Читать книгу Gun Digest 2011 онлайн

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The unique Carabine Buffalo bolt action over/under 9mm/.22 combination gun.

The various 9mm rimfire shotguns quickly became known as “garden guns” because they were considered ideal for potting small varmints that raided the family garden. In America, they became popular with farmers, who used them to dispatch barn pigeons without blowing hard-to-fix holes in the roof.

A FLOBERT FLOBERT

There is also a firearms design that carries Floberts’ name. My parlor pistol, for example, is a true Flobert in that it has a Flobert action: a single shot with a breechblock that rocks open when the hammer is pulled back. The hammer locks the breech closed at the moment of firing. This arrangement is very similar to the Remington Rolling block action. However, the Flobert design is not as strong and has been made only for low-power cartridges.

Flobert firearms in .22 and .32 caliber rimfire are fairly common in the United States. They rarely have any markings except the word “Belgium” stamped somewhere on the barrel and perhaps the telltale “crown over ELG in an oval” proofmark. Many were low-price imports from Belgium that were sold through Sears-Roebuck and other mail order catalogues in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Prices as low as $1.99 were advertised for these types of guns, most of which were bought by poor farmers who did not have the money to get an American-made gun. When these Floberts survive into the modern era, they are frequently in rough condition. They were, after all, bought as tools and used as such. To make matters worse, this was in the era of black powder cartridges with mercuric primers, a combination that almost invariably led to bore erosion.