sway of the bolt-action rifles.
• Appears in Commandos 2: Men Of Courage when the Commandos take missions against the Japanese in the Pacific. Most Mooks are armed with Type 38s as their standard weapon, which can be acquired by the team for their own use. The Type 97 appears in the hands of snipers, which Duke and Natasha can make use of. For the purposes of gameplay, they have the same characteristics as the Lee-Enfield, Springfield M1903, Kar 98 K and Gewehr 43, so any differences are purely cosmetic.
• The rifle used in Golden Kamuy by pretty much all Imperial Japanese Army troops, including the protagonist Sugimoto. Since the story is set in the first decade of the 20th century, it is the older Type 30 variant.

Carcano rifle

Top: Carcano M1938 short rifle, Bottom: Carcano M1938 carbineThe Carcano is a series of Italian bolt-action rifles designed by Salvatore Carcano at the Turin Army Arsenal in 1891, and called the Modello 91, or just the M91, replacing the earlier 10.35x47mmR Vetterli-Vitali rifles/carbines. The Carcano, in its rifle and carbine forms, served the Italians from 1891 until the end of World War II in 1945. Even afterwards the Italians didn't dispose of them- the Italian State Police used it until 1981. It has also seen use with many other countries, like the Germans (utilizing rifles captured from Italy's surrender in 1943), Greeks (like the Germans, utilizing captured rifles or those rechambered to Greek standard ammo, the 6.5x54mm Mannlicher-Schonauer, supplied by the US), Yugoslavs (utilizing both rifles they had in stock since 1921 and, in the case of the Partizans, captured ones), Finns (utilized in the Winter War, although it's noticeably overshadowed by the Mosin-Nagant owing to its non-standard ammunition and non-adjustable sight), and Indonesians (utilized in the Indonesian National Revolution, though use was limited due to scarcity of it's ammunition). It still sees action to this day, such as in the Libyan Civil War- where the rebels' lack of access to and familiarity with more modern weapons like assault rifles led to them preferring their own hunting rifles, such as the Carcano.

Chambered for the rimless 6.5x52mm Carcano cartridge, the Carcano series of rifles had a slightly higher magazine capacity than most contemporary bolt-action rifles (at 6 rounds, only the Lebel at 8 rounds and the Lee-Enfield at 10 rounds have higher magazine capacity) and fed from a Mannlicher-style single-stack en-bloc clip^note Which led to the rifle often being erroneously called the Mannlicher-Carcano. Unfortunately, the Italian Army issued cartridges with varying different powder types, casing alloy compositions, and projectile compositions, owing to a huge lack of standardization in the various munition factories across Italy. Whenever crates of cartridges were opened, the logistics troops often loaded up the clips with cartridges from different lots (which meant no clip ever consisted of cartridges that all came from the same factory). This was a bad idea, as it tended to cause varying bullet velocities and wild bullet dispersion, causing wildly inconsistent accuracy. Perhaps because of this, the rifle was never significantly used as a sniper rifle in either World War, unlike other contemporary bolt-action rifles, although the Italians did train and arm their few snipers with scoped Carcanos.

The Carcano was briefly chambered in the stronger 7.35x51mm Carcano cartridge before WWII broke out, but the war erupting before sufficient supplies were made led the Italian government to revert to the old munitions (and rechamber most of the already made 7.35mm rifles) to avoid further complicating the logistical nightmare coming from supplying the ground forces with nine different kinds of munitions in the face of Fascist Italy's monumental bureaucracy. Other 7.35mm short rifles were sold to Finland during the Winter War, but the Finnish troops disliked the Carcano's bullet dispersion and unusual caliber, and they were given to rear-line units. The lack of stopping power from the 6.5mm cartridge lead to some Italian Social Republic^note An Italian puppet state set up by Nazi Germany for Mussolini to control after the Italian Fascist government collapsed in 1943 soldiers switching to the Karabiner 98k if they weren't issued an MAB 38A or one of its variants.

There are almost a dozen variants of the Carcano, such as the Carcano Mod. 91/38 short rifle pictured above, but they mostly differ only in barrel length, chambering, and whether their bayonets were detachable or foldable. An exception was the Type-I Rifle (with the "I" obviously standing for Italian) produced for the Imperial Japanese Navy, chambered in 6.5x50mm Arisaka and having a 5-round magazine capacity, produced after the IJN contacted Italy due to all Arisaka production going to its bitter rival, the Imperial Japanese Army, midway through the invasion of China in 1937, resulting in army units getting fresh Arisakas before the naval ground forces. Production of the Type-I began in 1938 and ended in 1939, with over 60,000 built and shipped to Japan. However, due to fierce ultranationalism within the Japanese military, the Type-I was viewed as a second-class weapon by the Navy and most were put in storage, used for cadet training or given to Naval Guard units, though some did manage to see combat during the Pacific campaign.

Perhaps the most (in)famous aspect of the Carcano is that it was the weapon used to assassinate John F. Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald used a 6.5mm Mod. 91/38 Carcano fitted with a 4x telescopic scope to take the fatal shots. The weapon, alongside its scope, can be seen at the National Archives.

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• If a World War II game/ movie/ live-action TV includes Italians, this rifle in one of its variants is likely to appear (assuming the producers could be bothered to gather/model/actually recognize non-German weapons for the Axis) . Also, documentaries on Who Shot JFK? will include a reference to the Carcano.
• The M91/41 variant appears in Sniper Elite III, both as a usable sniper rifle (with a scope) and as a weapon commonly seen in the hands of Italian (and occasionally German) soldiers. It appears with a 5-round magazine capacity and has the highest muzzle velocity of the rifles available to the player in the base game, but it also has the highest recoil. It returns in Sniper Elite 4 in the hands of Mussolini's fascists and anti-Nazi partisans, and is also available to Karl.
• The M91/38 is also used by John Marston in Red Dead Redemption as a sniper rifle (with a slightly incorrect capacity of 5 rounds, though it's possible that Marston never knew that the rifle can actually hold 6) that is one of the 5 in-game rare guns. It is anachronistic, as the rifle model was not made until 1938 (hence the designation). The second game gives it the correct six-round capacity.
• Call of Duty 2: Big Red One has the Italian forces use the Carcano rifle in "Piano Lupo" and any multiplayer map featuring them. The in-game bio even notes that this kind of rifle was used in the Kennedy assassination.
• Shows up in the movie adaptations of Don Camillo, owned by the titular Badass Preacher (likely found or stolen during the recently-ended World War II, when he collaborated with the Partisans). He later upgrades to the MAB-38, having stolen one from Peppone's secret stash before setting it on fire.
• There is a Carcano rifle amongst the many firearms in the Prosperity police arsenal in Eight Legged Freaks. It's explicitly called out as "the gun that killed Kennedy" by both Deputy Williams and Harlan the local Conspiracy Theorist and wonder (in their own way) why the hell is that even there.
• The most common weapon of the Italian partisans in The Four Days of Naples, many different variants of the rifle are featured in the movie.
• Both the Mod. 1891 and the Mod. 91/38 appear as five-star Rifle T-Dolls in Girls' Frontline. 1891 is the older sister and the more responsible of the two, frequently calling 91/38 out for causing trouble by telling lies. The two are also unique in that their buff tiles affect other rifles rather than handguns, encouraging putting them together in an echelon.
• In Attack on Titan, the standard issue rifle of Marleyan military are primarily modelled after Carcano rifles, with a large numbers of these rifles also ending up in the hands of Paradis soldiers and scouts courtesy of Anti-Marleyan Volunteers.
• The Carcano M91/38 was added to Battlefield 1 in the Turning Tides DLC, where it has a special animation for removing the clip and inserting a round directly in the chamber when switching to the K bullet. The M91 TS was later added to Battlefield V in the sixth week of the "Trial by Fire" chapter for the Medic, where it always has a Tromboncino Modello 28 grenade launcher attached and can be switched from the rifle to it and back at will, with the grenades from the launcher being able to damage vehicles.
• Isonzo: The Carcano rifle and its variants serve as the main service rifle of the Royal Italian Army, coming in standard rifle, carbine, Cavalry Carbine, and sniper variants. The standard version also has the ability to fire rifle grenades when equipped by the Italian Rifleman class. The rifle and its variants also become available for the Austro-Hungarians as captured weapons after leveling certain character classes to Level 20 and completing their respective unlock challenges.

Henry repeating rifle

"That damned Yankee rifle you load on Sunday and shoot all week!"

—Various Confederate soldiers, on the Henry.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/images_71.jpegThe precursor to the Winchester line, and the granddaddy of all lever-action rifles, the .44 Henry Rifle was named after its designer, Benjamin Tyler Henry. It saw limited use in The American Civil War. Many later found their way West, notably in the hands of the Natives in their obliteration of Lt Colonel George A. Custer's U.S. Cavalry troops in 1876.

Patented by Benjamin Tyler Henry on October 16, 1860, the Henry Rifle was quite revolutionary for its time. While there were a few examples of lever-action firearms before it (most notably the Volcanic and Spencer Repeaters), they had serious issues that prevented them from gaining wide acceptance, either using weak cartridges (the Volcanic) or having mechanisms that were complex to operate (the Spencer). Based on the Volcanic, the Henry had a number of significant advantages. First, it used the .44 Henry rimfire cartridge that had respectable power within the rifle's ideal range of 200 yards or so. Secondly, the Henry's toggle lock system compressed the needed motions to reload and re-cock the action to one throw of the lever. The 15-shot tube magazine and simple lever-action gave it a massive firepower advantage over the muzzle-loading muskets and single-shot rifles of its time, and were also superior to the other repeating rifles available - even the Spencer held less than half the full capacity of the Henry. The weapon notably lacked a foregrip, making hot barrels an issue for users.

It was never officially adopted as a military weapon, but a large number of Union soldiers bought Henrys with their own funds during The American Civil War. The Henry made a massive impact in the battles it saw, with Confederate soldiers cursing the Union's "sixteen-shooter".^note The Henry was advertised with a 16-shot capacity, but in modern parlance this would be more like 15+1 - a full magazine plus a round in the chamber, which was not advisable as the Henry lacked safety features for safely carrying the weapon in this state.

The Henry was only produced for a few years, with production ending in 1866 with around 14,000 made in total. Nevertheless, it was very much a case of Short-Lived, Big Impact, as the Henry formed the basis of the Winchester lever-action rifles that soon followed, and the rest is history.

Most Henry Rifles in older Westerns are actually Winchester 1866 "Yellowboy" rifles with the foreends removed (the two can easily be told apart by the loading gate on the right side of the receiver, which the Henry does not have), as legit Henrys were rather rare at the time. In 1996, Louis Imperato & his son Anthony Imperato founded the Henry Repeating Arms company in New Jersey to begin producing truer reproductions of the original Henry, making them a more common sight in films^note Just to be clear on this, the current Henry company has absolutely zero relation to Benjamin Tyler Henry or the original manufacturer of the Henry rifle, the New Haven Arms Company. Ironically, despite the company's original intention to keep the design as faithful to the original as possible, a version of the rifle with a loading gate was eventually introduced in April 2019 due to overwhelming demand. Allegedly, Anthony Imperato was quite reluctant to produce this design, but the customer base clearly disagreed.

• Cool Action: Like the Winchester lever-action shotguns and rifles it preceded, the Henry can also be flip-cocked, though this requires modifications such as an enlarged lever loop to not break your fingers attempting it, and would be criminally unsafe.

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• One is used by Django in Django Unchained.
• John Dunbar's main weapon in Dances with Wolves is a Henry rifle.
• Appears in Red Dead Redemption as the 'Henry Repeater', and then in its prequel as the "Litchfield Repeater".
• One rechambered for .44 Magnum appears in Fallout 3 as "Lincoln's Repeater", the single most accurate firearm in the game. A more common variant in 10mm appears in the "Point Lookout" DLC, in both regular form and a unique "Backwater Rifle" with boosted stats to make it a middle ground between the lever-action rifles and Lincoln's Repeater.
• Used by many characters in Cowboys & Aliens.
• Native American Casino owner Jacob Nighthorse in Longmire gives an antique Henry to Sheriff Walt Longmire’s daughter Cady as a gift when she opens her legal office on the Cheyenne reservation. She later has to use it against a client’s abusive husband, but panics when she realizes that it doesn’t load like the Winchesters she’s used to. She figures it out just in time.

K 31 rifle

Above, the original rifle that can shoot within a minute of arc without a scope at long ranges, and below, the tweaked sniper variant that can do the same at even longer distancesThe Karabiner Modell 1931, or K31 for short, is a Swiss straight-pull bolt-action short rifle that was developed to replace the outdated Schmidt–Rubin rifles (the 1911 models, which were the latest, came in the cumbersome long rifle pattern and the handy but somewhat short-ranged short rifle pattern) that were previously in use with the Swiss military, and was the standard issue rifle with the Swiss from 1933 to 1958, though it still remained in service until the 1970's. The weapon is chambered in the 7.5x55mm Swiss round with 6-round detachable box magazines^note detachable only for cleaning, as the weapons and their magazines were all individually hand-finished that can be loaded from the top of the receiver with stripper clips, uses a heavily modified version of the Schmidt action (namely that it has a much shorter bolt-stroke), and features a distinct ring on the back of the bolt that acts as a manual safety switch, locking the firing pin and bolt of the weapon when it is pulled back and rotated to the right. Variants with telescopic sights known as the K31/42 and K31/43 also exist, and a heavily modified sniper rifle variant of the K31 was developed in the 1950s, known as the Zielfernrohr-Karabiner 55, or K31-55 or Zf K-55.

The weapon is renowned for its accuracy and reliability, considered by many to be one of the best military bolt action rifles ever made, and is still used for target shooting matches in Switzerland today. The weapon is also a common and popular military surplus firearm worldwide, and is the most well known of the rifles using the Schmidt action in the US.

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• Used by Swiss border guards in Shining Through, most notably to take out a German sniper shooting at Ed and Linda.
• Added as a sniper rifle to Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in Season 3, where it has a shortened barrel by default, but the “24.9" Extended” barrel attachment gives it the correct barrel length.
• The K31/43 variant was added to Battlefield V in the final summer update. It is the only bolt-action rifle in the game that has detachable magazines available for it, and always comes with a scope, though you can switch between using it and the iron sights. The weapon has several bugs from the rushed nature of the update, most notably the scope and iron sights aren't accurately zeroed, and a wonky reload animation with a bugged cartridge floating in the chamber when reloaded from non-empty with detachable magazines.
• Ian Mc Collum shows the Zf K-55 here.

Kel-Tec RFB

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/unknown_387.jpegFirst announced in 2007 and released in 2009, the Kel-Tec RFB^note RFB is short for Rifle, Forward-ejecting, Bullpup is a 7.62x51mm semi-automatic bullpup rifle, designed by George Kellgren.

The RFB uses a short-stroke gas piston, and is fed by the same magazines as the FN FAL.^note Unlike the FAL, the magazines can be inserted straight in, rather than having to be rocked in. Similarly to the FN F2000, the RFB is designed to be fully ambidextrous, with a forward-ejection system that ejects spent casings forward and over the handguard. The weapon itself is built around the gun's barrel, which serves as a kind of backbone to which the other components are bolted on. Also unusually, the RFB does not ship with iron sights; instead, a rail is provided for the user to mount optics of their choice.

The RFB has three main variants: the Carbine variant with an 18-inch barrel, a Sporter or Hunter variant with a 24-inch barrel, and a Target variant with a heavy 26 or 32-inch barrel.

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• A fictional underwater-firing variant of the RFB appears in ARMA III, named as the "SDAR" (Special Dual-medium Assault Rifle). This version has iron sights, and is capable of firing in semi-auto, full-auto, and three-round bursts. It's chambered in 5.56mm, and can take both regular bullets in 30-round magazines and fictional dual-purpose supercavitating ones that work underwater in 20-round mags. Despite the real weapon's modularity, including the rail still present to mount the weapon's sights, it can't be modified in any way; between this and the poor performance of 5.56mm against the armor available in-game, there's little reason to bother with one unless there is a metric ton of underwater activity.
• The M 7 A 3 in Killing Floor seems to be based on the RFB, with a thumbhole stock, foregrip, digital ammo counter, and medication dart launcher.
  • The same weapon with more embellishments (including P90-style magazines inserted at an angle away from the rear) also shows up in Darkest of Days and an addon for the Unreal Tournament 2004 Game Mod Ballistic Weapons.
• Appears in The Darkness II as the "Striker". Unlike the real RFB, it lacks a charging handle.
• The RFB is an unlockable weapon in Alliance of Valiant Arms.
• Appears as a usable weapon in Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 as the "KTR".
• The Sporter variant of the RFB with an M4's railed foregrip around the barrel appears as a usable weapon in Battlefield 4, where it is the first all-class DMR unlocked after getting enough points with Recon's sniper rifles.
• A usable weapon in State of Decay.
• Appears in Contract Wars as a usable weapon.
• The "CS 27 Misfortune" in Just Cause 3 is based heavily on the RFB, but fires in four-round bursts.
• Appears as a 5-star AR in Girls' Frontline, despite being a semi-auto only weapon that would presumably fit better as an RF (and getting a skill that targets enemies in the back like an RF). She's big on gaming when not in combat - to the point one of her skins has her pull out a handheld system and start playing it right there on the battlefield when a battle ends - and also treats fellow Kel-Tec weapon KSG as The Rival... a rivalry which KSG doesn't acknowledge.
• The "Twin Mill" DMR in SYNTHETIK is essentially an RFB with two barrels.

Krag-Jørgensen

The origins of the Danish Krag-Jørgensen rifle date back to the late 19th century. The gun's main feature was a special type of integral magazine which loaded from the side rather than the top.

—Description, Battlefield V

The Krag-Jørgensen rifle is a bolt-action rifle designed by Norwegian army captain Ole Herman Johannes Krag and gunsmith Erik Jørgensen. First introduced in 1886 and initially chambered in 8x58mmR, it was adopted by three major countries as a primary service rifle: Norway, Denmark, and the United States, and it was also used by Belgium and New Zealand. The US license-produced the weapon in .30-40 Krag at an important time in firearms development, when smokeless powder was supplanting black powder for use in firearms; indeed, the Krag was the first US service rifle designed from the start to use smokeless powder.

The Krag's defining feature is its magazine design; unlike other weapons of the period, which featured integral magazines loaded with stripper clips or chargers, the Krag uses a "capsule" magazine integral to the receiver, which is loaded with loose rounds from a gate on the gun's right side, then feeds them in a half-circle under the bolt and chambers them from the left. This design allows the user to easily "top-off" the magazine, and unlike most bolt-action rifles, allows the weapon to be reloaded without opening the bolt. Unfortunately, it lacked any kind of clip-feed capability, making it much slower to reload compared to contemporary weapons like the Mauser or Mannlicher.

The US's initial M1892 model had a number of flaws that were incrementally addressed as production went on, which meant interchangeability went out the window, and came with improperly-calibrated sights. The long list of modifications eventually resulted in the Army making a new model, the M1896, which eliminated the European-style one-piece underbarrel cleaning rod with a three-piece rod stored in a trapdoor compartment in the stock. More incremental changes led to the M1898, which didn't actually enter service until the following year and had some features that ran counter to the lessons learned in the Span-Am War. The sights of the 1892, 1896, and 1898 were also repeatedly switched back and forth between four different configurations—with each used at least least twice—thanks to constant infighting amongst senior leaders.

The rifle was not without its advantages. It was very finely balanced, especially the infantry version, and pointed naturally, with a smooth trigger. The capsule magazine was slow to reload, but fed very reliably even when dirty, while the bolt cycled more smoothly than pretty much any other rifle except the Mannlicher-Schoenauer. In general, it compared quite favorably to the French Lebel.

The rifle first saw use with the US military in the Spanish-American War and the Boxer Rebellion. In the former, American soldiers armed with the Krag found themselves outgunned by Spanish troops armed with Mausers, whose clip-loading rifles allowed them to reload much faster. In addition, the round-nosed .30-40 cartridge then in use was also a bit underpowered compared to the Spanish 7x57mm spitzer round and dropped substantially at longer ranges (though claims of poor lethality are exaggerated).^note Later Norwegian versions of the Krag were strengthened to take higher-velocity rounds the original versions couldn't handle. These rifles benefited from high-quality manufacture that allowed the bolt handle and guide lug to act as a second and third locking lug. The American versions had loosened the tolerances up on both components, meaning that they didn't actually rest against the receiver's locking surfaces. American Krags couldn't be adapted to .30-06 without being extensively (and expensively) rebuilt almost from scratch. Ole and Erik had also patented an updated version with additional locking lugs which could’ve easily handled .30-06, but the US didn’t buy it. Modifications were made to adapt the Krag to be clip-fed and strengthen its action for higher velocity rounds, but in the end, seeing the advantage of the Mauser design, the US eventually copied it with the M1903 Springfield, making the Krag one of the shortest-serving American service rifles (11 years). However, lackadaisical production of the M1903 meant that Krags remained in service for another fifteen years, seeing action in China, Mexico and Central America before finally being replaced^note It was still in service with rear-echelon troops when the American Expeditionary Force arrived in Europe in 1917 (as seen in many photos of Doughboys marching through London and Paris on their way to the front). Documents found in the National Archives indicate that a couple of Combat Engineer battalions did in fact reach the front with their Krags; while they are known to have suffered artillery and gas attacks, there is no mention of them ever actually firing their Krags at German infantry before their commanders horse-traded SML Es from the British to replace them. It also saw extensive secondhand issue in the Navy during the war, replacing the older M1895 Lee Navy without adding additional demand to the already-overwhelmed M1903 and M1917 production lines.

The Krag continued to see service well into the 20th century, with updated models serving all the way through WWII. Many of the weapons were also sold to civilians, and were converted to sport or hunting rifles. Others were delivered to US-supported governments throughout Latin America - the Constitutionalists in The Mexican Revolution received large numbers of Krag rifles and carbines, while the Haitian Gendarmerie, Dominican Army and Nicaraguan National Guard were all first armed with Krags. Today, the weapon is prized by collectors for its smooth action, rarity, and service history.

In film and television, especially in the early to mid-20th century, the Krag can often be seen impersonating Mausers or other bolt action rifles, on account of them being easier to obtain at the time.

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• A sporterized version is used by Atticus Finch to put down a rabid dog in the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird.
• Appears in The Wind and the Lion as the primary rifle of the US Navy and Marine Corps.^note Technically, this is inaccurate, as the Navy and Marines should be using the 6mm M1895 Lee Navy straight-pull bolt-action rifle that was their service weapon at the time, but these rifles were only made in small numbers (less than 10,000) to begin with and are really hard to come by.
• The rifle appears in The Rough Riders as the primary rifle of the US Army.
• Used by many of the Venture's crew members in King Kong.
• Frequently appears in Hogan's Heroes, ironically as the main weapon used by German soldiers, standing in for the Karabiner 98k.
• Upon their arrival on the alt-Earth in Destroyermen, the crew of USS Walker take full stock of their small arms locker and discover several crates of long-forgotten Krags and .30-40 ammo at the bottom of the stack, with Chief Gray suggesting that they probably came with the ship when she was new in 1918. The Krags are eventually issued to the newly-founded Lemurian Marines, who consider a mediocre rifle preferable to no rifle at all. Chack-Sab-At actually prefers his old Krag to an M1903, if only because it’s what he’s used to.
• It appears in Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2 as the "Bolt Action Rifle". The latter has it as the Weapon Of Choice for Bill Williamson.
• Many are seen in Gunga Din, standing in for the Martini-Henry that would have been used at the time.
• Appears as the primary weapon of the Norwegian LHV unit^note LHV is short for Land Heimevernet, which is Norwegian for Land Home Guard. in Wargame: Red Dragon.
• Many appear in the hands of Danish troops in April 9th.
• Appears as a usable weapon for the Recon class in Battlefield V, unlocked at Rank 13, where it deals the lowest body damage of all the bolt-action rifles, but has one of the highest muzzle velocities.
• The climax of McLintock! features Comanche warriors stealing several crates of Krag cavalry carbines while breaking Chief Puma out of the local fort's stockade. They shoot a lot on their way out, but are careful not to hit anyone.

Lebel Mle. 1886

The first military weapon to use smokeless powder, which initiated an era of rapid firearms development.

—Description, Battlefield 1

First introduced in 1886, the Lebel is a French bolt-action rifle, widely regarded as one of the most important rifles in history, as it was the first rifle to use both smokeless powder and boat-tailed spitzer bullets.

In 1884, smokeless gunpowder was invented by French chemist Paul Vieille. Compared to black powder, smokeless powder was significantly more powerful, and produced little smoke or fouling residue. Thus, in 1886, the French military ordered the production of a new rifle to take advantage of such capabilities, resulting in the creation of the Lebel, named after Colonel Nicolas Lebel, a member of the rifle's development team who designed its cartridge.

Chambered in 8x50mm Lebel, the Lebel has an 8-round tubular magazine, plus another round on the lifter and one in the pipe, for a total of ten rounds, unheard of for a military rifle in its day. It also had a magazine interrupter which, when engaged, prevented ammo from feeding from the magazine and required the shooter to hand-load a loose round into the chamber, as French doctrine called for the magazine to be an emergency reserve. It was initially chambered for a flat-nosed bullet, the "Balle M", but just two years later, the French adopted a redesigned "spitzer"-type (sharp-nosed) full metal jacket bullet, which had much longer range due to its sharp-nosed shape and tapered, drag-reducing boat tail. Rather than junk their brand-new weapon, which was designed for round-nose bullets, they instead made new cartridge cases with a circular groove in the base around the primer. When loaded into the Lebel's magazine, each bullet's nose rested safely in the groove of the round in front of it and away from the primer, preventing any nasty accidents.

Though it was a game-changer in 1886, due to the fast pace of technological development, the Lebel was quickly surpassed. The Poilu's standard infantry rifle was tough and fairly accurate, but it was also heavy, and its 8mm round was ballistically-inferior to newer cartridges like the 7.92 Mauser, .303 British, .30-06, and 7.62x54R. While it had almost twice the capacity of a Mauser, Carcano, or Mosin-Nagant, its magazine had to be loaded one round at a time, while everybody else's rifles used stripper clips. The British SMLE more than matched the Lebel's magazine capacity^note designed to hold ten at a time, rather than the eight-plus-two the Lebel had to settle for with both a detachable magazine and stripper clip loading. During World War I, French soldiers found that the Lebel, formerly the finest in the world, was obsolete compared to its contemporaries on the Western Front. The French quickly recognized the problem, but found it decidedly inconvenient to switch to a new design in the middle of a shooting war. The Lebel was widely distributed as war aid to poorer Entente allies, such as Romania and Italy.

Newer and more advanced Berthier rifles (which used three-round and later five-round en-bloc clips) were issued on a widespread basis to augment the Lebels, but never came close to replacing them. Despite their rifle's shortcomings, French soldiers and especially French Foreign Legionnaires actually preferred the eight rounds it had over the Berthier's five round capacity and still put the Lebel to good use. They continued to be found in the hands of Poilus and Legionnaires well into the 1930s, when the 50+ year-old Lebel was officially withdrawn in favor of the MAS-36. And even then, the rifle continued to see service through World War II, with last known service during the Algerian War during the 1950s. Lebels were widely distributed around the world through French arms sales and as war surplus after 1918, seeing service in the armies of Poland^note The most common battle rifle on the Polish side of the Polish-Soviet War due to crucial French aid, Ethiopia^note Common among the Ethiopian ranks enough to equip entire units, Greece and Thailand.

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• Any movie showing the French in WWI or the French Foreign Legion during the 1930s will prominently feature this rifle.
• Rick O'Connell's Foreign Legion unit uses Lebel rifles in The Mummy (1999). After his magazine runs dry, O'Connell is seen single-loading his Lebel, not bothering with the magazine. When the Tuaregs get too close, he abandons it and switches to pistols.
• Jean-Claude Van Damme and other Foreign Legion soldiers carry them in Legionnaire.
• The French troops are armed with the Lebel rifle in Verdun, where it can be fitted with a bayonet.
• Like Verdun above, Battlefield 1 added the rifle in the They Shall Not Pass DLC, which prominently features the French Army. It's actually a surprisingly good primary for the Scout class, with a decent rate of fire, excellent iron sights and a large magazine. Although it reloads slowly, this can be largely negated by switching to another weapon and back to the Lebel.

Lee-Enfield

A British bolt action rifle with a high magazine capacity, excellent for medium to long range use.

—Description, Battlefield 1

Top: SMLE No. 1 Mk III*, Bottom: Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk I

The Lee-Enfield is widely regarded as one of the best bolt-action rifles ever made. It began as a variation of the short-lived^note Though they were quickly replaced as the standard-issue weapon of HM's soldiers, most Lee-Metfords were modified with Enfield-type barrels and kept in service, with Nepalese and New Zealand troops carrying them against the Japanese in WWII Lee-Metford rifle with a shorter barrel that dumped the Metford-type polygonal rifling. At the time of its introduction, it was considered to be far too inaccurate as well as unreliable for combat; there was also resistance to the idea of a magazine rifle from top brass, with fears of wasted ammo and the detachable magazine^note Detachable only for cleaning; the rifle was not designed to be loaded by swapped magazines and only one magazine was issued per rifle being lost. Early rifles often had the magazine chained to the rifle's body to prevent a careless soldier from losing it and, like the Lebel above, were fitted with a "magazine cutoff," a panel that closed over the magazine and turned the rifle into a single-shot breech-loader; soldiers were ordered to use the magazine only in emergencies, an order which was so universally ignored that the cutoff ended up being deleted altogether as a cost-saving measure.^note Magazine cutoffs were a fad in turn-of-the-century rifle design. Experience in actual warfare proved the idea to be pointless at best, but it took a while for the generals to realize it.

It turned out however, that the SMLE was not as bad as was thought; the main problem in the Boer Wars was the ammunition, not the rifle. In fact, it was just about one of the best rifles ever made. Although not as accurate or robust as Mauser rifles^note Repeated firing of .303 British rounds caused the receiver to stretch out over time, necessitating longer and longer bolt heads to be installed over the life of the weapon (good thing they designed the bolt head to be detachable). This is why, while the Mauser 98 action is used for all sorts of super-magnum big-game hunting rifles, the Enfield action is rarely used for sporting rifles, and those that do use it tend to be chambered in smaller and less powerful cartridges like 7.62x39mm, it was reliable, and most notably, fast: Sergeant Instructor Alfred Snoxall set a world record in 1914 by making 38 shots in a twelve-inch target at 300 yards in one minute. This had quite an effect on the enemy; German accounts frequently praised British rifle fire.^note A common myth was that at Mons during World War 1, German soldiers reported with horror to their superiors that every British soldier was armed with a machine gun - however, the sound between the Maxim machine guns the British infantry would have used is quite distinctive from the sound of the SMLE and so the German soldiers would not have become that confused. This was helped by the fact that the rifle could carry ten rounds of ammunition at a time, double that of the rival German Mauser, and that its action cocked on the closing motion, which makes use of stronger muscles in the arm and hand.

The British Army as well as the associated Commonwealth states would continue to make use of this rifle all throughout World War I and World War II, with Lee-Enfield sniper rifles lasting all the way into the 1990s. It's also been used by several other countries, including some use as late as 2004 by insurgents in Iraq, though one of the most notable users would be Turkey. A fair number of them were captured from British, Australian and New Zealand troops during World War I at Gallipoli, both of the "Long Lee" and SMLE varieties. Turkey had far more Mausers than Enfields, so at first the Enfields were just stored as emergency reserve weapons. But in the 1930s, Turkey decided to rebuild their existing rifles (a variety of Mauser types, Gewehr 1888 Commission Rifles and Enfields) to match their new Model 1938 Mauser in configuration, and that's when things started to get strange. The modifications for all their other rifles were fairly straightforward, but the Enfield is quite different from any Mauser, and the conversion resulted a unique hybrid (Mauser-style internal magazine and barrel, but Enfield buttstock and modified Enfield bolt; basically a Mauser in the front and an Enfield in the back) which they referred to as the "English rifle", but which today's collectors know as the Enfauser. There are estimated to be less than 30 of them in the United States, with an uncertain number still in Turkey. Adding to the mystery is that nobody, not even the Turkish government, really knows how many Enfields were captured in the first place or how many of them were intact enough to convert. But they're not as expensive as you might expect given the rarity, if you can find one, because the Enfauser is also an obscure weapon. In India, they're still in limited use as police weapons to this day, and saw use with the Canadian Rangers until 2018.^note The main reason for its replacement was the difficulty of finding replacement parts. The retired Enfields were gifted to the Rangers as personal weapons upon the arrival of its replacement. The Lee-Enfield was also one of the major battle rifles of both sides of the Indonesian National Revolution, being the standard rifle of the Dutch in the early years of the war and captured SML Es became the most common rifle on the Indonesian side. Lee-Enfields are even treated as good guns in most Indonesian war movies set during the revolution, contrasting the Garands used by the Dutch and KNIL antagonists. In their war for independence from Pakistan, the Bangladeshis were almost entirely armed with Lee-Enfields, and many times successfully fought off the better-armed Pakistanis with them. The rifle would become a symbol of independence during and after the war.

A little-known fact is that despite being the quintessential British rifle, the designer of its basic action, James Paris Lee, was American^note Though he was born in Scotland, his family immigrated to Canada when he was 5 years old, and he then immigrated to the United States in his 20s.. After it failed to gain much interest from the US military ^note The US Navy did adopt his Model 1879 Sharps-Lee (later the M1885 Remington-Lee, a minor update, and the M1899 Remington-Lee, using the new .30-40 smokeless cartridge) rifle in .45-70, which was the most advanced rifle in the world at the time; it was a more modern design than the French M1886 Lebel, despite the Lebel's revolutionary use of a smokeless (nitrocellulose) based propellant. Surprisingly, just under 48,000 were produced between 1879 and 1895, the design was picked up by the British military, who adopted it for their Lee-Metford rifles. An improved barrel resulted in the Lee-Enfield long rifle, followed by a succession of improvements leading to the SMLE in 1904, less than two months before his death.^note Interestingly, converting an SMLE to fire .45-70 requires only a new bolt-head, a Remington-Lee magazine, and a .45 barrel.

• Cool Accessory: Earlier versions of the SMLE, up to the No.1 Mk III*, featured the P1907 Enfield sword bayonet, which was over 17 inches long,◊ roughly 3 inches longer than the German equivalent. The reason for this extreme length was that at the time, the SMLE was noticeably shorter than most other rifles at the time: prior to World War I, military theorists argued that the shorter length would put British soldiers at a disadvantage when forced into hand-to-hand combat, as their opponent would have a longer reach. The response was to create a longer bayonet, to make up for this deficiency. While undoubtedly cool and a sound idea in theory, it turned out that the long, unwieldy rifle-bayonet was a distinct disadvantage when fighting in the confines of the trenches, though no moreso than a shorter bayonet on the ridiculously-long Gewehr 98 Mauser rifles used by most German soldiers - trench warfare turned a lot of pre-WWI ideas on how to fight wars into non-factors at best and active hindrances at worst, and the idea that bayonet fights were won entirely based on how far a soldier could reach with his bayonet fell into the latter category. However, the length of the sword bayonet proved to be just about ideal for a close-quarters battle weapon, provided that it was detached and used alone. By the time of World War II, India was making shorter versions of the P1907 bayonet while Britain and Australia still used the full-length ones, but Britain was transitioning to the No.4 Mk I rifle, which used a widely-disliked "pig sticker" spike bayonet that had no capacity for use as a handheld knife separate from the rifle.
• Anything set in World War 2 and featuring the British should feature this weapon, though sometimes they are shown using American weapons instead.
  • On the other hand, some movies have depicted American G Is with SML Es slung on their shoulders instead of the correct M1 Garand. Depends on where it was filmed.
  • Likewise, any work set in World War One. If the Tommies are seen using something else other than Ross rifles or P'14 Enfields over the SMLE as their primary weapons, something's wrong.
  • In any work featuring the Soviet-Afghan War, mujahedeen tend to be carrying these if they don't have a member of the AK family on hand. Truth in Television, as Lee-Enfields were favorites with mujahedeen fighters for their large capacity and accuracy, and were one of the most common weapons encountered throughout the conflict. Many are still in use throughout Afghanistan today, and crude copies continue to be manufactured at Khyber Pass.
    • There is a famous anecdotal story — but verified with photographic evidence — that a particular mujahedeen shot down an Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter with an SMLE during the war. He sniped the pilot right through the cockpit's armored glass, causing it to crash.

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• Used in Gallipoli by the ANZAC army and is seen in the hands of all the main characters.
• Features in Kokoda which is to be expected considering it's about the Australian forces on the Kokoda Track during WWII.
• The Jawa Ion Blasters used in Star Wars: A New Hope were built from a heavily sawed-off Lee-Enfield No.1 Mk III with the grenade-launcher attachment glued to the shortened barrel.
• The Desmond Bagley novel Flyaway has a lengthy scene where an accountant who's never handled a weapon in his life works out how to fire an SMLE, whereupon he blows a villain's head off for a Big Damn Heroes moment.
• In "Crocodile" Dundee and its sequels, Mick Dundee uses a customised Enfield 303 Sporter with a thumbhole stock. It makes sense as Paul Hogan wanted to create an alternative to the regular '80s action heroes, so being armed with a pre-WWI bolt-action rifle is about as far away from the '80s action hero guns as you can get.
• Another weapon featured prominently in the Call of Duty games. Like the Garand, it is one of the few weapons not to follow the same One Bullet Clips rule as the other rifles, due to carrying double the ammo; in Call of Duty 2, the scoped variant is one of the few sniper rifles reloadable through stripper clips thanks to the offset scope mount.
• Killing Floor DLC features a steampunk variation as the "Single-Piston Long Musket"; one of the very few depictions of the weapon where it is reloaded by replacing the magazine.
• The "Hunting Rifle" in Cry of Fear is a scoped Lee-Enfield with a reduced capacity. It fares well as your only real long-range option when you can find ammo for it, but that ammo is among the rarest in the game, almost entirely disappearing from the game by the time you fight Carcass.
• Battlefield 1942, naturally. The game even inverts the point about WWII British forces above, as every Allied nation uses it, even after patches gave the Americans and Russians their own weapons (the Sniper for every Allied faction still uses a scoped SMLE).
• The rifle was shown in The Bridge on the River Kwai, in the hands of the Japanese soldiers instead of the British soldiers when the former should have Arisaka rifles. The movie was filmed in Sri Lanka; being a former British colony, they had easy access to British weaponry (as the Japanese troops also used Thompsons and Vickers Machine Guns too).
• British Infantry and Sappers will be armed with these rifles in Company of Heroes, some will opt out with Bren guns and PIAT Launchers respectively from upgrades for close-quarter combat and anti-tank combat respectively. Infantry Sections can have a designated Marksman use a scoped Lee-Enfield or use Rifle Grenades for more firepower.
• The British Commonwealth troops in Verdun are armed with the Mk. III rifle, which can be outfitted with a scope and a bayonet. The Horrors of War DLC gives the Canadian Raiders a sawn-off Enfield.
• The expansion packs for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault has the British use the No. 4 Lee-Enfield, and the similar yet anachronistic L 42 A 1 as their service and sniper rifles which the player can use. In European Assault, the player can find and use a Lee-Enfield fitted with a scope, but for some odd reason, it holds five rounds rather than ten.
• The SMLE appears in Battlefield 1 as a sniper rifle and a scope-less bolt-action rifle for the Scout class. It's widely agreed to be one of the best primaries in the game for its magazine size and its firing speed. A customized version with engravings is also available if the player downloads the Lawrence of Arabia DLC. Battlefield V features both the No. 4 Mk I and No. 5 Mk I, the latter added in the War in the Pacific DLC and called the Jungle Carbine.
• The SMLE No. 1 Mk III* is used by British troops and Sameer in Wonder Woman (2017).
• Dunkirk prominently features the SMLE No. 1 Mk III* in the hands of British soldiers. The Shivering Soldier is armed with one, while another British soldier fires at a Stuka with his.
• Sniper Elite V2 features a scoped No. 1 Mk III* as one of the weapons added with the "Landwehr Canal Pack" DLC; it has low muzzle velocity (making it harder to hit things at extreme distance) and a below-average scope, but it has the second-highest capacity among the game's rifles and is the fastest to cycle. It returns in Sniper Elite 3 as the main weapon of the British defenders at Tobruk and the LRDG, and Karl Fairburne can use it again. The No. 4 Mk II(T), a customized sniper variant of the No. 4, is the final unlockable rifle in Sniper Elite 4, and Karl can also gear up with the Enfield-derived De Lisle integrally-suppressed carbine if the situation calls for discretion, at the cost of significantly-reduced killing power at long range.
• The Lee-Enfield makes an appearance in The Long Dark as the firearm du jour. It's exceptionally accurate and powerful when in good condition, but ammo is VERY rare; getting a single bullet in a building is reason to party. It's only picked up a good ways into the Wintermute single player story mode campaign, and in a handful of locations in Sandbox mode. It also requires a rifle cleaning kit to be repaired, and that item isn't all that common itself. In a rare example of realism, it can be reloaded either bullet per bullet or through stripper clips, depending on whether it can be fed five rounds at once or not.
• Dummied Out as the Mark III rifle in Hitman: Blood Money, with the weapon space for it still being visible in the Hideout in the SD versions, but can be used through the give all cheat or modding the game. It is placed in the assault rifle category and shares its ammo with them, and is very accurate and powerful at the cost of obviously having a limited rate of fire due to being bolt action.
• The Lee-Enfield Mk. III is the standard-issue weapon of all British troops in 1917, and the two main characters Blake and Schofield are no exception.
• Lee-Enfield is a 5-star Rifle in Girls' Frontline. Depicted as a taciturn and consummate markswoman, the rifle she wields is a No. 4 Mk. I (T) variant with the No. 32 Mk. I telescopic sight.

M 1 carbine

The M 1 A 1 Carbine, a .30 caliber semi-automatic rifle with a folding stock, is commonly issued to paratroopers. Though it lacks the stopping power of larger rifles, it's lightweight, accurate and compact.

—Manual Description, Call of Duty

Top: M1 Carbine, Bottom: M2 Carbine The M1 carbine is a semi-automatic carbine, designed in 1938 and entering service with the US military in 1941. Its primary purpose was to provide a weapon lighter than a full-sized rifle but with greater range and power than a handgun for support and rear-echelon troops, in case an enemy using blitzkrieg tactical doctrine was able to outmaneuver the front line troops and interdict their supply lines. Despite its name, it is not a variant of or related to the M1 Garand; the only part shared between the two is the screw to hold the butt-plate in place at the end of the stock.

The M1 carbine is chambered in the inventively-named .30 Carbine, which was designed to cover the gap in effective range between .45 ACP pistols and SM Gs and the .30-06 M1 Garand. Utilizing a short-stroke gas system designed by a convicted murderer,^note David Marshall Williams was running a booze still during Prohibition; when the law came-a-knocking, he and his workers ran. Williams then opened fire on the deputies' car holding seized evidence, killing an officer. While incarcerated, a prison superintendent noticed his mechanical aptitude, and allowed him access to the prison machine shop, where he serviced the guards' weapons and drafted designs in his spare time. As trivia, Williams is often falsely attributed as the single most important person in the Carbine's design, to the point there is a 1952 film dramatizing his life up to the point where he worked with Winchester to design the Carbine; as already suggested, his only contribution to the design was the gas system the weapon can be fed by 15- and later 30-round detachable box magazines.

Variants include the M 1 A 1, which featured a pistol grip and a folding wire stock, developed for paratroopers; the M2, which featured selective fire capability, making it at least close to one of the first real assault rifles (though whether it actually counts as one or just a particularly large and long-reached submachine gun has been disputed)^note the M2 also strengthened the magazine release (the original design was made specifically with the 15-round magazines in mind, causing it to fail under the weight of the later 30-rounders) and added a bolt hold-open to the magazines to act as visual confirmation when they were emptied in combat; and the M3, which was designed to mount an infrared sight for night operations (which was incredibly bulky, and that's not even including its primitive battery which was so large it had to be carried in a separate backpack and attached via cable). The M1 and M 1 A 1 saw extensive use during the war, while the M2 and M3 arrived too late to see action except in the final stages of the war in the Pacific.

It saw extensive use through World War II, where it was a favorite of paratroopers, officers, and vehicle crews. In accounts by World War II veterans, the rifle is often referred to as just the "carbine", with the term "M1" used for the Garand instead. The Nazis, especially the Waffen-SS, also loved captured M1 Carbines. It continued to see service in Korea (where it obtained a significant hatedom due to its perceived lack of stopping power^note mostly caused by people firing the M2 full auto from outside its effective range, causing most bullets to sail far over the enemy and soldiers to conclude the problem was with the gun rather than their marksmanship; with the same barrel length, the .30 Carbine from the M1 has about as much power as a .357 Magnum, which nobody has ever accused of being deficient in stopping power) and was even used through to the end of Vietnam, as well as use by nearly every Western European military.^note The French Foreign Legion particularly adored it, as did the nascent State of Israel, where it remains beloved by police units to this day - to the point where they've attempted to market a bullpup conversion kit◊ for the guns so the police can update to a "modern" weapon while still using the same guns. It also saw plenty of use by Castro's revolutionaries, and was the favored weapon of Che Guevara - ironically, Che was executed by several bursts from a Bolivian M2.

In addition to surplus rifles, very slightly modified versions were produced for civilian sales (the main difference being that the wood handguard is usually replaced by a perforated sheet metal one), which for a time were very popular as self-defense weapons. It is still manufactured for civilian and police work (to a more limited extent), occasionally with updated synthetic modular furniture; particularly notable manufacturers include Iver Johnson and Universal, who produced cut-down pistol versions of the weapon dubbed the "Enforcer",^note They mainly differ in that Iver Johnson produced theirs out of surplus military Carbines, which more visibly resemble full-size models, while Universal built theirs entirely new and have several changes made to cut costs and Chiappa Firearms, who in the more modern day has produced modernized 9x19mm and .22 LR variants.

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• Almost every WWII movie, ever. Usually seen anachronistically with post-war bayonet lug and upgraded sights, as M1 Carbines that escaped the upgrades are comparatively rare and manufacturers have only relatively recently started making reproductions in the WWII configuration.
• In Mob City, Joe Teague uses an M1 Carbine that he likely brought back from his service in World War II.
• Indiana Jones (and various mooks) in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
• Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes.
• Almost everyone in The Green Berets who doesn't have an M16.
• Infamously, was the weapon wielded◊ by Patty Hearst, when she was brainwashed into aiding the Symbionese Liberation Army. Also, Ebony magazine published a famous photo◊ of Malcolm X covering a window with one, when his split with the Nation of Islam turned nasty.
• The original Call of Duty commonly features the M 1 A 1 in its American campaign. As above, it is incorrectly fitted with post-war adjustable sights; given that video games aren't governed by real-life rarity, chances are the programmers simply hadn't seen the genuine WWII configuration (games hadn't even started really featuring the Carbine until that year). Call of Duty 2 switches to the original M1 with period-accurate sights and lack of a bayonet lug, though it's noticeably rarer this time, only a small handful of American soldiers carrying it over the Garand or BAR (and still called the M1A1 for some reason). It returns in World at War in the same form as in 2, including the incorrect name, and is even rarer than before - almost no appearances in singleplayer and is made the final unlock in multiplayer (except for those who preordered, who get a unique pre-set class that uses it until they prestige to get an extra custom slot). Interestingly, because of that late unlock, it is noticeably more powerful than all of the other semi-auto rifles available in that game, whereas in the original two games it was more in-line with its real-life power (killing in one or two hits at short range, but not able to beat the Springfield or Garand past a few feet).
• The unnamed "Carbine" or "Huntsman" in BioShock Infinite appears to be based on the M1 with modifications like a second left-handed charging handle added to the side of the gun. It would normally be anachronistic within the game's 1912 setting, but the existence of interdimensional "tears" throughout Columbia explains its presence. Its high power and thicker magazine (closer in size to that of the M14) suggest that the Columbian version is chambered in something larger than .30 Carbine. Also available in a Vox Populi version as the "Burstgun", which holds 30 bullets at a time and fires in three-shot bursts, which is wrapped up in red tape and features a lens acting as a scope and a massive water-cooling jacket over the front of the barrel.
• In The Zombie Survival Guide, the M1 is named as the best firearm to use against zombies, due to being short and light enough for indoor combat and on the run.
• Added in the Blue Sun mod for 7.62 High Caliber. It doesn't appear very often and it faithfully replicates the gun's attributes: very light and fairly powerful at close range, but not a substitute for a proper battle rifle or assault rifle.
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein features the M3 carbine, with the massive IR scope, as the "Snooper Rifle"; it's a silenced, far more powerful alternative to sticking a scope on the standard Kar 98 or using the FG 42, but it holds far less ammunition (15 bullets max, compared to 200 in reserve for the Kar 98 and FG 42) and since it's an American bullet you can't get more from dead enemies.
• Men of War features the M 1 A 1 Carbine carried exclusively by the US Airborne paratroopers, while a slightly anachronistic M2 Carbine model with 30 round magazines is issued to US Army Rangers.
• Insurgency initially featured the WWII-era M 1 A 1 paratrooper model as an antique Insurgent weapon. Following the Oct 2015 patch, the weapon model was replaced with a newer, post-WWII M1 Carbine model with full stock and updated adjustable rear-sights^note (cosmetic, not actually adjustable in-game), with an added option of using the M2's 30-round extended magazine.
• Day of Infamy features both the M1 Carbine and M 1 A 1 Paratrooper variants for the US Army, used by the Officer and Radioman classes, the former available in every map while the latter is only available in maps based on battles the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions participated in. While both are equipped with post-war sights, Officers can choose to equip the non-para version with period-accurate (and less cluttered) iron sights, alongside other options like slings for faster switching to and from the weapon and bayonets for Quick Melee.
• American Airborne troops make good use of this rifle in Company of Heroes, as well as a token member of a Rifleman or Rangers unit.
• Remington-manufactured M2 Carbines are used by mooks in Dr. No. Quarrel uses one to fire at the Dragon tank and near the end, Bond takes out the guards' attack dogs with one. The M1 Carbine shows up again in You Only Live Twice as one of the many guns used by SPECTRE mooks.
• Although it never shows up, a M1 carbine is listed among the many weapons Deadshot is lethal with in Suicide Squad (2016), unique in that it is specifically named while the exact model of the other weapons are not given.
• The "GI Sniper" skin for the Mc Manus 2020 sniper rifle in Saints Row IV is an M 1 A 1 with a foregrip, extended magazine, and bulky sniper scope attached, presumably meant as a Shout-Out to the weapons' appearance in Return to Castle Wolfenstein (especially considering one of its patterns refers to "death incarnate", the Wolfenstein series' perennial Harder Than Hard difficulty).
• In Marvel Preview Issue #2, which presented the origin story of The Punisher, various disgruntled Vietnam veterans used scoped M1 Carbines to carry out assassinations. Frank Castle himself uses a custom M2 Carbine with a folding stock, ventilated barrel and foregrip as his primary weapon in Issue #201 of Amazing Spider-Man, which can be converted from firing .30 Carbine to rubber bullets with the flick of a dial. In Daredevil (2015), Frank finds one in Colonel Schoonover's gun cage at the end of Episode 12.
• Unusually for a Medal of Honor game, where Selective Historical Armory is in play, the M1 Carbine makes an appearance in Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault as one of two semi-automatic rifles in game, alongside the Garand.
• Available in scoped configuration with DLC in both Sniper Elite V2 and Sniper Elite 4, mostly just for the sake of Gun Porn; its high rate of fire and large magazine capacity (the highest among the scoped rifles of either game at 15) is offset by low zoom and a very low muzzle velocity leaving it only useful for close- to mid-range shooting.
• Rising Storm issues the M1 Carbine to US Army and Marine Squad Leaders, Commanders, Flamthrower Operators, and The Engineer class. Upgrades for it include adjustable sights, extra magazines, and a bayonet attachment.
  • The Carbine reappears in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam in two variations. A well-worn M1 Carbine, possibly a French or South Vietnamese capture, is available for the Viet Cong, while the Americans and South Vietnamese can use a brand-new M2 Carbine.
• Found in Foxhole where is simply referred as "Carbine'', it is semi-automatic so it fires faster than the bolt-action rifle, although it has a little less accuracy, range, and damage. You can also attach a Bayonet to stab enemies at short range.
• Available for the US faction in Hell Let Loose, where it's issued to Riflemen via unlock, and to Medics by default.
• Post Scriptum issues the M1 to regular US Army infantry units, while the M 1 A 1 variant is issued to maps with US Airborne Divisions in them, such as Foy and Grave.
• The Air Force expedition in Lost Continent is kitted with these. Probably just because they were cheap and easy for the movie studio to acquire in 1951, but it makes sense in-story as well, since they're heading to sparsely-inhabited islands rather than a warzone.
• Available in the first Vietcong, available from the armory from the beginning and widely used by ARVN soldiers. It has the post-war sights and bayonet lug, to which you can actually attach a bayonet to.

M 1903 Springfield

The Springfield 1903 first saw action in the U.S military operations in the Philippines, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic and in General John "Black Jack" Pershing's deep penetration raids into Mexico, in pursuit of Pancho Villa. When World War I started, it was ready for war before the Doughboys were.

—Chris Kyle, American Gun

From top to bottom: Early production M1903 with rod bayonet, World War I standard M1903, World War 2 standard M 1903 A 3, World War 2 M 1903 A 4 sniper rifleThe M1903 Springfield rifle is a five-shot bolt action rifle that was used by all branches of the United States military. The rifle was developed in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. There, U.S Army and Marines armed with a number of lever-action rifles, Springfield 'Trapdoor' rifles ^note  Civil War-era surplus muskets converted to breech-loaders and the Krag-Jørgensen rifle were often outmatched in firepower by Spanish and Cuban soldiers armed with the Spanish-made Mauser M1893 long rifle. Specifically, two shortcomings in the Krag's design were that it lacked the ability to be quickly reloaded with a stripper clip and it could not load high-velocity ammunition. Though modified versions of the Krag were tested, the U.S military knew they had to adopt a new rifle. Seeing an obviously superior weapon system in the Mauser, Springfield Armory combined elements of the Krag with the Mauser's bolt and magazine, with the addition of a down-turned bolt handle (a feature Mauser wouldn't adopt until the late 1920s). The Springfield was chambered for the short-lived .30-03 and soon the .30-06 Springfield round that quickly replaced it; the latter would be the mainstay rifle round of the U.S Military until the formation of NATO. Early models had an integral spike bayonet located just under the muzzle, where cleaning rods would usually be stored on other rifles of the time, in an attempt to provide melee capability without having to carry a separate bayonet. It was found to be flimsy and inferior to regular knife bayonets, so future production batches of the M1903 had the rod bayonet's slot replaced with a proper knife bayonet lug.

The Springfield (along with the new sharp-nosed .30-06 cartridge) was judged similar enough to the Gewehr 98 system that Mauser Werke successfully sued the US Government for patent infringement. The Americans were forced to pay royalties to Mauser. It got worse when the US Patent office was ordered to arbitrarily seize Mauser's patents in 1918, on the grounds that one should never pay licensing fees to one's enemies just to produce a rifle similar to the enemies' own. After the war ended, Mauser found out about this and sued the US federal government again, with the US Supreme Court agreeing that going to war against Germany was not the same as going to war against a private institution within Germany. As a result, the Americans were forced to pay even more money to Mauser than would have been paid through the original licensing fee had the patents not been seized.

After undergoing initial field testing by American troops during the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa, the rifle's first notable engagement was during World War I in 1918, used by United States Marines. It proved to be reliable, accurate and much quicker to reload, much to the dismay of the Germans who were on the other end of it.^note Although the M1903's role in WWI is arguably overstated, as it was actually outnumbered by the M1917 Enfield (which is mentioned below) for much of the war.

When WW 2 broke out, the United States supplied Springfields to foreign powers as part of the Lend-Lease program, most notably Nationalist China and Free France. Prior to receiving M1 Garands after 1953, the M 1903 A 3 was standard-issue for the ROCA in Taiwan after the civil war. The Free French army was reequipped with Springfields and M1917 Enfields in August 1943 by the Americans. The Springfield was also the service rifle of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force in Italy^note The Brazilian service rifle was actually the Mauser Model 1908, however, it was decided that the FEB forces would instead use US equipment to simplify logistics, as they were under US command. In US service, the rifle was just being supplemented and eventually replaced with the M1 Garand when the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor. During the first years of the Pacific Campaign and the U.S' entry into Northern Africa as part of Operation Torch, the Springfield was still the primary service rifle of the Marines and the Army until finally being (mostly) replaced by the Garand mid-way through the war. In 1942, production shifted to the M 1903 A 3, which used cheaper stamped steel parts and a simplified but more practical rear sight.^note The earlier modifications were far less significant; the M 1903 A 1 simply had a semi-pistol grip stock, while the M 1903 A 2 was a Springfield modified for use as a sub-caliber training device for artillery pieces. Production continued for the duration of the war for rear-line units (and initially for the Marines, until they too had enough Garands to go around). Two American generals, Omar Bradley and Joseph Stilwell, adored the Springfield and carried it when they had to visit the front lines^note Bradley habitually kept the rifle in his jeep during campaigns in North Africa and Sicily, occasionally taking potshots at German planes. Although Bradley was an excellent shot, he did not manage to bring down any planes. Stilwell preferred to use a battered M1903 Springfield over a sidearm, and carried it throughout his time in the China-Burma-India theater..

The Springfield was not removed entirely from service, though. The most celebrated use for the Springfield was that of a sniper's rifle. Already an accurate and powerful rifle, many Springfields were modified to be more accurate and fitted with scopes as the M 1903 A 4 (in the Army; the Marines used a different modification of existing M 1903 A 1 rifles from their National Match target shooting team, adding a distinctive Unertl 8x power scope that was nearly 20 inches long^note In other words, almost as long as the rifle's barrel! and without a new model number, for their snipers). The Springfield also remained in front-line service right through the war with squad grenadiers: the use of rifle grenades was awkward with the M1 Garand, which could not be conveniently unloaded and reloaded with blanks for the purpose, and so the Springfield served all the way to Germany and Okinawa.

The Springfield sniper rifle continued to see service after its infantry rifle version was retired, through both World Wars, The Korean War and The Vietnam War (alongside the Winchester Model 70 in Marine Corps usage) until finally being replaced by more modern bolt-action rifles based on the Remington 700 and the M21 semi-automatic rifle. Original snipers can be distinguished from modern reproductions by the fact that the manufacturer and model number markets are offset slightly to the left and the serial number slightly to the right so that they remain fully visible with the scope mount in place, while when an M 1903 A 3 is converted into a repro sniper they'll be partially covered by it.^note Oddly enough, despite the altered position of the markings, the M 1903 A 4 sniper rifles are still marked "MODEL 03-A3". Today, the Springfield is a popular collector's item and surplus examples were and sometimes still are used as hunting rifles.

• Cool Accessory: The Pedersen device was an experimental attachment developed during WWI that would allow the Springfield to fire a pistol cartridge in semi-automatic mode. Combined with Pedersen's proprietary 40 round magazine for the .30 Pedersen round, the modified Springfield would have become a predecessor to the assault rifle. Production started in 1918, but the war ended before any were sent to Europe. Most Pedersen devices were destroyed, with the only survivors being sought-after collector's items.
  • The M1903 could be fitted with a Maxim Silencer, which would supposedly help new recruits in firearms training. The whole point of the idea, according to Hiram Percy Maxim (the inventor of the suppressor and son of Hiram Stevens Maxim), was to allow rookie soldiers to get used to the military grade rifles without flinching. Note that some larger variants of the Maxim Silencers could be fitted to machine guns.

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• The Springfield rifle and the sniper variant has been seen in just about every WWII film, television show and video game made featuring the American Military. Examples include: Call of Duty,^note Call of Duty interestingly features three different models of the weapon, depending on the game - the original, United Offensive and 3 use the A4, 2 uses the A3, and World at War uses the A1. The Pacific, Battlefield 1942, Battle of the Bulge, The Big Red One and Saving Private Ryan.
• Medal of Honor
  • In Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, the A4 sniper variant is one of Lt. Mike Powell's most recurring weapons of choice, alongside the Thompson. Interestingly, the rifle is absent in the campaigns of the expansions.
  • Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault features the A1 variant, both scoped and non-scoped. The non-scoped variant is plentiful during the Makin Atoll raid level before being supplanted by the M1 Carbine and M1 Garand. The scoped variant is available for use in the early part of Makin, and is also the Weapon Of Choice for your squad's sniper, Pvt. Willie Gaines.
• The Springfield is used frequently by the sailors of the U.S.S San Pablo in The Sand Pebbles.
• Used in Far Cry 2 as the first sniper rifle the player encounters, and the first used by enemy snipers; for the first half of the game it stands as the more powerful and accurate option, in return for worse durability and a much slower rate of fire than the SVD or the later AS 50. For no readily apparent reason, all available M1903s are left-handed, fired by right-handed shooters, which is exactly as awkward as it sounds (especially since the first-person animations never show your character moving his thumb out of the way of the bolt's travel path). They're also loaded by inserting the stripper clips into a hole underneath the receiver as if they're a regular magazine, which doesn't even try to make any sort of mechanical sense regarding how it chambers new rounds or manages to completely blow itself apart when its reliability reaches zero.
• Used by the U.S Army after Kong in King Kong (2005) starts tearing through New York City.
• The residents of the Hoovervile The Doctor visits as well as their leader Solomon try to fight off the Daleks with these rifles in the Doctor Who episode "Daleks In Manhattan". Not that it does them a bit of good.
• Used by soldiers of the US and Mexican armies along with the main character Coffer in The Wild Bunch. Among the Mexican soldiers it was presumably a stand-in for Mexican Mausers, as in 1913 the United States wasn't exporting the M1903 to anybody.
• Leon's first sniper rifle is a Springfield M1903 converted to .223 in Resident Evil 4.
• Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth lets the player use this as a weapon, as well as Marsh's followers, U.S Marines and Coast Guardsmen. It's powerful enough to drop even a Deep One in one well-aimed shot.
• A sporterized version is seen in the film A Boy and His Dog, used by Vic. It features a modified stock, peep sight and cut down barrel. Interestingly, this exact same rifle can be seen used by a man aiming from a rooftop in The Book of Eli as a sort of homage.
• The "Birdseye" sniper rifle in BioShock Infinite is an M1903 with an assumed name, along with a few hybrid features from the Kar-98 (the section of exposed barrel near the front), the SMLE (the detachable box magazine), and the M1917 Enfield (the front sight).
• Added in the Blue Sun mod for 7.62 High Caliber. It's like all other bolt-action rifles from the era: powerful and long range, but slow to fire and reload. Not to mention that the ammo is less common and more expensive.
• Carried by Gary Cooper as Alvin York in Sergeant York, though incorrectly as the real York was issued an M1917 Enfield rifle.
• In Men of War, the M1903 Springfield is commonly issued to US Army medics and (quite accurately,) US Marines in early Pacific skirmish maps, while the M 1903 A 4 Scoped models are issued to US snipers.
• US Snipers in Company of Heroes are also armed with the M1903 Springfield.
• Appears in BloodRayne as the "Springbrook Rifle."
• The M1903 appears in Battlefield 1 as a rifle for the Scout class. In addition to two variants with scopes, there is also a variant with a Pedersen device.
• Appears towards the end of Letters from Iwo Jima, used by a Marine sniper who kills Lt. Fujita.
• The M 1903 A 4 is available in Sniper Elite V2, Sniper Elite 3, Sniper Elite 4, and Sniper Elite 5 it being Karl Fairburne's default rifle in all but 3 and 5, where in the former it is instead available via DLC and can be given a camo pattern, while in the latter Karl is using the SREM-1 as his rifle of choice.
• Ernest Hemingway, who loved the M1903 and owned at least two of them, put it in the hands of some of his characters: Francis Macomber and his wife (The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber) and Thomas Hudson (Islands In The Stream).
• Shows up in Girls' Frontline as a four-star rifle Tactical Doll. Off the battlefield, her personality is much like an old-fashioned housewife: kind, motherly, and ready to offer advice for anyone who needs it.
• Intrepid and Hornet from KanColle both carry the M1903 as their weapon of choice.
• Available for the Rifleman and Sniper classes in Rising Storm. Notably, on the Guadalcanal map, to reflect historical accuracy, the Marines will only have access to this rifle, due to the US Army taking in all available Garands at the time. The Sniper version, meanwhile, is notable for starting off as the M1903a 4, but, provided it can be leveled up, can be replaced in favor of the M1903a 1, with a more powerful scope.
• Hell Let Loose: the M 1903 A 4 is issued exclusively to the US sniper class as their sole sniper rifle.
• Post Scriptum: the A3 standard variant is available as an alternate loadout weapon for the US rifleman and medic class, while the scoped A4 variant is the weapon used by the US sniper classes.

Mannlicher-Schönauer full stock carbine

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/unknown_90.jpegAlthough based on a military rifle designed for export and adopted by the Greek Army by 1906 (why the chronically underfunded Greek Army adopted a rifle that every other army regarded as too expensive^note The Portuguese Army wanted to buy them despite not being able to afford them, but were overruled by the civilian leadership. Instead they went with the Mauser-Vergueiro, a locally-developed hybrid design that copied the Mannlicher-Schönauer's ultra-smooth bolt but otherwise was basically a Mauser 98 clone. Austria-Hungary also was on the verge of adopting an 8mm Mauser chambered Mannlicher-Schönauer variant in 1914, but World War I intervened and only a few prototypes were made. Since Austria-Hungary didn't exist anymore after the war, nothing more came of that idea. is unclear), this superb Austrian hunting bolt-action rifle-carbine had been built directly for the civilian market beginning in 1903.
It had a complex action with rotary magazine and split receiver and fired proprietary Mannlicher ammo, either 6.5x54mm (M1903), 8x56mm (M1908), 9x56mm (M1905) or 9x57mm (M1910), though non-proprietary chamberings like 7x57mm Mauser and .30-06 were eventually offered (the M1924 and M1956 came in nearly all common rifle chamberings of the era). It acquired a brilliant reputation as a hunting rifle either in the Alps, British Isles or Africa, fired by such figures as Ernest Hemingway and WDM "Karamojo" Bell and proving it could take even the largest African Elephant with a well-placed shot.
The action was the smoothest bolt-action in recorded history and the features that made the gun instantly recognizable also betrayed it as an "aristocratic" weapon: short length, full stock, very straight bolt operation, flat bolt handle and precise triggers (sometimes including a double trigger, with the front trigger being a "set trigger" than would set the main trigger to go off with only the slightest pull) told the gun has been aimed to be carried in a saddle sheath and used in hunting on horseback, like upper class hunters did. The full-length stock was so intrinsically linked to the Mannlicher-Schönauer carbine that even now, decades after it went out of production, such a stock is still referred to as "Mannlicher style" (even though Mannlicher himself had nothing to do with the stock design, it was more his protege Schönauer's doing).
It stood in production until 1972. Steyr-Mannlicher now offers a vaguely similar rifle, the "Mannlicher Classic," which mimics the style of the Mannlicher-Schönauer but replaces the rotary magazine with a less expensive but distinctly less cool detachable box magazine and simplifies the bolt design. The proprietary Mannlicher ammo was also abandoned, even the classic 6.5x54, much to the disappointment of more nostalgic shooters (who would seem to be the target audience of the rifle, leaving one to wonder what exactly Steyr is thinking).

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• In the TV show Ramar of the Jungle, Dr. Tom Reynolds carries a Mannlicher-Schönauer.
• Amon Goeth uses a full-length barrel version◊ to take potshots at his Jewish workers in Schindler's List (the Real Life Goeth◊ had the ubiquitous Mauser Kar98k of the German Army).
• British brigadier Lord Lovat uses one to lead his men onto Sword Beach in The Longest Day. In real life, Lovat and all his men were issued American M1 Garands for that mission, to ensure that they had enough firepower to "hold until relieved".

Marlin Model 336

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/h22021_l209442480_original_4284885139.jpgAn American lever-action rifle designed in 1948 by Marlin Firearms based on their earlier Model 1893 and 1936/36 rifles, the Marlin Model 336 was in production from 1948 all the way up to 2020, and was ranked the #2 all-time leader in U.S. high-powered sporting rifle sales after the Winchester Model 1894 with over 3.5 million rifles sold. Distinguishing it from the earlier Marlin rifles, it has an open ejection port machined into the side of the receiver, and it includes a stronger and simpler round-profile chrome-plated breech bolt, a redesigned cartridge carrier, an improved extractor, and coil-type main and trigger springs in place of the flat springs used in earlier Marlin rifles. The rifle comes in a wide variety of calibers, but the most common are .35 Remington and .30-30 Winchester. Several variants were later introduced, including the New Model 1894, which differs in using the old short-receiver Model 1894 action incorporating the flat-profile bolt due to trouble with the 336 action loading .44 Magnum rounds, and a larger caliber variant of the 336 known as the Model 1895 was later introduced in 1972, named in honor of the Marlin Model of 1895, and chambered in .45-70, .444 Marlin and .450 Marlin. Compared to the Winchester, it's somewhat heavier with a simpler internal mechanism and a full pistol-grip type buttstock in contrast to the Winchester's straight grip stock. Unlike many other lever-action rifles, it can also be cleaned from the breech, which avoids damage to the muzzle caused by cleaning rods and tools.

The rifle is also popular for as a parent for various wildcat caliber conversions in the western United States, Alaska and Canada where encounters with grizzly bears and other potentially dangerous animals can be expected. Out of these cartridges, the .510 Kodiak Express is the most powerful, and requires a new barrel to be installed on the rifle. Custom short-barreled Marlins called Guide Guns (named after the types of longarms favored by Alaskan hunting and wilderness guides as a defense against attacks by bears) also exist, with Marlin themselves making the 336SDT, 1895SDT, 1895G, 1895GS, 1895GBL, 1895SBL, and 1895m to capitalize on the trend.

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• The Model 336 and 1895 appear in Fallout: New Vegas as the Trail Carbine and Brush Gun respectively, the former being chambered in .44 Magnum and the later in .45-70, and the latter being considered one of the best rifles in the game and typically wielded by NCR Veteran Rangers and Legion Assassins. A unique variant of the Brush Gun called the Medicine Stick is available with the Gun Runners Arsenal, which features a ghost ring sight, a nickel finish, and a medicine wheel on the stock.
• The Model 336 appears in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as simply the Rifle. It first appears in the "Body Harvest" mission wielded by violently isolationist survivalists working on a farm CJ has to steal a combine harvester from, and CJ himself can buy it from Ammu-Nation for $1000 after completing said mission. It's slow, by very accurate and powerful.
• The Model 1895 appears in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) as the MK2 Carbine, classified as a marksman rifle. It can be customized with brown wood furniture, a skeletonized stock, a Midwest Industries M-LOK forend, and a different set of iron sights, with a "Dusty Trail" rare blueprint being available for it.
• A scoped Model 1895SBL was added to PAYDAY 2 in the Gunslinger Weapon Pack as the Bernetti Rangehitter, classified as a sniper rifle.
• Marlin's Model 1894 features in Battlefield 4, added with the Spring 2015 patch. It's cut down like the Mare's Leg, with the addition of rails; due to its short size and being chambered for .44 Magnum, it's treated as a sidearm.
• The Model 1894 with a shortened magazine tube only holding 4 rounds appears in Far Cry 5 as the 45/70, seemingly confused with the Model 1895 which is actually chambered in that caliber, and is unlocked at a resistance level of 1. A cut-down variant called the 45/70-T is also unlocked at a resistance level of 3, and returns in Far Cry 6, unlockable by default.
• The Model 1894 appears in Warface, where it is customized with an Osprey suppressor and railed handguard.
• The Model 336 is the rifle of choice of Kayce Dutton in Yellowstone, and is also used by other Dutton ranchers.
• Nandi, Malcolm, Zoë and Lucy all wield Model 1895s in the Firefly episode "Heart of Gold".
• The Model 336 is used by Arturo in Red Dawn (1984), first being picked up from a store by him just after the invasion.
• In Jurassic World, Owen uses a scoped carbine version of the Marlin 1895 with a shiny nickel finish. Even amongst the sleek, modern black assault rifles used by the In-Gen security forces, it still manages to draw the viewer's eye. It also makes sense, as the Marlin 1895's big, slow, and heavy .45-70 Government round is far more effective against large, dangerous game (like carnivorous dinosaurs) than 5.56 or even .308, while also being much more handy and manageable than the .600 Nitro Express of Roland Tembo's elephant gun.
• A Model 1895SBL is used by Tequila in Kingsman: The Golden Circle when he confronts Eggsy and Merlin at Statesmen HQ.
• The Model 336 is used by Jay in King Kong Lives to try to stop his buddies from taunting Kong.
• The Model 336 was used by Ronnie in The Amityville Horror (2005) to kill his family while he's possessed.
• Burce Campbell attempts to use a Model 336 in My Name is Bruce, but doesn't realize the safety is on.
• The Model 336 is used by Dan and Billy in Doctor Sleep during their ambush of The Knot in a campground.

Martini-Henry

A breech-loading, single-shot rifle firing a heavy black powder cartridge. It was used during the Zulu, Boer wars and World War I.

—Description, Battlefield 1

The quintessential rifle of 19th-century colonialism in certain parts of the world. The Martini-Henry rifle was introduced in 1871, which was one of the first rifles issued that was a breech-loading rifle rather than a muzzle-loaded weapon. It replaced the Snider-Enfield, which was also a breech-loaded weapon, though the Martini had a falling-block action and was initially designed as a breech-loader instead of being a conversion from a muzzle-loaded rifle. This allowed for a much quicker reload between shots in contrast to a muzzle-loaded weapon, being chambered with the .577/450 Martini-Henry Cartridge (though the rifle can accept different cartridges that were configured depending on who acquired the weapon). While this was the weapon of choice of the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire had managed to acquire several of these rifles for service. Over time, the rifle was phased out by more contemporary weapons, such as the Lee-Enfield or the Gewehr 98, which as bolt-action rifles allowed soldiers to fire multiple shots without having to reload frequently. The rifle barely saw some service in World War I, although the British Army had long since then replaced the rifle with the Lee-Enfield. The rifle was even used by Afghan partisans during the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, which happened about a century after the rifle was introduced.

There also existed the Martini-Enfield rifle, which was retrofitted to use the .303 British cartridge that the Lee-Enfield was loaded with. Also there was the Greener Police Gun/Prison Shotgun, a shotgun variant that fires a unique 14.5 gauge brass shotgun shell, and the Greener-Martini Light Harpoon Gun, which was modified to fire a harpoon. And Ian (AKA Gun Jesus) of Forgotten Weapons has found that Khyber Pass gunsmiths of Pakistan have been making new Martinis in various configurations to pass off as antiques to Western troops deployed to Afghanistan.

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• The most famous example of the rifle's use in any media would be Zulu, where the British soldiers used these to repel the Zulu warriors at Rorke's Drift. Even some of the Zulus used this rifle at some occasions. And in the actual battle, the Martini-Henry's good rate of fire was one of the key factors in deciding the British victory. That said, some extras in scenes like the volley fire drill end up using anachronistic Lee-Enfields instead, since while they acquired plenty of the rifles, they ended up burning through all the available blank cartridges for its obsolete caliber in the midst of production.
• The Thuggee cult have this rifle in their possession in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
• Jaws had shown Quint in possession of the Greener Harpoon Gun.
• The Jungle Book shows several British soldiers armed with this rifle, including Colonel Brydon. Buldeo and some of his men still use the Martini-Henry after the Time Skip when the British have replaced the rifle with the newer Lee-Enfield.
• Although extremely outdated for the time period, the Martini-Henry shows up in Battlefield 1 as one of the most ridiculously overpowered rifles available, being able to down almost anything in one hit.
• Danny and Peachy smuggled around twenty Martini-Henrys to arm their soldiers to take over Kafiristan in The Man Who Would be King.
• Forgotten Weapons deals with the Martini-Henry occasionally. In one episode, Ian shows a chopped-down "Martini-Henry pistol" which he determines is actually a Khyber Pass copy made sometime after 2001 and artificially aged to rip off US/Coalition soldiers in Afghanistan interested in buying an antique. As for shooting it, Ian figures that’s probably not the safest idea.
• Occasionally referenced by Rudyard Kipling, most notably in "Young British Soldier," where he warns recruits "Don’t call your Martini a cross-eyed old bitch!" when they miss a shot, and reminding them to maintain their weapon properly. Some editions change the Martini to an Enfield.
• Appears anachronistically in Assassin's Creed: Unity as the Silver-Plated Musket.
• Added to Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades in the 2019 Meatmas update, where it is classified as a lever-action rifle due to it's lever-operated falling block mechanism.
• The IC 1 (Interchangeable Carbine Mark 1) variant was added to Hunt: Showdown in patch 1.1.3, unlocked at Rank 16, with bayonet (Riposte) and low-powered scope (Deadeye) versions also being available.

MAS- 36

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/images_124.jpegThe Weapon Of Choice (rifle-wise) for Gauls with Grenades during the Second World War, alongside the long-obsolete Lebel mle. 1886 ^note (still used in the Second World War because of MAS-36 production starting too late for the French military to equip all units with the MAS) and the Berthier series of rifles, the MAS-36 is a bolt-action rifle chambered in the then-new 7.5x54mm French cartridge, produced by Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Étienne (MAS, hence the name) and adopted in 1936 (hence the designation) by the French military. It is actually an amalgation of three contemporary military service rifles, having dirt-resistant rear locking lugs like the British SMLE/Lee-Enfield, down-turned bolt handle and "peep" sights like the British/American P'14/M1917 Enfield, and the five-round internal box-magazine like the German Gewehr 98. The result was an ugly and roughly made but immensely strong and reliable bolt-action rifle, seeing a long history of service in World War II and beyond.

In service, the MAS-36 was often given to front-line troops first, with reservists and rear-echelon troops being given the older Berthier or (again) the long-obsolete Lebel mle. 1886. When France fell in 1940, the Germans seized a large number of MAS-36 rifles, and gave them the designation Gewehr 242(f) ^note For "Frankreich", which is the German word for "France", using them as service rifles for their own garrison units based there, and later (as the war turned desperate for them), the Volkssturm. Many were taken to North Africa by the Free French army and continued to serve as their main battle rifle, alongside lend-lease Lee-Enfields, until August 1943 when they were reequipped with M1917 Enfields and M1903 Springfields. Others were used by Vichy French forces and the French Resistance.

Even after the war was over, the MAS-36 was still in extensive use by the French forces, most notably their Army and colonial defense forces during the postwar counter-insurgency operations, seeing service in the First Indochina War (which ended disastrously for the French) and the Suez Crisis; most notably, during the Suez Crisis, French paratroop marksmen of the 2ème RPC (Régiment de Parachutistes Coloniaux), employed telescope-sighted MAS-36 rifles to eliminate enemy snipers. While the MAS-36 became substitute standard when the semi-automatic MAS-49 below was introduced into French service in 1949, the bolt design of the MAS-36 still lives on in a dedicated sniper based on its bolt action, the FR F1 in the original 7.5mm French cartridge and 7.62mm NATO and later the FR F2, the latter still seeing service to this day.

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• As one of the three standard French rifles during World War II (the other being the Lebel and the Berthier), the MAS-36 appears in media set during the era, either in France or one of it's colonies, most notably Vietnam.
• Patton has this weapon in the hands of Moroccan soldiers, since it is set in Africa and Morocco was still a French colony during that time.
• Appears in 7554, a Vietnamese first-person shooter, as the MAS 36 (no hyphen).
• Battlefield 1942 adds this weapon in the Forgotten Hope mod.
• Medal of Honor: Underground is an ambiguous case of the rifle's appearance; Vichy French Milice enemies use a rifle that looks the same as the normal Karabiner 98k but clearly has a different firing sound, meaning it is probably intended to be the MAS-36.
• French troops use this rifle in Call of Duty 2: Big Red One. In single player, it's used by Vichy French troops in North Africa during "Baptism by Fire". In the multiplayer, it's used by both Vichy French and the Free French Forces, depending on the map you're playing on.
• Briefly seen being used by French troops in Dunkirk.
• Eylstadt's army in Izetta: The Last Witch uses the MAS-36 as its standard infantry rifle.

Mauser rifles

A German bolt action rifle firing a very fast projectile, excellent for long range use.

—Gewehr 98 description, Battlefield 1

From top to bottom: Gewehr 98, Type Zhongzheng, Karabiner 98k

A series of bolt action military rifles (the two most groundbreaking examples being the Gewehr 98 and the Karabiner 98k) first issued in 1871 and still in limited use today,^note The early black powder Gewehr 71 and 71/84 rifles fired the 11x60mm Mauser round. Once smokeless powder came onto the scene, Mauser military rifles were primarily made in 7.92x57mm (aka 8mm Mauser), 7x57mm (aka 7mm Mauser) and 7.65x53mm (aka 7.65mm Mauser or 7.65mm Argentine). 7.92mm Mauser was used by Germany and most other European and Asian users of Mauser rifles. 7x57mm Mauser was used by Spain, Yugoslavia, Mexico and most South and Central American nations, and was also (and remains to this day) highly popular for use in hunting rifles, especially in Europe. 7.65mm Argentine was used by Belgium, Argentina and Turkey, along with more limited use by several other South American countries. Sweden went their own way, and used the 6.5x55mm (aka 6.5mm Swedish Mauser) round, which no other nation's Mausers were chambered in (but Norway's Krags were). Spain, Yugoslavia and Turkey all switched to 7.92mm Mauser, with the latter two converting their 7mm and 7.65mm rifles to fire that round. After World War II, many non-Communist nations converted their Mausers to .30-06 or later 7.62mm NATO in order to take advantage of the large amounts of American ammunition being provided as military aid. the Mauser rifles have at one time or another been the standard infantry weapon of every country in the world, such as its native Germany, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, Israel and many more. Mauser copies were also the standard infantry weapon of Nationalist China and even the United States (as the M1903 Springfield; the US actually paid royalties to Mauser until the Treaty of Versailles) and Britain. Their brief flirtation with replacing the Lee-Enfield came in the form of the Mauser-derived Pattern 1914 during World War I. The US also used this rifle, adapted to .30-06 as the M1917, alongside the M1903 during WW 1. The Japanese Arisaka also drew heavily from the Mauser (though the bolt was internally rather different, the magazine and stripper clip system were a direct copy). Czechoslovakia and Belgium also made numerous Mauser 98 short rifle clones for export between the World Wars, when Germany was prohibited from making military weapons, and to a limited extent resumed this practice after World War II. A particularly widespread copy was the Czech vz.24, which became the standard infantry rifle for many countries, especially in Iran, who domestically produced their own copies of the rifle, and used them into the Iranian Revolution and the early years of the Iran-Iraq War, where they were used by Iranian child soldiers.

The Mauser design, although not as fast to operate as the Lee Enfield due to its cock-on-opening action, featured a third locking lug and was one of the strongest bolt-action designs of the time (allowing it to be chambered in huge big game hunting magnum rounds from the .300 Winchester Magnum to .577 African game calibers), and counts almost every current-production bolt-action rifle as a descendant. It is very common on the military surplus market, and sporterized versions are a common European hunting weapon. And not uncommon as an American hunting weapon either, on account of large numbers having been brought back as war trophies; however, since there are multiple incompatible 7.92x57mm specifications, 8mm Mauser in the US is loaded to the lowest one as a precaution, putting it on par with a .30-30 versus the .30-06 power class of European loadings. The Mauser action is also commonly used in factory-built civilian hunting rifles.

The Gewehr 1898 is the correct model for WWI. It's identifiable by its high-profile rear sight, straight bolt handle, and the fact that it's ridiculously long (just over four feet). The Karabiner 98 also existed as a weapon for cavalry, artillery, and engineers, though it was a "carbine" only in the sense that it was (slightly) shorter than the G98. After WWI, the further-shortened Karabiner 98 Kurz, or "Carbine 98 Short," became the definitive version in German service. Like its predecessor, the Kar 98 K was a carbine in name only, and was comparable in length to an M1 Garand or SMLE. It also introduced a down-turned bolt handle, but since they were frequently re-arsenaled with old spare parts, many will still have the WWI-style straight handle.

The Chinese in particular have used Mauser rifles for a very long time. The Gewehr 1888 rifle^note which was actually a hybrid of Mauser and Mannlicher rifles commissioned by the German government was purchased and put to use by the Qing army, while the locally-produced Hanyang 88 won the Xinhai Revolution for Dr. Sun Yat-sen's forces, was used throughout the Warlord Era and the Northern Expedition by Chiang Kai-shek's troops, plus serving as the primary rifle of the Chinese Communists until 1946. The most famous is the Type Zhongzheng, an attempt to create a mainstay service rifle based on the Mauser model 1933 short-rifle for Nationalist forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. However, only somewhere around 700,000 of these rifles were manufactured from 1935 to 1949, and could not supplement the entire Chinese army during the wars. Moreover, due to material deficiencies, the Type Zhongzheng was not a particularly well-made rifle, and suffered numerous drawbacks. One of the rifle's major problems was its lack of heat resistance. Continued use tend to expand the bolt, rendering it difficult to pull. Some of its users actually called it a 'stepping rifle', meaning one had to actually kick & step on the bolt to force it to open. Moreover, the bore tend to lose its rifling relatively quickly compared to other mainstay rifles around the world at the time. It is actually quite common to see surviving examples retaining only 50% of its rifling or less. The Type Zhongzheng short rifle was superior (when it worked) to the longer Japanese Type 38 Arisaka in stopping power, rate of fire, range, although both rifles used a straight bolt handle. After the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949, the PLA used the Type Zhongzheng in the first year of the Korean War, before phasing it out in favor of the Mosin-Nagant M44 and its Chinese copy, the Type 53. The PLA kept the Type Zhongzheng for ceremonial use, while others were given to commune militias and Red Guards. Large numbers of Type Zhongzheng rifles captured from the defeated Nationalists were given to the Viet Minh, who used them against the French in the First Indochina War.

Another conflict that saw great protagonism of the Mauser family was The Mexican Revolution, where both Federal and revolutionary troops made heavy use of that rifle, and as a result the "máuser" was inmortalized in many folk songs from that era. The most common model was the Chilean Mauser M1895 in 7x57mm, imported into Mexico in large numbers during the start of the conflict in 1910, in both regular rifle and carbine form. Mexican arsenals produced small numbers of M1902 and M1910 rifles, while the Huerta regime imported Mausers from Germany and Austria after an US arms embargo. The Mauser was highly desired by revolutionary soldiers and guerrillas predominantly armed with old Winchester lever-actions that were often outranged by the modern, clip-loading rifle, despite the Winchester's higher rate of fire. Mausers were often stolen by the Zapatistas, Villistas and Constitutionalists from Federal troops, brought over by demoralized defectors or captured in raids.

• Cool scope: The standard German scope reticle (seen on the top right of the picture) is most often associated with sniper versions of the Kar 98, and after the Dragunov's PSO-1 is probably the most recognizable rifle scope reticule in media.^note In Real Life, this sort of reticule is sometimes referred to as a "German Post" reticule. It consists of a horizontal bar with a break in the middle and a vertical one which goes from the bottom of the scope to the middle, with a triangular top. You'll often see a Cold Sniper staring down one of these in a World War 2 movie or a Mafia hit.
• The Gewehr 98 and Karabiner 98k are iconic mook weapons for movies set during World War I or II. Somewhat less commonly, Gewehr 98's are seen as an IRA weapon in movies depicting the Irish Civil War (Truth in Television). Meanwhile, the Type Zhongzheng will show up in practically every Chinese movie or TV series set during the Second Sino-Japanese War, as the standard weapon for most Nationalist and Communist soldiers, with the Hanyang 88 making appearances in works set during the later years of the Qing Dynasty, the Xinhai Revolution or the Warlord Era.

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• The World War II iterations of the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty video game series feature the 98k quite heavily as a slow heavy-hitter.
  • Medal of Honor: Allied Assault zig-zags the classic representation: the regular unscoped Kar 98 K deals pathetic damage with no upsides, making it a Mook gun through and through. No wonder the core game never bothers to let you pick one up^note you can pick one up in the Omaha landing if you (purposefully or accidentally) miss the Springfield in a crater when you have to run from one bunker wall to the other when the M1 Garand or the snipers are so much better. On the other hand, the scoped Kar 98 K is the better of the two sniper rifles, as the action is cycled much faster than the Springfield's and the crosshairs aren't as intrusive.
  • It's surprisingly made an appearance in the modern-dated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), where it's usable in both Multiplayer and Single Player modes, possibly referencing its current real life usage in the Syrian Civil War by FSA soldiers.
• Shirai, the female Chinese guerrilla sniper in My Way, uses a Karabiner 98k. A more historically accurate weapon would have been the Type 24-while Nationalist China imported Kar 98ks before 1937, by the time Shirai appears, all the German-trained Chinese divisions that would have been using the Kar 98k had been wiped out.
• In Public Enemies, Christian Bale carries a Model 98 Sporter in 9.3x57mm Mauser.
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade features the Spanish Mauser, as well as the Czech vz. 24 model. The latter was commonly used by the real-life Nazis after they conquered Czechoslovakia; since it was the same length as the K98k and most of the parts were interchangeable, for once their infamous affinity for captured weapons didn't introduce another logistical nightmare.
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor features the Chinese Type Zhongzheng (aka "Chiang Kai-Shek Rifle") in the hands of rogue Nationalist troops.
• Remember how some Mausers are made for .577 Nitro? Quinn's rifle in Reign of Fire is an Ulriks Mauser T-Rex. if Quinn could shoot straight, they'd probably have less of a dragon problem.
• The Blue Sun mod for 7.62 High Caliber adds the K98k among its many, many new additions. It tends to appear from the beginning of the game in the hands of low-level thugs and bandits, with a very high level of power offset by a slow rate of fire, low capacity, and sheer size and weight.
• In Men of War, the Karabiner 98k model of the is the most commonly issued rifle for German infantry, while the Karabiner 98k Sniper Rifle is used by German sharpshooters.
• The Legacy of the Glorious features a Spanish company making licensed copies of the Mauser 71, and then go on with self-designed improvements.
• German Volksgrenadier and Grenadier Squads use the Karabiner 98k in Company of Heroes.
• The Gewehr 98 appears in Battlefield 1 as a sniper rifle and a scopeless bolt-action rifle for the Scout class.
• Major Li, the Chinese sniper in Flowers of War, uses a Type Zhongzheng when fighting the Japanese and during his last battle on the church rooftop.
• The Gewehr 98 is used by practically every German soldier in Wonder Woman (2017).
• 7554 features the Type Zhongzheng as an available primary weapon for the player, with possibly the quietest action of all the rifles available.
• An unspecified Mauser rifle (implied to be a Model 1871/84) makes a surprise appearance in the Western comic book Tex Willer, carried by a Mauser travelling salesman. When the stagecoach he's traveling is attacked by a small band of Apache, Tex takes advantage of the Mauser's greater range to take out their chief and decimate them from beyond the range of their Winchesters^note the salesman says the Mauser has triple the range of a Winchester, though he could be exaggerating the numbers.
• The Kar 98 K appears in every game of the Sniper Elite franchise. Sniper Elite 4 also features a Swedish Mauser, likely the only one in gaming history.
• German soldiers in 1917 use Gewehr 1898s.
• Kar 98 K is a 5-star rifle T-Doll in Girls' Frontline. Formerly the poster girl of useless 5-star units^note Kar 98 K's skill has her fire a single powerful shot after a long charge time. The problem is that battles are often over far before she can use her skill, and on the occassion that a fight drags on that long, the shot only hits a single unit and is overkill in most cases., a rebalance gives her a niche for taking down high-threat, medium-health enemies such as Doppelsoldners. Proportional disrepancies in her default art also led to fans joking about her being extremely short.
• SYNTHETIK offers two variants: a standard "K98 Classic" as the starting weapon for the Sniper class, and the considerably more high-tech "Human Model 9800K". The latter variant shoots Fusion Charges and, like other fusion weapons, grants a boost to the wielder's shields.
• Hell Let Loose has the Karabiner 98k as the standard-issue rifle for the German faction, issuing it to, among others, the Rifleman and Anti-Tank classes as their default weapon.

Mosin-Nagant

A Russian-made bolt-action rifle. It originated as the main infantry rifle of Czarist Russia and saw considerable action in the Second World War as the "long spear" of Red Army snipers. It was also the preferred weapon of The End, the Cobra Unit's aged sniper.

—Description, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Top: Mosin-Nagant M91/30, Bottom: Mosin-Nagant M 1938 Many classic military rifles are beautiful examples of master craftsmanship embodying form and function. The Mosin-Nagant, nowadays frequently called "Moist Nugget", didn't give much of a damn about the former. It's not pretty or refined, but can take a beating and still remain functional. It has enough power to knock a man down a kilometer away (and enough recoil to shake the shoulders aplenty), but one off the rack can usually only be trusted to at most 700yds. The action takes a bit of muscle, but there are few ways it can go wrong, all of which can be solved with a properly-applied boot. Reloading also requires a bit of strength, and it's often not as smooth as other bolt-action rifles. The Mosin-Nagant is crude by modern standards, and certainly far from perfect. But it works, even in the most adverse of situations, and remains good enough to be competitive today. The Mosin is notable in that it was kept in the inventory of every single Soviet-friendly country, and despite everything is still in widespread use into the present day, although it's naturally outnumbered by the AK family and the SKS.

The Russian analogue to Mauser-based designs,^note The Mosin actually came a full seven years before the Mauser, and the two differ in several significant ways. The Mosin has two horizontal locking lugs while the Mauser has three vertical lugs. The Mosin bolt body is multi-part while the Mauser's is solid. The Mosin uses a button ejector while the Mauser uses a claw extractor. The Mosin uses push feed while the Mauser uses a controlled feed. The Mosin has its bolt handle on the forward portion of the bolt while the Mauser has its bolt handle at the rear of the bolt. The bolt handle of the Mosin closes in a recess of the receiver and acts as a third locking lug, the bolt handle of the Mauser does not. The Mosin is designed for a rimmed cartridge, the Mauser for a rimless one. The Mosin has a interchangeable bolt head while the Mauser heads are not interchangeable. The Mosin has a split bridge receiver while the Mauser receiver is not split. this bolt-action rifle was originally designed by Sergei Ivanovich Mosin, with details taken from a competing design by Léon Nagant. Chambered in 7.62x54mmR, the Mosin is known for its rugged construction, a "safety" that is non-intuitive^note The safety is engaged by pulling the cocking ring on the end of the bolt back and turning it counter-clockwise, reversing that to disengage it. Most regarding it think of either action as difficult and inconvenient at best. and unknown by most owners of the weapon.^note Among Mosin-Nagant owners the standard response to people asking about the safety is to adopt your worst Russian accent and say "Safety? Is not safe! Is gun!"

First introduced in 1891, the rifle was used by the Russians in WWI as the M1891 long rifle and the shortened Dragoon, by the Soviets in WWII as the shortened M91/30 pictured above, and by both sides in the Russian Civil War and the Russo-Finish Winter War (the previous two leading to the gag that the rifle has "fought itself and won every time"; the Finnish version used 7.62x53mmR ammunition, though the difference was mainly just in name). Simo Häyhä himself used the Finnish Mosin-Nagant M28-30 for most of the war. The British and American expeditions to help the Whites during Red October also saw Tommies and Doughboys outfitted with Mosins, with some being made in America by Remington. The first Mosin order was even fulfilled by France and during the war, the American company Remington made them under contract from the Tsar. Many of these Mosins either went with the American Expeditionary Force or fell into National Guard and military academy hands, where they were mostly just used for training and drill.

China was also a major user of the Mosin, with the M1891 being bought by or supplied to warlord armies, as well as seeing use by the famed White Russian mercenaries. During the time when the Kuomintang were backed by the Comintern, their army received Mosins as part of Soviet aid, shipped from Vladivostok to the Kuomintang base of Guangzhou, although the 7.92mm Hanyang 88 was also used by Kuomintang soldiers. When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out, the Nationalists received more Mosins in a resumption of Soviet aid, motivated by the ongoing Japan-Soviet border war around Manchuria. After Mao's takeover of China and China entering The Korean War in 1950, the People's Volunteer Army adopted the M44 carbine as their standard rifle, and so did the rest of the PLA. Their North Korean allies used the regular M91/30. After the war, they copied the M44 as the Type 53, many of which were later sent to the Viet Cong. On their part, the Viet Minh first received Mosins in the later years of the First Indochina War, sent through China from the USSR.

And during the Spanish Civil War, the Republicans were provided with huge quantities of Mosins from the USSR, their main source of foreign aid, with both the famous M91/30 and the 1891 long rifle being exported to Spain. The Mosin was one of the standard rifles of the Second Spanish Republic's Popular Army alongside the existing Mauser M93, and famously served as the primary service rifle of the International Brigades, who nicknamed the Remington-manufactured M1891s "Mexicanskis"^note The Non-Intervention Committee formed by France and Britain during the civil war meant that all countries selling arms to Spain were eager to keep the exact shipments and weapon types secret from reporters. So whenever a Brigade veteran refers to the "Mexicanski" rifle, they're secretly referring to a Mosin-Nagant M1891 or the Mosin-Nagant M91/30. due to some arriving wrapped in Mexico City newspapers. 5000 Remington-made Mosins had been transferred to Mexico after WW 1, and found their way to Spain. Most Spanish-marked Mosin-Nagants can be occasionally found on the market, with Spanish lettering and added wire sling hangers to fit European rifle slings. Despite the troubles and politicking of Soviet arms shipments to Spain, there were enough Mosins that they actually replaced the dizzying mix of black powder and bolt-action rifles in various calibers in Republican service, so by mid 1937 to late 1938, the Republicans were standardized on the Mosin despite their infamous and ongoing logistical problems.

Poland also produced a very unique and cool copy in the form of the Karabinek wz.91, which involved converting a M1891 long rifle to 7.92mm Mauser, shortening the rifle by 20cm, modifying the sights, replacing the spike bayonet with a new mounting for Polish/German bayonets, modifying the bolt and shortening the firing pin. Mosins were also supplied to every Warsaw Pact member after WW 2.

Finland was another major producer of its own variants of the Mosin Nagant. After becoming independent following the Russian Revolution, the Finns were left with a large quantity of Mosin rifles at their disposal. Thus, instead of modernizing its army from scratch, which was considered economically infeasible due to Finland lacking any major industries at the time, the Finnish military instead opted to slice, dice & reassemble from the best Mosin parts they could find as part of its modernization program. This lead to the creation of the semi-experimental M27, M28, M28/30 and additional developments eventually accumulated to the M39. It is actually quite common to see Finnish rifles being fitted by parts with different serial numbers. For example, a M39 could have a new Finnish barrel, a reworked trigger, but a receiver dating from the late 19th century, with a Russian Mosin bolt salvaged from the 1930s. In addition, Finnish captures of Russian Mosin-Nagants from both the Winter & Continuation Wars were often reworked and refurbished with a number of improvements, such as a more responsive trigger, a better bolt-body... etc. Occasionally, even the rifle stocks were forcefully fitted onto rifles that they weren't intended for (the M28 in a 91/30 stock for example). Yet, these mismatched rifles have the reputation of being the 'best' Mosins available, and highly sought after by collectors.

The Mosin is said to be the weapon of legendary snipers like Vasily Zaitsev, Ivan Sidorenko and Simo Häyhä, the latter credited with 505 confirmed kills with the Finnish M28 variant. Due being the former service rifle of the Afghan Army, the Mosin saw frequent use by the mujahideen in the early years of the Soviet-Afghan War, although the Mosins were quickly exchanged for fully automatic AK Ms and higher capacity Lee-Enfields. The Taliban still uses Mosins as sniper rifles due to the large amounts of leftover 7.62x54mmR ammunition in Afghanistan.

A massive number of these rifles were made (over 37 million have been produced overall, and 17 million just from the M91/30 variant — only the AK has higher production numbers), and many were packed up by the Soviets to prepare for World War III. When that never came, the crates were bought up by Americans and the rifle is now incredibly common on the surplus market for just a couple hundred dollars or even less, though prices of the carbine versions have spiked to around $400. As a result, the Mosin and its foreign copies have become extremely famous in America and obtained a big Fandom for its low cost, availability of ammunition, rich history, ruggedness and "exotic" nature as a previously-unobtainable Eastern Bloc weapon, performing well as a cheap target or hunting rifle. It even has earned the tongue-in-cheek nickname of "Moist Nugget", and the rifle's memetically strong recoil ^note Double if you're shooting one of the carbine models is not considered a serious flaw by its fans. Though the rising prices in recent times have led to some Hype Backlash, the Mosin has become popular enough to have various accessories manufactured for it, such as detachable 10 to 30-round magazines, scope mounts and custom triggers.

Finnish Mosins tend to be more expensive than the Russian versions, and there are also a variety of rare variations (like the Russian M1907 and Finnish M 27 Rv cavalry carbines, probably the two rarest of all) that most people will never see outside of pictures or a museum. One particularly unusual, ultra-rare and totally unofficial variant was the "Obrez" pistol, a Mosin-Nagant with the stock and most of the barrel sawed off to form a highly concealable but dubiously practical Hand Cannon, which are known to have been used to some extent during the Russian Revolution.

• Cool Accessory: The M1944 and M91/59, as well as the Chinese Type 53, all feature a side-folding spike bayonet that is permanently attached to the rifle. The iconic spike bayonet of the M1891 and M91/30 also counts.

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• This website throws the Mosin-Nagant's proverbial hat in the ring of the the perennial "AK vs AR" debate. Hilarity Ensues.
• Most movies and videogames that feature the Soviet Union during World War 2 will feature the Mosin-Nagant. Often also a first choice weapon for Cold Sniper characters, sometimes to emphasize their distrust of modern technology.
• Famously unbalanced as a sniper weapon in the original Call of Duty due to being the only scoped rifle to reload with a stripper clip (in real life, or even with every other bolt-action sniper weapon in the game, the scope placement prevented this). Even the basic rifle had the best iron sight in the game.
• Has a big role in Enemy at the Gates. Naturally, since the movie is about Vasily Zaitsev.
• Escape from Tarkov introduced the Mosin-Nagant sniper variant in the 0.10 beta update, where it quickly gained notoriety within the community. While the powerful 7.62x54R round had existed for a while back (then-exclusive to the SV-98), the Mosin rifle was extremely accessible to newer players and more importantly, cheap. As a result, many veteran players with their high-end body armor and helmets suddenly found themselves being victims of a One-Hit Kill to the now-common 7.62x54R rounds fired from this rifle. It has since been hit with cost re-balances, but nevertheless remains a popular cheap rifle to bring out on raids, with the trader, Mechanic having several missions dedicated to testing the player's proficiency with the Mosin. Later updates also brought the infantry straight-bolt variant (immune to the Kochetov mount for scopes due to bolt placement), the Obrez and much more modding options for the rifle such as add-on rails and third-party manufactured stocks.
• The sniper rifle used by The End in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a modified Nagant with a pistol grip and folding stock, modified to fire tranquilizer rounds.
  • It appears again in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, always in the same form as The End had it (though in Peace Walker you have to research and upgrade it to that point; it can also be upgraded even further than the old version to take a suppressor) and always firing tranquilizer rounds. The Renov-ICKX sniper rifle in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is based off a Czechoslovakian copy of the Mosin, the vz.54, and a unique customized version is Quiet's favored weapon.
• One of the first rifles available in 7.62 High Calibre. It's very powerful and accurate, even compared to later rifles, but features a very long refire time (1.8 seconds in a game where less than 1 second is the standard) and an equally long reload time, to reflect the bolt-action nature of the gun. Also available in the Mosin-Nagant 1944 Carbine, with permanently attached bayonet, and the unbelievably common Sawed-Off Mosin-Nagant 1944, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin (and also less powerful and less accurate, while being just as slow-firing and slow-reloading).
• Extremely common weapon for the Soviet forces in Red Orchestra and Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad. Standard riflemen also have the option of the shorter M38 or M44 carbines, while snipers can use a scoped version.
• Appears in PAYDAY 2 with the Gage Historical Pack DLC, as simply the "Nagant". The model appears as the slightly shorter M1907 carbine by default, with the alternate barrel lengths turning it into the even shorter M38 carbine or the full-length M91/30. It's also the first sniper rifle added to the game that can be fitted with iron sights in place of a scope, and the first weapon that can accept a bayonet to increase melee damage when using regular Pistol-Whipping.
• In Men of War, the M91/30 model is the most commonly used rifle for Soviet infantry, while a sniper version of the gun comes attached with a PU scope.
• Appears in the DayZ Standalone. Since it is the only weapon currently in the game that can mount a long-range optic, it is the closest thing the game has to a true sniper rifle. This, and its relative commonality make it a popular choice for PvP.
• Ghost Recon: Future Soldier features one with modernized features as the "MN 91/30" in a pre-order bonus, available to Bodark scouts as their equivalent to the Ghosts' M 40 A 5 from the same pack. It returns in Ghost Recon Wildlands with an Archangel Manufacturing stock and an extended, detachable magazine as the "M1891."
• Commonly seen in the hands of Soviet conscripts in Company of Heroes 2, with Sniper Teams using the scoped version of the rifle.
• While serving as a militiaman in the Spanish civil war, George Orwell managed to examine a fresh Mosin-Nagant from an Assault Guardsman, which he names the "Russian rifle". Although he notes that the rifle was far from perfect, he describes them as vastly superior to the Spanish Mauser M1893 long rifles, which he labels "old blunderbusses" due to many being in poor condition.
• Battlefield 1 is set to introduce both the Mosin-Nagant and the sawed-off Obrez in the In the Name of the Tsar DLC.
• Project Reality features the Mosin-Nagant and the Obrez for the African Resistance, Taliban and Iraqi Insurgency factions.
• The Finnish M/39 variant shows up in the hands of Finland's weapons-teams in Wargame: Red Dragon
• Curiously, the sniper that joins Pvt. Kelly's squadron in Kelly's Heroes has a Mosin-Nagant as his weapon of choice rather than a Springfield.
• The Mosin-Nagant M91/30 appears in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam to the NVA and Viet Cong as a primary weapon choice, and the oldest gun in the game yet. Both the regular rifle and a sniper version are available.
• Unturned features the Mosin as the Schofield^why?  it's named after Nelson's social studies teacher, who asked for a gun named after him during a stream. It's a bolt action civilian-grade rifle that's almost as long-ranged and accurate as a dedicated Sniper Rifle, and equally as large with a 5x2 inventory slot footprint. Its only real issue is the standard sights, which are very obstrusive.
• It appears in Killing Floor 2 as a Tier 3 DLC weapon for the Sharpshooter perk, it stands out from the rest of the Sharpshooter guns. By being the only weapon with an attached bayonet, replacing the standard bash attack to knock back enemies that get to close with a rather long-ranged stab, not only that it could also allow the player to parry and block incoming attacks like the other melee weapons on offer.
• A 4-star rifle in Girls' Frontline. A Friendly Sniper through and through, the game depicts her as a big sister figure to Nagant Revolver. She notably uses several different variants of the Mosin-Nagant: a M91/30 in her default appearance, a "bent bolt" M91/30 with PU Scope for her Luna Sea costume, and a modernized variant with polymer cheek rest and rail mounts for her Neural Upgrade.
• Appears in Insurgency for use by the Insurgent Sniper and Sharpshooter, and costs 1 point. It can equip optics on a rail replacing its rear sight.
  • It returns in Insurgency: Sandstorm basically unchanged. It can equip stripper clips if its optic doesn't obstruct the bolt. One optic option is its unique PU 4x scope.
• Hell Let Loose features gives the Soviets 3 variants of this rifle: the M1891 with an open sight issued to the Rifleman class, the M1891/30 for most other Infantry classes (with the Sniper issued a scoped version of the rifle), and the M1891/38 Carbine as an unlockable for the Soviet Rifleman class.
• The M38 carbine with an ammo pouch and pack of bandages strapped to it appears in Far Cry 6 as the Eastern Front, available as either DLC or from the black market, and is classified as a sniper rifle. A golden variant known as the White Lotus is also available.
• Mosin-Nagant M1891 shows up multiple times in Golden Kamuy, particularly during the Russo-Japanese War flashbacks in the hands of Russian soldiers. It's also the preferred weapon of Vasily, a Russian border guard and one of the latest member of Sugimoto's Group.

Muzzleloading muskets and rifles

Top: Brown Bess flintlock musket, Bottom: Pattern 1853 Enfield caplock musketThese were the Ur-Example of rifles or, more generally, guns in general. A muzzleloader is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. To load one, one must put gunpowder and a lead ball down the barrel.

There are four basic types of muzzleloaders. The first was the matchlock. In this, the shooter lit a slow-burning piece of rope attached to the hammer, which ignited the powder when the trigger was pulled. The second was the wheellock, which used a steel wheel spinning against a piece of pyrite to set off a spark to ignite the gunpowder. The third was the flintlock. This action had a small piece of flint (hence the name) hitting what's called a "frizzen", which produced a spark to set off the powder. Finally, there was the caplock. Developed in the 1820s, this mechanism used small copper cups called "percussion caps," which had a small charge which ignited the powder. Early models were smoothbore, while later models had rifled barrels.

An early model of muzzleloader was the arquebus (or harquebus), which used a matchlock action, and was typically fired from a support of some sort. A notable type of arquebus was the Japanese tanegashima, which were copied from Portuguese matchlocks, and used by the Japanese from the 16th century until the 19th century. Later noteworthy muzzleloaders include the Brown Bess musket (officially the Land Pattern Musket, used by the British Empire and many others), the Kentucky rifle (used by the American colonists), the Charleville musket (used by the French Empire), and the Jezail (a type of musket from Central Asia, India and parts of the Middle East identifiable by its curved stock).

Muzzleloaders were the only types of guns for centuries. Matchlocks were widely used until the 17th century, being replaced by the flintlock, in turn flintlocks declined in the early 19th century as caplocks became widespread (wheellocks, developed between the matchlock and the flintlock types never replaced the matchlock in mass usage due to their high cost and complexity). Muzzle loading itself gave way somewhat after mid-century to the first generation of breech-loading firearms. However, muzzleloaders are still used by some hunters.

There was an enormous difference between smoothbore and rifled muzzleloaders: the former were (relatively) quick to reload but painfully inaccurate (Colonel George Hanger wrote to Lord Castlereagh in 1808 that "I do maintain and will prove, that no man was ever killed at 200 yards by a common musket, by the person who aimed at him.") Smoothbore muskets frequently were not even equipped with sights since peering down the barrel was as close as you were going to get anyway.^note Games which feature precision sharpshooting with smoothbore muskets, even matchlocks (infamously, the Assassin's Creed series) are Rule of Cool fantasy Rifles, on the other hand, could be deadly accurate in the hands of a skilled marksman, but glacially slow to reload. This was because the ball had to be tight-fitting to "bite" into the spiral grooves or rifling in the barrel, and ramming it home took considerable time and force - sometimes a mallet! For this reason (as well as cost) rifles were restricted to sharpshooters and certain specialist units, while line infantry were issued smoothbores which could maintain a high volume of volley fire, very effective at short range (a musket platoon could be thought of as a sort of 40-man shotgun).

This all changed with the perfection in 1846 by Dr. Claude-Étienne Minié of a conical bullet with a hollow base: the Minié ball. The key to the Minié ball was that when loading it was slightly subcaliber relative to a rifled bore's lands and would easily slide down the barrel, but upon firing the thin walls of the base would expand, gripping the rifling tightly. This combined the best of both worlds: rifle accuracy with smoothbore rate of fire. There quickly ensued the general issue of rifle-muskets like the Pattern 1853 Enfield and Model 1861 Springfield. This was a revolution, and led to both massive casualties and dramatic changes in tactics during the American Civil War.

* Uncool Drawback: Matchlocks and flintlocks are notoriously unreliable in bad weather, to the point where they wouldn't fire at all, or worse, cause "hangfires," where the powder is burning yet has not yet set off the main charge. This might lead to some accidents. The percussion mechanism solved this issue.

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• Expect these to appear in any movie set during The American Revolution or The American Civil War, plus films showing the early days of the British Empire. Matchlock muskets may also show up in works set in Feudal Japan.
• Appears in Assassin's Creed from the third game onwards.
• Used in Age of Empires III.
• Pattern 1853 Enfield muskets are used by many of the Vulvalini in Mad Max: Fury Road.
• The Tanegashima, a Japanese copy of a Portuguese matchlock arquebus^note Named for the island the weapon originally arrived in Japan through; a Chinese ship with Portuguese adventurers on board had to set anchor there in 1543 due to a bad storm. The lord of the island bought a pair of them from those adventurers, set one of his swordsmiths to copy the design, and the rest is history. features as a secret Joke Weapon in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. It's difficult to obtain, ^note You need to save up a million points to buy it from Drebin in MGS 4, or do a Monster Hunter crossover mission to get a Rathalos Wing and have a member of the R&D team with the "Japanese Patriot" skill to develop it in Peace Walker. weak, only holds a single round at a time, takes longer than anything else in the game to reload, and forces the player to stand up to do so. However, every shot that connects with an enemy in an outdoors area has a one in three chance of summoning a gigantic tornado, throwing everybody in the vicinity into the air ^*  And causing them to land inside Kaz's helicopter and become a new recruit for your group in Peace Walker and scattering tons of items for you to collect.
• A Jezail Musket is one of the rifles the Sniper can have in Team Fortress 2 as the "Bazaar Bargain". It's been modified to be a bolt-action rifle with an aperture sight for a scope and a laser pointer.
• A musket loaded with saboted rounds is used by Roberta in Black Lagoon.
• Multibarreled flintlock volley guns appear in Sharpe as the support weapon of The Big Guy Harper, The Alamo (1960) in the hands of Jim Bowie, and in Shogun Assassin as one of the weapons concealed in the Baby Carriage.
• A Jezail Musket can be found as an easter egg on any maps featuring the Ottoman Empire in the Battlefield 1942 mod, Battlefield 1918.
• Grand Theft Auto V added a musket as an available weapon in the Independence Day Special update. It's placed in the shotgun slot and has tremendous damage and excellent accuracy at the expense of only firing one shot before an extremely long reload.
• The tanegashima is noted in Soul Edge as a point of concern for Mitsurugi and the reason he seeks the titular swords is to have a counter against the musket. In his ending, he notes that the swords are nothing but evil and destroys them before challenging a musketeer to a duel. He can win or lose depending on the player's reaction, meaning he either dodges and strikes his opponent before he can reload, or is shot in the process. Later games reveal that the duel is canon and that Mitsurugi lost, but he later develops techniques to counter firearms anyway, meaning that the threat of tanegashima no longer concerns him.

P' 14 Enfield/ M 1917 Enfield

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sgtyorksniper.jpegAfter the rather harrowing experience of their soldiers in the Boer War, the British Army took a hard look at their issued small arms and came to the (ultimately incorrect) conclusion that their No.1 Mk III SMLE rifles were inferior to the German-made Mausers used by the Boers, therefore the Empire's men should be equipped with Mausers. Of course, being British, they weren't about to just buy them off the Germans like everybody else. And there was also the matter of those pesky patent laws, as the Americans found out the hard way when Mauser Werke sued the US Government over the latter's M1903 rifle and the .30-06 cartridge. So the only solution was to build a better Mauser, without using anything Paul Mauser would recognize as his own.

By 1913, they had come up with something that was basically a Mauser/SMLE hybrid: a Mauser-style bolt and 5-round charger-loaded internal-box magazine with an Enfield-style safety (on the opposite side of the receiver compared to the SMLE) and a cock-on-closing mechanism with a new and greatly improved sight, chambered for a new high-velocity .270-caliber cartridge: the Rifle, Pattern 1913. Unfortunately the new round was too hot, with a brutal recoil and causing unacceptable barrel wear, and within a year the RSAF threw in the towel and rechambered the P'13 for standard .303 British. This rifle was officially adopted as the Pattern 1914. There was just one small complication: the UK was now embroiled in a major conflict with the Germans, Austrians, and Turks, and the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield was too busy turning out desperately-needed SML Es to retool their production line. Thus, the P'14 was outsourced to the United States, with Winchester, Remington, and Remington's subsidiary Eddystone contracted for production. The new rifle was rugged, fast and accurate, if a bit on the hefty side, and was well-liked. It saw some use in the Great War and World War II as a sniper and second-line rifle, but was relegated to the Home Guard afterwards, as the SMLE was available in much greater numbers and had proven itself to be a fine rifle.

On the other hand, when the United States entered the war in 1917, the Army realized that it couldn't get its hands on enough M1903s to equip the Doughboys shipping out to France with existing production capability. Remington, Winchester, and Eddystone had just completed their P'14 contracts, but would need months to retool their factories for the '03. A quick test proved that the P'14, designed for the rimmed .303 British cartridge, could be easily rechambered for rimless US .30-06 Springfield ammo (and had room for an extra rimless round, giving the American variant a six-round capacity, though issued stripper clips still only held five). With that, and a rear sight calibrated to .30-06, the US Rifle, Caliber .30, M1917 was born. After fixing a couple issues (early Winchester variants did not have interchangeable parts), the M1917 became the most common American weapon on the Western Front. It was prized for its exceptional accuracy, and the cock-on-closing mechanism cycled more smoothly than even the Springfield's excellent bolt, but it was longer and heavier than the Springfield. Famously, the M1917 Enfield was initially used by Sergeant Alvin York to take down German machine gunners in the battle that earned him the Medal of Honor.

Like its British cousin, the M1917 was mostly relegated to rear-line use after the war, as it had only been adopted in the first place as a stopgap weapon. Some were issued to the Philippine Army and saw action against the Japanese, while others were given to the Free French army in 1943. A large number of them were sent to England under Lend-Lease to equip the British Home Guard in WWII. These had a red stripe painted on the stock to differentiate them from .303 P'14s. The M1917 was also the most common Lend-Lease rifle provided to Nationalist China, especially for use by the American equipped and trained units in Burma, who kept their rifles when they became the New 1st Army. As the M1917 itself was quite long and heavy, it was often shortened for the Chinese soldiers, who tended to be of smaller stature than their American allies. When the civil war broke out in 1946, the New 1st Army soldiers continued to use their M1917s, while others were distributed to the rest of the National Revolutionary Army◊. Some were captured by the PLA and saw use in Korea until the standardization of Soviet-based equipment began, after which they were given to rural militias, Red Guards or simply put in storage. A few M1917s made their way to French Indochina, where they were used by the Viet Minh. Today, the rifle still sees use with the Danish Slædepatruljen Sirius (Sirius Dog Sled Patrol), who value the rifle's reliability in harsh Arctic conditions and its powerful round for protection against polar bears.

The entire inventory of M1917 rifles (minus those still held by the Philippine Army, and those kept by the Chinese) was declared surplus in 1946. Many were chopped down and sporterized, becoming quite popular as cheap deer rifles in the 50s and 60s. Today it's actually surprisingly difficult to find a US Enfield in "GI" condition, with unmodified rifles fetching $1000 or more as collectibles.

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• Forgotten Weapons has multiple episodes devoted to the M1917 and P’14. In this one, Ian (dressed in period-appropriate US Army uniform and Kelly helmet) runs through a two-gun move & shoot match with an M1917 rifle and M1911 pistol, handily demonstrating how smoothly the Enfield’s bolt cycles. All the more impressive considering Ian is left-handed.
• If you see a movie about US troops in World War I (not nearly as common as movies about the British or French in WWI), there's about a 50/50 chance they will carry M1917s instead of M1903s.
• The titular hero of the "Crocodile" Dundee movies favors a sporterized P-1914.
• In The Untouchables (1987), The Mounties who assist Ness's team in the border ambush are armed with P'14 rifles.
• Army personnel on the streets of Manhattan in the third act of King Kong (2005) carry a mix of M1917s and M1903s, plus at least one BAR.
• An M1917 is used by Chalky White in Boardwalk Empire.
• A posse/militiaman has an M1917 in Night of the Living Dead (1968).
• A scoped .30-06 M1917 Enfield is used by Charlie in Wonder Woman (2017), which is an odd choice considering that the P'14 Enfield was popular with British snipers and used the same .303 ammunition as the British battalion Steve's mercs serve with.
• Verdun gives the Snipers and Observers of the Scottish Highlanders the P'14 Rifle, with a scope for the former. British Riflemen also have this rifle for their initial loadout.
• Karl Fairburne can equip a scoped M1917 in Sniper Elite 3.
• The 1917 Enfield makes an appearance in Battlefield 1 as a part of the Apocalypse DLC, initially only as an Infantry variant, though a variant with both an offset-mounted optic AND a suppressor has been teased.
• In The Lost Battalion almost every soldier on the American side is seen carrying the M1917.

Ruger Mini- 14

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mini_14_6.jpgFirst introduced in 1973, the Ruger Mini-14 is a semi-automatic rifle, so named because it resembled a miniaturized version of the M14. Designed to be simple, reliable, and affordable, the rifle was and still is popular among civilians and law enforcement. It achieved the height of its popularity in the civilian market in The '90s due to loopholes in the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 (namely, it lacked many of the "military-style" features that were targeted by the law) making it one of the easiest semi-automatic rifles to acquire; the expiration of that law in 2004 has seen the AR-15 and similar rifles rapidly overtake it in the civilian market, though the Mini-14 is still a widely used rifle in rural areas or areas that restrict the sale of the AR-15 and similar rifles. Early models had a flaw that ruined their accuracy, though later models (beginning with serial numbers 580-x from 2005 onwards) addressed this flaw with modifications to the barrel and manufacturing process. The easiest way to distinguish these is by checking for a tapered barrel that bulges slightly at the point where the barrel extends past the stock; the pre-2005 models have barrels that are the same diameter the entire length.

The Mini-14 is a common sight in films and television shows of the 1980s and '90s. The rifle was a favorite of film armorers (who referred to the Mini-14 as "The Jamless Wonder") as the feed system happened to cycle blank cartridges without issue, which were problematic in other 5.56mm rifles at the time.

The weapon has many different variants, including the select-fire AC-556, and is chambered in three calibers: .223 Remington/5.56x45mm NATO, 7.62x39mm (the latter designated the Mini Thirty^note it is NOT spelled "Mini-30," as Ruger's own website refers to it without numerals), and .300 AAC Blackout (the Mini-14 Tactical as of 2015). It also comes with a variety of accessories, including folding and bullpup stocks, the latter of which is often used to give the rifle a futuristic appearance in sci-fi films.

• Cool Accessory: The GB-pattern side-folding stock. Originally sold from the rifle's inception in 1973 until 1989 (when Bill Ruger himself personally halted all civilian sales of it following the Cleveland Elementary School shooting in Stockton, CA, and then sales to law enforcement ended in the mid-1990s). The folding stock and accompanying pistol grip attachment make the already well-balanced rifle even more compact and convenient to carry. While it was $40 when it was in production, the folding stock is now easily selling for upwards of $800 to $1,000 each on the used market. Fortunately, Samson Manufacturing is bringing a reproduction of it back into production for 2020 for under $300, so you too can live out your A-Team fantasies.

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• The Mini-14 is well-known as the primary rifle of The A-Team, though they seemed to have trouble actually hitting anyone with them.
• One is used by Ken in A Fish Called Wanda.
• Twice in the Grand Theft Auto series.
  • The Mini-14F appears in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, as a reference to The A-Team. In the initial release, it was a full-length version with a wooden body and referred to as simply the "Ruger", though the later 2.0 version shortened the barrel, recolored it to a dark synthetic body, and renamed it the "Kruger".
  • Grand Theft Auto V features the Mini Thirty, with an aftermarket chassis making it resemble the M39 Enhanced Marksman Rifle, as the "Marksman Rifle". Originally implemented in the "Last Team Standing" DLC, the gun can be unlocked in the next-gen version after the Paleto Score. In game, it's classified as a sniper rifle, though it lacks the ability to zoom in with the scope in return for a faster rate of fire, a larger magazine (8 by default, able to be doubled to 16) and, before an update gave them all that ability, the ability to move around while scoped in.
• A scoped and suppressed version appears as George Clooney's main weapon in The American.
• A scoped version appears as the "Hunting Rifle" in Left 4 Dead and its sequel, treated closer to a battle rifle-caliber weapon like the M14. In the former it's the Sniper Rifle of choice, in the latter it's the "Tier 1" alternative to the MSG 90 A 1 (the proper "Sniper Rifle"), with better accuracy on the move and a faster reload in exchange for less ammo than the Sniper Rifle, both per magazine (15 vs. 30) and in reserve (150 vs. 180).
• The Morita Mk I rifles in Starship Troopers are based on Mini-14s in Muzzelite MZ 14 bullpup stocks. They also have an under-barrel Ithaca 37 shotgun attachment that packs more heat with one or two shots than a five-person squad unloading their mags on a bug. Private Watkins has a scoped variant, which the Lieutenant Rasczak borrows to Mercy Kill their RTO, and a shorter carbine variant without the underbarrel shotgun also shows up a few times in the hands of pilots and NC Os like Rasczak.
• The Mini Thirty shows up in Max Payne 3, with a folding stock and the option of a scope and a Laser Sight. By default it has a 10-round magazine, but the golden variant gives it an AK-sized 20-round mag.
• Appears in the "Breakout" level of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, with a five-round magazine offset by incredible accuracy and power. Sadly, it doesn't reappear for the spike in difficulty after that level.
• Guards at the bank in the Panama level of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory use the AC-556.
• Both the Mini-14 and Mini Thirty show up in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, the former with an aftermarket chassis and an Aimpoint Comp M 2 red dot sight as the "Copperhead SR7", the latter with the regular stock given a camo paint scheme and an ACOG as the "Mettler M-30".
• The M590 assault rifle in Space: Above and Beyond was a Mini-14 in a custom shell.
• Cutscenes in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun also make use of the same M590 props as the more common model for GDI's version of the M16 Mk. II pulse rifle (the rarer one being the M 41 A from Aliens).
• The Mini-14 quickly gained popularity as one of the best guns in Player Unknowns Battlegrounds early in its release... until it got Nerfed.
• Available in Insurgency for the Security team's Rifleman, Recon and Designated Marksman. Modeled after the Mini-14 GB and using 20-round magazines, it was initially only capable of semi-auto fire, though later on it was renamed to the AC-556 and given additional full- and burst-fire modes, though still missing the select-fire switch.
• The "Rifle" of Condemned: Criminal Origins is an AC-556 minus the select-fire capacity, fitted with 20-round magazines that only hold 10 rounds, each shot having incredible power behind it.
• In the Line of Duty: The FBI Murders is a made-for-TV movie of the 1986 Dade gunfight between two bank robbers and eight FBI agents, leaving both robbers and two agents dead. In the movie, criminal Michael Platt is depicted as using an AC-556K in full-auto with extended 40-round magazines. This is a dramatization of the actual event: the real life Platt used a standard semi-auto only Ruger Mini-14 with a folding stock and he had no extended mags on him.
• An early-game weapon in SYNTHETIK Arena, also available in Legion Rising if the Arena Premium Upgrade DLC is installed.
• The "Vendetta" in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is a Mini-14 in all but name, with a synthetic stock (including a stock that's folded by default) and a large scope attached to classify it as a sniper rifle, added during the Operation Spectre Rising event. It also gets a unique Operator Mod, a bipod which lets you fire it in full-auto as long as you're prone.
• Forgotten Weapons has done a few videos on the Mini-14 and variants, including one showing off the normal version and discussing measures taken to reduce costs over the M14, another discussing the differences on the AC-556, and one taking the AC-556 out to the range.

Sharps rifle

"Ah-ha. The legendary Sharps."

— Elliot Marston, Quigley Down Under

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/images_86.jpegThe .52 Sharps series of rifles was one of the most prolific rifle types of the 1800s, and arguably the most popular rifle in use in the Wild West before the invention of lever-action guns like the Henry repeater. The Sharps rifle is a breech-loading falling-block rifle with a single cartridge capacity; at first it used paper cartridges, but later versions used brass. First developed in the late 1840s, the Sharps rifle saw a long career in a number of roles. The military rifle was the weapon of choice for U.S. Sharpshooter regiments in the American Civil War and the carbine version was extremely popular on both sides of the conflict.^note The popular story that the term "sharpshooter" came from snipers' preference for the Sharps rifle is an urban legend; the term had already been in use for several decades before the rifle was invented. Meanwhile, the civilian versions gained a reputation as being powerful and accurate hunting rifles, with some going so far as to say that the Sharps rifle was the cause of the near-extinction of the North American bison (hence the nickname "the buffalo gun").^note This is something of an exaggeration; the Sharps was expensive and its bespoke ammunition hard to come by on the frontier. The bulk of the bison slaughtered were dropped with cheaper Remingtons and Springfields firing Army-standard .45-70. The Sharps rifle is thus an iconic firearm of the Old West, though these days somewhat overshadowed by the later Winchester Lever-Action rifle and Colt Single Action Army revolver.

• Cool Accessory: During the Civil War, the Sharps Rifle Company developed a version with a coffee grinder in the stock for grinding coffee in the field. However, these were not produced for very long and are nowadays extremely rare and valuable.

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• The Sharps 1863 Carbine shows up several times in Dances with Wolves.
• A Sharps 1874 is used by The Man With No Name to shoot the rope Tuco is hanging from in the graveyard in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It travels back in time about a decade or so to get in his hands.
• One of the most popularly-depicted of the Sharps rifles is the 1874 Long Range. It appears in several movies, including Quigley Down Under, Legends of the Fall, Up and Wyatt Earp. It also appeared in the television series Lonesome Dove and two video games, GUN and Red Dead Redemption. The "Quigley" rifle was provided by Ace Custom manufacturer Shiloh Sharps, who offers modern-day hand built variants for about $3000.
• In Sons of Guns, Will starts getting a bit giddy when someone brings in a Sharps Carbine with a coffee grinder stock. It turns out to be a far-less valuable reproduction.
• The Sharps 1874 Cavalry rifle shows up in both the original True Grit and the remake as the Weapon Of Choice for Le Beouf. He displays an uncanny accuracy with it throughout both films.
• Appears in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood as the "Heavy Rifle."
• A Sharps 1874 can be used in Gun as the first of the game's two Sniper Rifles. Clay gives it to Colton to fend off Macgruder's assault on the rebel HQ.
• The Sharps is often featured in Tex Willer, usually referred as the Buffalo Gun and in the hands of buffalo hunters or bandits that prefer the longer range and/or greater power to a Winchester's rate of fire. In one of its most memorable appearances, a sniper was using it to fight Tex from beyond the range of our hero's Winchester, only for Tex to apply Real Life sniper doctrine and shoot the sniper from the limit of the Sharp's range by shooting above him.
• One of the top-tier weapons in Fistful of Frags. It is the only weapon in the game to feature a scope and almost always kills in one hit.

SKS

Millions of SKS rifles were produced originally for the Soviet Army in 1945 and in China as the Type 56. The SKS is a popular rifle with civilian shooters, and can still be found in a number of arsenals around the world. A number of aftermarket upgrades are available for the SKS.

—Battlelog Description, Battlefield 3

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/images_1_1.jpegThe Samozaryadny Karabin sistemy Simonova (Simonov Self-loading Carbine), or SKS, was designed and fielded in the last days of World War II. Firing the intermediate 7.62x39mm round (which is known for being the same caliber used by the more famous AK-47), it was designed to bridge the gap between high-powered long-range rifles and short-ranged submachine guns. It was soon replaced by AK pattern weapons and ultimately forgotten in the Soviet Union. But it went on to have a long career in Red China, North Korea, North Vietnam, many Eastern Bloc and Soviet-friendly nations, and even non-aligned states such as Yugoslavia. The SKS is still quite a popular gun around the world today. Visually, it is very similar to the SVT-40 (actually based on a down-scaled version of the PTRS anti-tank rifle), although not quite as pretty, a good bit more robust (slightly heavier), and 8 inches shorter. The SKS features a fixed magazine with a capacity of 10 rounds which can be filled either by clips, or one at a time. The SKS is slightly more powerful and accurate than the AK due to its longer barrel and better sights.^note This is the reason why the PLA in particular loved the rifle, fielding them as designated marksmen rifles alongside the Type 56 until they copied the Soviet SVD. Even then, the assault rifle that replaced both the Type 56 and the SKS, the Type 81, still mostly used an SKS action with only ergonomics and rotating bolt inspired by the AK. Most have folding bayonets, or at least originally did; some (especially from China) had the bayonet removed prior to import.

When the Communist Bloc fell, all of a sudden, it was suddenly available for very cheap with crates of Soviet and Chinese ammunition (Soviet variants qualified for "Curio and Relic" status, as do Yugoslav ones,^note most of which have an attachment for firing rifle grenades via blank ammo, which is mostly useless since grenades are illegal but which has spawned a popular golf ball launcher attachment along with the ultra-rare East German^note Most of which are reputed to currently be in a warehouse in Croatia, of all places., North Korean and Vietnamese versions, which bypassed some restrictions on account of being brought home as war trophies), and the fixed magazine meant that they were not at all affected under the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 (which when it came to rifles only dealt with those with a detachable magazine), and a large number of people found that the ballistics matched up nicely with those of the .30-30 Winchester 1894 (the "poor man's deer rifle" of the previous century). Frequently susceptible to being "bubba'd" with optical sights (Scoped SKS'es served as urban marksmen rifles in the Bosnian War, but are lackadaisical beyond that role), "tactical" accessories (or "tacticool", as some disparagingly call them) like detachable magazines, and camo paint. Now it's a favorite of both hunters, as well as mall ninjas on too low a budget for an AR-15. It is also a moderately popular choice of home defense weapon, being easy to use, easy to bring to bear, and firing a relatively more powerful round than handguns, shotgun pellets, and the AR-15 (and a round that's readily available at a low price).

The popularity of the SKS in the United States started to fall off in the mid-2010s due to the supply of military surplus rifles drying up, not helped by continued firearms import restrictions against both China (in place since early 1989, in response to several mass shooting incidents that involved Norinco Type 56 rifles) and Russia (enacted in 2014 in response to the Crimea annexation), which have driven up prices and forced domestic importers to turn to other sources such as the Balkans just to find more rifles to sell. Another important factor is the flooding of the market with new AR-15^note Two things have contributed to this: Development and spread of new manufacturing techniques in America have driven down the costs of polymer construction (specifically, 3D printing), and continuous fears of an "assault weapons" ban that have been repeatedly proposed by various U.S. politicians after mass shootings became more scrutinized and sensationalized (though not necessarily more frequent compared to previous decades) in The New '10s have caused constant panic buying of AR-15s by consumers who fear they may no longer be able to get one in the future. These have resulted in an explosion of supply in the AR-15 market as many arms manufacturers have rolled out variants of said rifle and AK variants for low prices. On the other hand, the SKS can still be found for cheap in Canada, which never enacted import restrictions against China and is thus still flush with Chinese surplus rifles that sell routinely in the $200-300 CAD range.

• Cool Action: One of the last rifles designed to feed from stripper clips, thus it is designed so that the chamber and the open end of the magazine are clearly visible and reachable when it locks open on empty. If the operator needs to reload with a partial magazine, he would pull the magazine latch allowing it to swing open and drop all the cartridges, close it, and pull the bolt back. Having a dump pouch for those falling cartridges and then being able to be loaded with said loose cartridges one by one makes it ideal for ammo-shortage scenarios. Also helped when the Chinese issued low profile chest-rigs that carry 200 rounds of ammo on stripper clips in 10 pouches; you could theoretically wear two to three of them depending on your shoulder strength for a total of four- to six-hundred rounds on your chest! This can be achieved because stripper clips are lighter than stamped metal magazines. The Czechoslovakian VZ. 58 assault rifle can also be fed via stripper clips, but lacks the capacity to quickly unload the cartridges in the magazine into a dump pouch in favor of going for detachable proprietary magazines (AK mags won't fit).

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• Rebels in Tropic Thunder.
• NVA forces in We Were Soldiers, Born on the Fourth of July, and many more movies set in Vietnam (Truth in Television, as the design was exported to nearly all Communist nations).
• Afghan villagers in Rambo III.
• A very good long-range rifle in 7.62 High Calibre, including permanently attached bayonet. In keeping with the Gun Porn styling, you can also get the Type 63 and Type 84 carbines (which use detachable AK magazines, a godsend in a game with no stripper clips for reloads) and the Zastava LK M59/66, which is unique among SKS clones in being capable of fitting a sniper scope.
• Several variants of the SKS have been seen in the Battlefield series:
  • In Battlefield: Vietnam, the Type-56 Carbine appears as the standard NVA or Viet Cong rifle, utilizing the stripper clip method of reloading.
  • The popular Battlefield 2 Game Mod Project Reality has the SKS in the hands of the Iraqi Insurgents, Taliban and Chechen Militia forces.
  • The Yugoslavian M59/66 (based on the appearance of the front sight and default muzzle device) appears in Battlefield 3's multiplayer mode as a mid-range sniper rifle, the first unlockable semi-auto option for the Recon class after the starting Mk 11 and SVD and the first unlockable SV-98, equipped with just about every single one of the aforementioned "bubba" accessories. Perhaps nodding to reality, it's better for close- to mid-range combat than longer ranges with high close-range damage and a decent fire-rate cap allowing it to compete with assault rifles and carbines. Battlefield 4 features the same weapon again, this time as an all-class DMR, the third one after the RFB and Mk 11.
• Featured in Cruelty Squad as the ZKZ Transactional Rifle. Notably, its firepower scales with the value of the player's stock market holdings, and having enough money invested properly allows it to gib anything with one shot.
• Appears in the DayZ standalone. It is one of the better non-modern military weapons, able to mount a medium range PU scope and can kill in 1-2 hits anywhere on the body. Arguably its most useful feature is the fact that it does not need a magazine to fully load it.
• A favored weapon of Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, this one modified with a large scope and an extra block of wood under the forestock to accommodate her mechanical left arm.
• In a rare instance of the rifle appearing during WWII, Men of War features an early model of the SKS in the hands of Soviet Red Guardsmen and Spetznaz troops. Truth in Television, as the rifle was developed in 1944 and had documented field-tests during the Soviet's last push into Germany.^note Any appearance of the rifle in skirmish scenarios before 1944 however should be considered slightly anachronistic.
• Nicknamed the "Simonov carbine" in The Things They Carried as one of the weapons that O'Brien's platoon used in combat, possibly captured or looted from dead Viet Cong.
• Used by NKVD troops in their attempt to execute Mr. Piver in Episode 34 of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
• In Command & Conquer: Generals, Chinese "Red Guards" use the Type 56 carbine, which is a licensed Chinese copy of the SKS, with a distinct bayonet attached. China is the only faction whose basic infantry units use semi-automatic rifles to emphasize precision fire, in contrast to their USA and GLA counterparts who use fully automatic rifles; the damage from a Red Guard's shot is equivalent to a Ranger or Rebel's automatic burst.
• In the light novel of Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Pitohui uses an SKS to make her promise to meet LLENN in real life if she can beat her. The anime changed it to an AK rifle.
• Usable by the NVA and Viet Cong in Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. It includes its famous foldable bayonet, which you can use.
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) features it as of its Season 3 update, using detachable magazines and by default appearing as the Zastava M59/66 with a furniture similar to the Tapco Intrafuse Stock System, albeit with a unique folding skeleton stock; though the original wood body is available as well. Strangely, this SKS uses Western-style suppressors as opposed to PBS series suppressors used by many Russian firearms.
• Appears as a 2-star Rifle in Girls' Frontline, a member of Makarov's team in chapter 3's night battle maps, often considered a Butt-Monkey due to an Ascended Glitch where the animation for training a T-Doll's skill would randomly have her show up in place of the training dummies and promptly get shot over and over again by the training Doll.
• The SKS-D appears in Insurgency, feeding from detachable 20-round magazines and has a chopped barrel. It costs 1 supply point and is available for the Insurgent Fighter, Marksman, Scout, Sharpshooter, and Sniper as a counterpart to the Security AC-556.
  • It returns in Insurgency: Sandstorm basically unchanged. It costs 2 points and is available for the Insurgent Advisor with a proper rail mount for optical sights and has a full-length barrel with (unusable) bayonet. It can be fitted with AKM 30-round mags and 50-round drums.
• Appears in Far Cry 6, where it is classified as an assault rifle, and is one of the last ones available at Rank 4.

Spencer repeating rifle

Handling this replica or a replica even today, you can sense the careful smithing as soon as you pick it up. It has weight to it, and when you move the trigger guard down, the smooth action of the metal components, all expertly fitted, reminds you of a fine watch.

—Chris Kyle, American Gun

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/unknown_029.jpegOne of the first repeating rifles, the Spencer was originally designed in 1860 as an infantry weapon for the US Army, where it saw some use by Union troops in the Civil War (but was still mostly outnumbered by the cheaper single shot muskets the Army already had) but it saw new life in the old west, predating and being cheaper than the more famous Winchester lever-action rifles. Chambered in .56 Spencer rimfire, the gun was unique in that the hammer had to be cocked manually between shots, as the lever action didn't operate the hammer like the Winchesters or Henry rifles did. Nevertheless, the rifle was well-machined and fitted, reliable under combat conditions and skilled users could maintain a rate of 14-20 rounds per minute, which gave Union sharpshooters a strong advantage when attacking Confederates armed with slower muskets.

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• Morgan Freeman's gun in Unforgiven, later used by Clint Eastwood in the climax.
• This is the first rifle you receive in both Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2, given to you by Bonnie and Dutch respectively. Also shows up in the earlier Red Dead Revolver as the "Owl Rifle". The sequel actually shows off the weapon's unique tube magazine that in its stock, by way of being reloaded with a speedloader-like device that was normally issued with the weapon.
• Used by Christian Bale in 3:10 to Yuma (2007).
• The 1860 carbine shows up in The Magnificent Seven (2016) in the hands of one of the farmers during rifle training, as well as being used by a militiaman during the town's defense.
• Usable in Fistful of Frags as a weapon bought from mid-tier red chests. It has a lower Rate of Fire, reload speed, and magazine size than the similarly-tiered Yellowboy Winchester, but in exchange has nearly as much power as the single-shot Smith Carbine available as a starter weapon.

Winchester lever-action rifle

“There is but one answer to be made to the dynamite bomb and that can best be made by the Winchester rifle."

—Theodore Roosevelt

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/win1873.jpegThe Winchester is the quintessential lever-action rifle seen in numerous westerns. In real life, the unique design was for its main utility as a horseback gun; the shorter barrel and the repeating lever made it easier for horseback soldiers to fire off of a speeding horse. While The Wild West is long gone and Winchester themselves no longer manufacture the rifles, the Winchester rifle and its lever-action cousins are still used today for hunting.

The original Winchester rifle, now known as the Model 1866, was a direct evolution of the Henry repeating rifle. The most notable difference from the Henry was the addition of the loading gate on the receiver, allowing the Winchester to use a forestock and closed tube magazine. The 1866 proved to be a popular rifle, but Winchester found their true success with the Model 1873, AKA "The Gun That Won the West", which was chambered in a number of popular handgun rounds of the time such as .44-40. The 1876 and 1886 models were built with stronger actions and chambered for heavy rounds compared to the pistol calibers of earlier models. The 1873 received a direct successor in the Model 1892, which used the stronger action of the 1886 as well as being significantly lighter than the 1873. The Model 1894 is the American deer rifle, most often chambered for the .30-30 round, and has sold over seven million units by 2006. The obscure 1895 model featured a box magazine that allowed the usage of pointed "spitzer" rounds, which were unsafe to use in the tube magazines of prior models. While a commercial failure in America upon release, Imperial Russia ordered a large number of 1895's in the outbreak of World War I, where it proved more reliable and easy to operate than the Mosin-Nagant, although it was never fully adopted. The 1895 is also notable for being the "Medicine Gun" of Theodore Roosevelt.

In movies, the model in question will almost always be the Model 1892 carbine, due to it having been in production during The Golden Age of Hollywood and looking similar enough to stand in for its predecessors, as well as the ubiquity of the "Five-in-One" blank cartridge that could be chambered and fired in three different calibers of revolver (.38-40 Winchester, .44-40 Winchester and .45 Colt) and two calibers of lever-action rifles (.38-40 and .44-40; rifles chambered in .45 Colt wouldn't exist until decades later). For modern plastic versions of the Five-in-One blank, it's an Artifact Title, with .44 Special or Magnum revolvers and rifles and .410 shotguns make it closer to ten-in-one nowadays. A Model 1866 will often have the fore-stock removed and do double duty as a Civil War-era Henry rifle, as until recent reproductions came onto the scene the "Yellow Boy" Winchester was much more readily available.

Another popular variant of the Winchester Lever-Actions is the 6-shot cut-down rifle/pistol called the "Mare's Leg".◊As described it is a shorter version of a Winchester lever-action rifle and in a way they are more or less Hand Cannons.

• Cool Action: As with the Winchester 1887 shotgun, spin-cocking it is very common in fiction. Don't Try This at Home for the same reasons as with the 1887 — you will break your fingers.

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• On the subject of trivia not entirely related to the weapon: Computer hard disks were referred to as "Winchesters" in the 1970s and 1980s. The original IBM designation for their first hard disk drive was 30-30, which is the same as the .30-30 Winchester round developed for the 1894. The name still persists in several programming languages for a hard disk drive.
• Name a Western, any Western.
• Lord Bowler in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. uses a sawn-off version commonly called a "Mare's Leg," identical to the one used in Wanted: Dead or Alive.
  • Zoe in Firefly uses one (the same prop gun as in "Brisco") - IN SPACE!.
• In For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Clint Eastwood's character carries a "Hollywood Henry" (a 1866 Winchester modified as mentioned above).
• Namegiver of and found in a bar in Shaun of the Dead.
• Tom Selleck uses a rarely seen Model 1876 Centennial .45-60 with a military-style handguard as his Weapon Of Choice in Crossfire Trail
• Vincent can use three Winchester rifles in Final Fantasy VII. In addition to a standard Winchester Model 1894, he has access to a "Mare's Leg" version called the "Shortbarrel", and the "Sniper CR" which is simply the Shortbarrel with a sniper scope attached.
• Harry Dresden carries one on the cover of Cold Days.
• Shows up in Fallout: New Vegas as the "Cowboy Repeater", rechambered for .357 Magnum, making it a valuable early-game long arm so long as you didn't waste your stock of .357 trying to fire it from the strangely-useless Ruger Blackhawk.
• The Model 1894 appears in Killing Floor as the "Lever-Action Rifle", where it is incredibly cheap, very useful with its high power per-shot (about equivalent to the Commando's SCAR-H), easy to aim at short- to mid-range (the model uses a rear-tang peep sight), and is one of the few weapons that can be topped up quickly and easily. As of the Sharpshooter update it's available in Killing Floor 2 as well, using the standard sights and with an increased capacity of 12 rounds, but otherwise having similar characteristics. The 2017 Summer Sideshow added the similar Mossberg 464 SPX Centerfire, a modernized .30-30 lever-action rifle that can fit AR-15 stocks and sights, fitted with a red dot scope and having higher power than the Winchester to act as an alternative Tier 2 weapon for the Sharpshooter.
• Added in the Blue Sun mod for 7.62 High Caliber. The Winchester 1892 is available in three different sizes (full size rifle, carbine, and Mare's Leg pistol) and each can be had in .45 Long Colt, .44 Magnum, or .357 Magnum.
• The Model 1873 is added as a sniper rifle to PAYDAY 2 with "The Butcher's Western Pack" DLC, as the "Repeater 1874". Owing to being a pistol-caliber rifle, it has the lowest damage per shot of the sniper rifles (tied with the "Rattlesnake" and the semi-auto snipers), but it's still damaging enough to one-shot most enemies below Very Hard difficulty (and beyond with headshots, naturally) with higher ammo counts than the others (15 rounds in the mag, 45 total), and being a sniper rifle it still punches through thin materials and shields. It's one of only three sniper rifles that can accept iron sights instead of a scope or other sight (the others being the Mosin-Nagant, the Winchester Model 70, and the SVD), the only one to start with iron sights by default, and the only one to not accept the wide variety of other sights the other sniper rifles get (its only scope option is a unique A5 scope).
• Appears in the Louisiana chapters of BloodRayne as the "Winkesler Rifle."
• The Winchester Models 1866 and 1873 are very common sight in Westworld. Notably, outlaw Hector Escaton carries a "Mare's Leg" variant.
• Doc wields a Model 1866 "Yellow Boy" in Back to the Future Part III modified with a large loop lever and a massive scope.
• The "Mare's Leg" variant is used by the protagonist in Impasse.
• Skull Face of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain uses a Mare's Leg as his personal sidearm. It's about the only weapon that appears in the game that can't be developed by the player and is only usable by Snake in a cutscene.
• Fitting for his Wild West theme, a Model 1866 is the main weapon of Chief in Wonder Woman (2017). Looking closely, it has brass studs hammered into the stock, which was a real practice done by Native American warriors, who enjoyed customizing their rifles with beautiful and elaborate decorations.
• Due the Western setting, the rifle is ubiquitous in Tex Willer. The title character and his friends are notable for specifically using different munitions for their rifles and their revolvers, in spite of one of the Winchester-Colt combo selling points being the ability to have them in the same chambering.
• The Model 1892 is Hijikata Toshizou's firearm in Golden Kamuy.
• A Model 1895 is usable in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 as a usable weapon in both Blackout and zombies as the Essex Model 07. In both modes, however, it's severely lacking compared to other weapons and should only be used early on when nothing better is available, which is often not the case.
• Father Grigori's weapon of choice during your stay in Ravenholm in Half-Life 2 is a Winchester 1886 rifle he named "Annabelle". It's unusable to the player by normal means, but by cheating you can acquire it. It behaves like a double rifle, uses Magnum rounds, and shares the view model of the SPAS-12 as a placeholder.
• Kinzo Ushiromiya owns several Model 1894s in Umineko: When They Cry, sawed down into "Mare's Leg" rifles, which are borrowed by the other members of the family to defend themselves. The events of the third Episode result in a Bad Future where Eva apparently used one to murder the rest of the family.
• The Model 1894 is used by Kasumi in Persona 5 Royal.