Wednesday, January 8, 2014

The Strange Case of Kris Gasior and his Kbsp wz.38M Rifle

 Polish Kbsp wz.38m rifles

When a firearms collector in Virginia decided to sell part of his collection, he got a knock on the door from federal agents. What happened next involved an epic legal battle that included seizure of a prized possession, a lost piece of history, and a diplomatic crisis between Washington and a European government.

The story of the Kbsp wz.38M 

 

In pre-WWII Poland, the country was trying rapidly to modernize their military. The Polish Army was in the 1930s largely equipped with leftover weapons captured or donated to it after the First World War. With Hitler’s Germany to the West and Stalin’s Soviet Union to the East both rearming with the newest gear, Warsaw understood that they needed the best weapons available. One of their plans was to equip their army with a bold new semi-automatic battlerifle. This gun, designed by Polish firearms engineer Józef Maroszek, was very advanced for its day.

It used a gas-operated, tilting-bolt action that was not unlike the FN FAL, which it predated by nearly twenty years. Using 5-round stripper clips, it could top off its ten-shot box magazine rapidly. The wz.38 looks rather like a Winchester Model 1907, but uses an action closer to that of the FN FAL and borrowing heavily from John Browning’s BAR light machine gun.

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