The Adler _ What the Judge Roy Bean?

Judge Roy Bean was an eccentric US saloon keeper & law man who died in 1903. His name was used for decades in the phrase "What the Judge Roy Bean?" as an exclamation instead of using the words "What the hell?"

In his lifetime many new things came along, new railroads, automobiles and all manner of innovations.
Why in the year he died Harley Davidson began with Cadillac the year before

Also in 1903...
Edward Binney and Harold Smith co-invent crayons.

Bottle-making machinery invented by Michael J. Owens.

The Wright brothers invent the first gas motored and manned airplane.

Mary Anderson invents windshield wipers.

William Coolidge invents ductile tungsten used in lightbulbs

But the lever action rifle was pretty old by the time Judge Bean left this world. In fact the first ever lever action is thought to be Colt's 1st & 2nd Model Ring Lever rifles. Both were cap & ball rifles produced by Patent Arms Mfg. Co. in New Jersey between 1837 and 1841.

 

The first truly successful lever action 12 Gauge shotgun was the Winchester Model 1887 which had been around 16 years when Judge Bean died. So the earliest 12 gauge lever action shot gun is celebrating its 129th birthday this year. Lever Action Rifles are celebrating their 179th birthday this year.

 

IT IS THEREFORE NOT NEW TECHNOLOGY.

 

Its not rapid fire, all firearms fire only as rapid as the operator can fire and even then there are limitations. Some firearms cannot fire as fast as others, some operators cannot fire fast as others and some can't hit a barn door with their first shot let alone the less accurate follow up shots. You can access the Youtube video where 2 experienced shooters fired 10 rounds. One used an old style double barrel shot gun, the other a 5 shot Adler lever action. They claimed the double barrel won, maybe but for sure, there was pretty well nothing in it. Trouble is, you don't have a desk top with the 10 rounds sitting there when you're hunting pigs in the brush, on foot.
Aside from that lever action rifles (and shotguns), pump action rifles (and shotguns) and bolt action rifles are "repeaters". If the Adler is "Rapid Fire" then so is every firearm except single shot firearms and double barrel shotguns. Fact is the only "Rapid Fire" type firearm are sub-machine guns & full machine guns.

 

IT THEREFORE CAN'T BE CLASSIFIED AS RAPID FIRE.

Its never been involved in a mass shooting. NEVER. No cited recordings of a lever action being used in gun crime. They're not the most reliable gun, lots of moving parts, they didn't take long before they were superseded by pump action shot guns and semi automatics. They have been around for ages, but not been very popular at all in recent times. You cannot easily fire them in the prone position because the gun has to be raised to cycle the lever to eject the spent round and cycle in the next round. Or you have to roll onto one side & lever it. Or lift up if you're leaning on a roof of a ute spotlighting. They, like lever action rifles, come into their own as a "Scrub Gun" or "Brush Gun" where a hunter is on foot and is at close quarters with a pig or dog and several shots are needed.

 

IT IS THEREFORE UNABLE TO BE CALLED THE "WORLD'S MOST LETHAL SHOTGUN" AS ONE PRESS OUTLET FOOL PUT IT.

 

How did the Adler get so popular? Simple...simple and sad really.

Nioa is a very large importer of firearms and only sells wholesale. It helped designed the firearm for the Australian market because its very difficult for shooters in some states to get the pump action (invented in 1897) and semi auto shotgun (invented in 1898). There were 7+1 lever action shotguns already available & in circulation in Australia but they've earned their reputation as being less than reliable and prone to breaking parts that are hard to get. They had become almost a curio or oddity. Some of the brands that can have up to 10 round magazines are Winchester, Chiappa, Norinco, Emerald, IAC & others, although most are either 5 shot or 8 shot. So they're here, been here a long time & available under Cat A quite legally. Lever action shotguns weren't hugely popular, that is until the Adler showed up. To promote it Nioa did a Youtube video where they torture tested 2 slightly different Adler shotguns (different barrel lengths), both 7+1 firearms. How do you torture test them? By firing 5000 shots through both of them as quickly as possible. If they were going to fail, this would show where it would and how badly it would be.

They didn't fail.

 

The video then quickly went viral amongst shooters who quickly realised they could go pig hunting on foot without dogs and knives which is very dangerous. Its on foot in the bush (where a ute can't go) that this firearm, like any lever action, comes into its own as a hunting firearm. Except now there was a reliable 12 gauge to choose from. Some claim they're not that great and there other new brands in Australia now, like Pardus & others but the hype built fast. Adler orders started flooding in. All long before they'd hit full production past the first 2 they torture tested.

 

Then politics entered, the anti-gun lobby cranked up and Tony Abbott installed an Importation Ban,  due to still unknown fears about the firearm and supposedly because a shot gun was used in the Lindt Café siege. However, the Lindt Café siege had a gunman with no firearms licence and the firearm was an illegally modified pump action illegally bought on the black market not a lever action.

So now lawful gun owners can legally own & licence a 12 gauge 7+1 lever action shotgun (still can) they just cannot get a new one because although they're legal, they cannot be imported.

Yes its a bizarre situation where a licenced firearm owner can legally purchase a 5 shot Adler, then go straight around to the gun smith, get it converted to a 7 shot and not be breaking the law. Still under Cat A.
Tony Abbott's import ban was to stay in place until the states all agreed to re-classify it from the category that John Howard's firearms review put the 7 Shot Lever Action Shotgun in back in 1996.

And the advantage of the firearm is not a lot. In fact the huge groundswell of desire for a 7+1 may be mainly due to the threat of it being taken away. For me, if I were pig shooting a lever action rifle or shotgun is fine but then I'm not interested in hunting pigs. If I had a use for one & had a fondness for old western style firearms then maybe. Otherwise no, most of the ban hype actually increased desire and orders.

The ban, which had a sunset clause before Tony Abbott was dumped as PM, actually helped sell more Adlers than Nioa could have ever done with a normal advertising campaign. In fact when the political flares went up, Nioa removed their YouTube Videos straight away but sale orders continued to increase. Not so smart Mr Abbott/Turnbull.

They've been in the community since the late 1800s and never been used in a mass shooting, no not one. They are not the firearm of choice by criminals or terrorists. Short firearms are, but more on that in a minute. The Sydney police worker callously gun down outside a Sydney police station by a radicalised Muslim teenager, he used an illegal Glock semi automatic pistol. That kid also did not have a firearms licence, it came from the black market and its now said to have never been legally sold in Australia but rather it was sold in the USA and smuggled into Australia.
So what is the preferred firearm of the criminals? Hand guns or sawn off shotguns so they can be concealed when carrying. Thing is if you convert an Adler into a sawn off shot gun, it will be a single shot lever action because it has a tube magazine, once shortened, it doesn't work. You can cut the stock off, but it actually makes cycling the lever action more difficult. Criminals & terrorists won't choose a lever action. Its a hunting action these days, has been for well over 60 years.

Malcolm Turnbull, you are at some stage going to have address the cause of the issue and clamp down on the black market gun trade rather than ban guns that aren't new, nor related to crime?

Its been an embarrassing SOVEREIGN OVER REACH by the government and highlights their absence of knowledge on the subject & their reliance on emotional hype devoid of facts, figures or common sense.

And just what part have the media played in this glorious Python-esque cock up of gargantuan proportions? Well they were the first fooled, and they're still running with it.

Port Arthur gets mentioned and its worth remembering that gunman was a deranged psychopath who had trouble discerning reality from fantasy according to his prison mental health worker (a professor no less). He also had no car licence, no gun licence and bought all the illegal guns from the black market. Of his 3 firearms, none were lever action. He used a AR-15 & a L1A1. He did have a shotgun, didn't use it & it wasn't a lever action. 

 

You'd think John Howard would have poured $500 million into address the illegal gun trade, smugglers and serious mental health. Sadly no. There are more votes in fear campaigns, facts are not needed. Mr Howard was also protecting us all from Weapons of Mass Destruction when he sent our country to war in Iraq & turns out there were none there. Perhaps it would have been easier if Saddam's troops and hench men all used Lever Action Shotguns, but no they all used military automatic weapons.

One other point, the reason John Howard's 1996 review put lever actions shotguns in Cat A was pretty simple. You manually cycle a round into a chamber, you pull the trigger and it fire one shot & one shot only. Then you manually cycle the spent round out & manually cycle the next fresh round into the chamber. Its not automatic, its not semi automatic, its not rapid fire. The only firearms that are rapid fire are fully automatic firearms, which most people know as machine guns. Long as you hold the trigger in it keeps firing at a rapid rate. That's what rapid fire is, a full automatic firearm. They are 100% completely banned in Australia for civilian ownership.

Wake up, stop and think seriously for one minute.