Remington Model 700 The Remington Model 700. Now Ruger makes its own variants of the 10/22, and if you care to pay a considerable amount of money, any number of gunsmiths will build you something really fancy. Then someone discovered that if you put a match barrel on one, and replaced the factory trigger with a good one, the 10/22 would really shoot. A member of the class of 1964, the 10/22 began simply as a nicely designed semiauto rimfire with a magazine that actually fed and an attractive price. 22 rimfire rifle in the world and, along with the AR-15, the most cobbled-on. Will it replace the bolt action as the sporting rifle of the future? I would not bet against it. Few rifles are as highly developed or offer as many options for use. It is a cult gun, dearly loved and furiously defended by its admirers. Right now, the AR is a hugely important part of the firearms industry. And a properly tuned AR with a good barrel and a match trigger will shoot just as well as nearly any bolt action. All the cartridges designed for it are small, and the gas operation and recoil-buffer spring reduce kick even further. It’s easier to pick one up and hit with it than it is with anything else that I know of. It is ergonomically superior to traditional rifles. You can tear it down and put it back together in a different form. All at once, it seemed, younger shooters discovered that the black gun had advantages found nowhere else. Brought on the civilian market in 1965, the AR-15 was virtually ignored until well into the 21st century, but then it caught on with a rush and a roar. It, and its carbine successor, the M4, is still very much on active duty. Yet it has gone on, in highly modified form, to be our longest-serving infantry rifle. NRA Museums/Ĭan a firearm have a stranger history than this one? The M16 (the military version of the AR) was issued as our main infantry rifle in 1966, but its debut was botched to a degree unequaled in the history of military ordnance. In any event, enjoy, and when you e-mail to inform us we’re a couple of ignorant swine, check your spelling and punctuation. Fox would teach his grandmother to suck eggs. Anyone who would tell you that a Weatherby Mark V is “greater” than an A.H. It’s simply the top 50 choices in no kind of order at all. This list is not compiled in order of greatness. Other factors: longevity (the Mosin-Nagant), sheer excellence (the Purdey self-opener), and general-horribleness-but-still-works-like-a-son-of-a-bitch (the Mossberg 500).
The Remington Nylon 66 made synthetic stocks not only acceptable but desirable, and the Smith & Wesson Model 29 altered our concept of what a handgun could do. There are a number of ways a gun could make this list: The first was to change the course of firearms design.