Australian Sporting Shooter – August 2023
English | 84 pages | pdf | 43.15 MB
Welcome Australian Sporting Shooter Magazine August 2023 Issue
THE Australian firearms manufacturing industry is going gangbusters. The number of gun makers is expanding, the number of guns they’re making is steadily increasing and there’s growing demand from overseas. Best of all, it’s only going to get better. Lithgow Arms has, of course, been making contemporary sporting rifles in rimfire and centrefire for eight years and the factory is making a bit of a push now to expand its range of rifles and calibres. And on the quiet (you didn’t hear it from me!) there’s a lot more being contemplated by management and engineers. Lithgow is our biggest manufacturer. Second is Southern Cross Small Arms, based in Campbelltown, south-west of Sydney. I went through the factory the other day and saw the huge investment the company has made in tooling up to make its Taipan pump-action rifle, which is also being tweaked to be available as a straight-pull bolt action. In both pump and straight-pull form, it has garnered interest from foreign markets, including the US and NZ.
When I was there, Southern Cross was shipping out 400 rifles a month and not meeting demand. Yes, capacity is being increased. Expect to see a few new calibres to supplement the .223 currently being made. Meanwhile, Lithgow Arms is now putting its actions in Southern Cross TSP-X chassis. Nice to see collaboration between the Aussie factories. In Queensland, Enfield Arms has designed and marketed the Genesis One straight-pull, as tested by Nick in this issue. It’s another Cat B firearm made right here in Australia for our market. Don’t forget companies like Wedgetail, which makes high-end Category D firearms for the professional market.
That began in response to the stupidity of Australian gun regulations, which make it so hard for Cat D shooters to import the guns they need that a local industry was spawned. Turns out there are only so many worn-out SLRs a professional can tolerate before happily spending a few thousand dollars on a brandnew Australian-made ARplatform rifle.
Wedgetail has designed a pump-action rifle for the Cat B market and was aiming to have the MPR308 Model 2 on sale about the time you read this. It’s a high-quality, made-to-order firearm using some of the best components on a homegrown product. There have been rumblings from NIOA, our local international arms conglomerate, about making commercial firearms here, but we’ll have to wait and see. You could have a whole arsenal of Australian-made rifles and isn’t that a wonderful thing?
MICK MATHESON
Editor
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