WINCHESTER MODEL 1885: John Moses Browning was a
firearms designer who became known for guns that were innovative,
popular, and timeless. His first effort, developed in obscurity in 1878
at the age of 23, was a falling-block single-shot rifle that he tried
to manufacture by hand with his brother in a workshop in Ogden,
Utah. That might have been the end of a short story, except that
Browning’s work caught the eye of the Winchester Repeating Arms
Company in general and Thomas G Bennett in particular. Bennett,
the company’s vice-president and general manager, traveled to
Ogden and negotiated the purchase of the single-shot design. He
also acquired a prototype of what would become the Model 1886
lever-action. The Winchester–Browning relationship lasted two
decades and produced a wide variety of firearms, including the
Model 1887 and Model 1897 pump shotgun, the falling-block singleshot
Model 1885, and the lever-action Model 1886, Model 1892,
Model 1894, Model 1895 rifles as well as the long recoil operated
semi-automatic Remington Model 8; but it all began with that
humble falling-block single-shot rifle.
BROWNING AUTO-5: At age 13, John Moses Browning made his
first firearm. He was awarded number one of more than one hundred
patents at age 24. He died of heart failure at his workbench on
November 26, 1926, while working on a self-loading pistol design that
would become known as the Browning Hi-Power, a firearm appreciated
world-wide by sportsmen, gun collectors, the military, and law
enforcement agencies. But it was the Auto-5, the first mass-produced
semi-automatic shotgun, that transformed the successful designer into
a manufacturer. Browning had initially offered what he’d deemed his
“best achievement” to Winchester with whom he’d had a successful
and productive relationship. But the two could not come up with an
agreement. Browning eventually produced the new design himself. It
became the second best-selling auto-loading shotgun in US history,
just behind the Remington 1100.
REMINGTON 1100: American gun owners rarely change their mind
overnight when a new model comes along, but that’s essentially what
happened when Remington came out with the 1100,
64 The TRUMP RALLY Publication