by Member-Deleted » 17 Nov 2016, 12:27 pm
In my late teens/early twenties, I was fortunate enough to work in my fathers gun shop in Townsville, North Qld. It was a different world then, with basically no gun laws as such. A drivers licence or form of ID was all that was needed to buy anything from an air rifle to a 460 weatherby. Even then, you could borrow someone elses', as their was no photo ID anyway.
Apart from my collection of Lee Enfields (about 32 from memory, all on racks on open display, not hidden away in a safe), I also amassed a small arsenal of military self loaders. Not big noting myself, but I probably used, fired and handled more self loaders than anyone I know. The roof space in the gunshop was full of boxes of ex miltary hardware, some of which were totally illegal. My father had the dubious good fortune of buying the business from a shoddy character who ended up doing time on fraud charges a couple of years later, but that is another story............
My job was to go through all the boxes, and sort out what was suitable for sale, what could be salvaged for repair, and what could be tossed out. That also meant I got first choice at buying what I found, at cost price. So my collection included M1 Garands and M1 carbines, a H&K 91, Valmets in both Nato calibres (an AK 47 copy made in Finland), Swedish Jungmanns, FN 49's in 30-06 and 8 mm, a pile of AR10's (junk to say the least), AR 15's and AR 180's, a really nice G43 in 8mm, and an STG 44 selective fire in 7.92 Kurz. This was reluctantly handed over to a local collector with the appropriate licence. There were more of course, such as the ruger Mini 14, and the Springfield M1A M14, a host of 22 autoloaders as well, but they were brand new in the display cases. Anyway, I'm sure you get the picture.
I spent lots of time at the range testing them out, as well as pig hunting trips whenever I could, and some interesting things came to light.......while they were a lot of fun at the range, and some were very effective amongst a large group of pigs, for most practical purposes,my bolt actioned rifles were simply better. With self loaders you need to full length resize every round, which you normally lost most of in the long grass while hunting. The mini 14 had a shell catcher, but it was the exception. You also were restricted in your handloads, as they were very selective in bullet shape, and all needed almost full power rounds to operate efficiently. Trying to reduce loads to get better accuracy usually resulted in jams and misfeeds on most of them. I modified my M1 Garand to fire single shot, and did some other work to it, but it was still hard pressed to match my No4. Lee Enfield .
The triggers were all inferior, none of them grouped as well on the range as my "H" barreled Lithgow, and the tendency to waste shots was always present. While I regret giving some of them up, realistically, I don't have a need for a centre fire self loader, and would be hard pressed to justify having a rimfire semi auto as well, although the Ruger 10/22 and the H&K 22 magnum auto were brilliant rifles. Times have changed, society has as well, and I would be uneasy thinking that AR15's were as accessible here as they are in the US. In the hands of the Bona fide collector, or responsible shooter there would not be a problem, but in the wrong hands it would be a different matter.
While the media seems obsessed with lever actioned shotguns (which are junk in my opinion), at least they are leaving other types of firearms alone. Hopefully, no-one in the media will ever cotton on to the fact that some one armed with a Lee Enfield rifle could do an enormous amount of damage, far in excess of those lever actions. 303 ball, 10 shots in 10 seconds, charger clips and spare magazines, a No 5 Jungle Carbine would be a deadly weapon in the wrong hands. Thankfully, its an obsolete gun from last century, so no-one will take it seriously..........