The lever-action rifle’s time with us spans three centuries, including all of the 20th, and these arms have experienced a recent resurgence of popularity. At the two major debut sites for new firearms, the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT Show) and the National Rifle Association’s Annual Meeting (NRAAM), we’ve seen a surprising number of new lever-action rifles introduced (or re-introduced). Gun manufacturers don’t spend big bucks to tool up for a new production line unless their intensive market research demonstrates that a whole lot of people want to buy said product.
A Brief History
The most recent introduction is Smith & Wesson’s first lever-action rifle, the Model 1854. The name comes from the year in which Horace Smith and Daniel Baird Wesson purchased Walter Hunt’s 1848 patent, which formed the basis of the Volcanic lever-action pistol that became the first Smith & Wesson handgun. The new S&W is a .44 Magnum carbine, which resembles a 20th-century Marlin far more than a 19th-century Volcanic.
Even before the Volcanic, Colt patented a ring-lever revolving rifle dating back to 1837-1841. Even before that, a lever-action revolver capable of firing six shots in less than six seconds was produced in Italy by Cesar Rosaglio and patented in 1829.
Not until the 1860s did America see the Spencer lever-action rifle that Abraham Lincoln personally tested within walking distance of the White House, astounding observers with his excellent marksmanship, nor the rifles that would define the lever-action from then on. The 1860 design of Benjamin Tyler Henry and Oliver Winchester gave us the shape that comes to mind today when we see the words “lever-action rifle.”
That mold would not be broken until Arthur Savage’s sleek Model of 1899. Built to take higher pressure rounds such as the .300 Savage, the Savage 99 was a connoisseur’s rifle for generations. The mid-20th Century would see other modernizations, such as the Winchester Model 88 in .243, .308, and .358 Winchester, and still later, the odd-looking but efficient and powerful Browning BLR. Today, the face of the lever-action in most minds is the Winchester 1894, usually in .30-30, which for a very long time was America’s most popular deer rifle.
The Lovers of Levers
The Western movie and TV craze of the 1950s brought a resurgence in single-action revolvers, led by Bill Ruger’s Single-Six and Blackhawk, and also sparked more interest in lever-action rifles. A “One of One Thousand” specimen co-starred with Jimmy Stewart in the movie “Winchester ’73.” John Wayne used a Model ’92 in virtually every Western on his resume, including “Stagecoach,” in which he introduced our country to the large loop lever. And on TV, of course, there was “The Rifleman” starring Chuck Connors and a series of Model 1892s and their South American clone, the El Tigre.
Propmasters had put a screw inside the trigger guard area of the lever, which hit the trigger every time Connors closed the action. The opening scene showed him firing from the hip in every episode, a fusillade of about a dozen blank cartridges in a couple of seconds. He then glares at the camera with a squinty-eyed look of determination and reloads a dummy cartridge from his shirt pocket.
The silver screen sold many cowboy six-shooters and lever-action cowboy carbines. The rise of Cowboy Action Shooting sold a bunch, too: the pistol-caliber lever-action is a cornerstone of that popular game. For us Boomers who spent our childhood in the center of that TV cowboy culture saturation, shooting a SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) match is like playing cowboy all over again, except with real bullets.
Today, we have lots to choose from: Marlin is back with excellent quality since Ruger took over the brand. There are countless Winchester clones to be had, mostly Italian-made but also produced by Miroku in Japan.
In addition to the clones, we have the current Henry brand, which I think had a lot to do with the current resurgence of interest in lever guns. These are not authentic replicas of the old ones but similar enough to satisfy the nostalgia needs of many.
There is more than nostalgia involved in the popularity of these guns. The late, great Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson had access to AR15s and Mini-14s but often chose to go into danger with his .30-30 Winchester ’94 to back up the Colt Commander .45 on his hip. If memory serves, the retired Ranger passed away in Uvalde. I like to think that if he had been alive during the recent atrocity there, he would have walked into the school, put a 170-grain .30-30 slug into the mad dog killer, and made a quick end to things.
If lever guns were just about nostalgia, they wouldn’t be selling the steampunk-looking ones with flashlight attachments, red dot mounts, and AR15-style adjustable stocks that we see today. If it’s not just nostalgia, what is it? The fact is that lever guns have some practical attributes.
Practical Features
Another big driver of the lever-action rifle’s resurgence in popularity is the growing number of states where legislation has been passed against semi-automatic rifles. Seeing this coming, the great gun expert Col. Jeff Cooper many years ago dubbed the short-barrel lever-action .44 Magnum carbine “the Brooklyn Special,” feeling that it was quite suitable for home defense. The specter of such anti-gun legislation has caused a great many of our people to buy a lever-action carbine as a hedge against possible confiscation of autoloaders.
Intangibles
For some, shooting a manually operated firearm is simply more fun. You get to do more. You feel more in charge of the machine. It’s like driving a car with manual versus automatic transmission: there’s a sense of you driving it, as opposed to it driving itself. It can be simply more fun.
Finally, there is no more truly American rifle than the lever action, and there’s something to be said for that, too.
