American Western Arms Rifles
Kim du Toit
December 30, 2002
12:00 AM CDT
Every so often, I stumble across a "new" gun (ie. I’ve never heard about it or the company before), and have to spend a little time learning about both.
A while back, I looked at "cowboy"-type revolvers which are copies of the original Colt and Remington models, made by Uberti and Cimarron.
Then I stumbled across American Western Arms, who are making a name for themselves in the Cowboy Action Shooting world with their honest and reliable copies of the Colt First Generation Single Action Army (SAA) models.
All that said, I’m not going to look at the revolvers, because I can’t find any decent pictures of them. [AWA people, hint hint] Instead, I’m going to look at their rifles, which look for all the world like the Winchester ‘94 lever-action, except for the fact that they’re pump-action. The rifles come in two configurations, the 24" barrel Rifle:
and the 20" barrel Carbine:
Both are available either with a round barrel, or the "historically-correct" octagonal barrel.
I have to say that I like the look of these rifles, which come chambered for the usual "cowboy" loads: .38 Special, .38-40, .32-20, .44-40 and .45 Colt. Of course, that’s all I can say: the manufacturer claims that the release date is "November 2002", so I haven’t been able to test them out yet.
But a "short-throw" pump rifle in .45 Colt or .44-40? Yowzer. That means you can pop them off almost at semi-auto rate.
The suggested list price is just under $900, which means that they’ll sell for about $700.
That lil’ Carbine looks yummy.
Update: Several Alert Readers have pointed out that the AWA rifles are based on the old Colt Lightning—many thanks for the reminder.
Gratuitous Gun Pics
