14 Comments

  1. One of those guns I have wanted for years an FN-49 in 7×57. I have handled one but never shot it. The owner at the time also had at least one MAS-49.

  2. Own one now, FN-49. Venezuelan Sniper version. Nice shooter. But need to remember to turn the valve at the end to semi from single (grenade launcher mode, I’m thinking).

    Thought it was odd they did not disable that feature. What sniper needs to launch rifle grenades?

    Definitely threw me for a loop the first time I shot it (wtf? why won’t it cycle).

    • I think your weapon was probably modified from a standard production item, not custom-built at the factory as a sniper rifle.

      • To tell the truth, I am not sure. All the details were correct on it, in terms of equipment and markings, it is all good.

        7mm, very nice shooter. Manageable recoil.

  3. You wish that NATO had adopted a softer shooting 7mm cartridge instead of 7.62mm? You mean like the 7mm cartridge developed by the British which the rest of NATO wanted but which the Americans refused to accept and insisted on their own 7.62mm? Imagine that!

    To top it off, the 7mm British cartridge had a much better ballistic profile and so outperformed 7.62mm at long range in terms of kinetic energy. That means that it would have been a better machine gun and marksman cartridge as well. Even if NATO still eventually went to something 5.56mm for rifles anyway, we would still have a better machine gun and marksman cartridge today.

    This is probably the biggest “what might have been” decisions in small arms technology in the period since WWII.

  4. I have the Luxembourg 30-06 version. Makes my Garand jealous when I shoot it, but it’s SO nice to shoot. Kind of like how the Garand should/could have been changed, if they had had the time and lack of pressure from a war to allow them to do so. I can imagine the 7 mm version is a sweet shooter as well.

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