In this case, you’d use the rifle to hold out till you can draw the pistol.

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Oleg Volk

With the rifle being a fun .22 Henry and the pistol being a serious .45ACP. I wonder if a 45ACP lever action is possible — it would fit almost twenty rounds and have minimal report and muzzle flash even un-suppressed.

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13 Responses to In this case, you’d use the rifle to hold out till you can draw the pistol.

  1. Jason Allard says:
    December 24, 2011 at 6:39 pm

    Since they were often made in .44-40, if not .45LC, I don’t see why someone couldn’t make a lever action gun for .45ACP.

  2. Joe says:
    December 24, 2011 at 7:00 pm

    Someone put out a rimmed cartridge for cowboy action shooters that is essentially the same as .45ACP in measurements. Doesn’t really solve the issue of commonality of cartridge between sidearm & rifle. Why not carry a .44mag or .45Colt revolver & shoot the appropriate levergun?

  3. Lanius says:
    December 24, 2011 at 7:09 pm

    I heard there are issues with pointy bullets in tubular mags.

    Also, are self-loading carbines in .45 ACP so much less reliable than lever actions? Or this would be a niche product for people who prefer weaponry that appears to be ancient?

    • Jeff the Baptist says:
      December 25, 2011 at 9:24 pm

      The pointy end of the bullet rests on the primer of the round in front. A hard enough hit and the mag can chainfire. This has been known to happen if you carelessly drop the follower on an original model henry. You really should load leverguns with flat-nosed bullets.

  4. neutrino_cannon says:
    December 24, 2011 at 7:41 pm

    .45 ACP would not be a good candidate for a tubular magazine because it headspaces on the case mouth. This means that the crimp is usually not very tight, so it’s rather prone to bullet setback.

  5. JBranch says:
    December 24, 2011 at 8:06 pm

    Love the figuring on the wood of this gun. Very nice.

  6. Chris says:
    December 25, 2011 at 8:19 am

    I’ve been looking for one in 357 with the “john wayne” loop for years now with no luck. Passed one up for 400 clams a decade ago. Should have bought it!!

    CIII

  7. anonymous says:
    December 25, 2011 at 8:24 am

    I asked the same question over 10 years on one of the internet gun forums (probably The Firing Line), and was told that it wouldn’t work since the .45 ACP is not a rimmed cartridge like the .38/.357 or .44. To this day, I’m still not sure what that has to do with anything, since other firearms are able to extract empty .45 ACP cases just fine.

    This was during the 1994-2004 “assault weapons” ban, and I was intrigued by the idea of a non-semi-automatic (ie, either a lever or pump-action) carbine in common pistol calibers (9mm, .45 ACP, etc.), whether tube-magazine or detachable-magazine fed (especially if it used common handgun magazines). I figured that such a weapon would be a near ideal home-defense firearm in jurisdictions where handguns and/or “assault weapons” were heavily regulated. Unfortunately, I have no mechanical-design skills, so my ideas went nowhere.

    Other advantages to pistol-caliber carbines is that it’s easier to find handgun ranges to shoot them at, so they’re more likely to be practiced with. And they require less skill to use than a handgun (the idea behind the M1 Carbine).

    The Marlin Camp Carbine was one of those things where the idea was better than the execution. I don’t think Ruger offers the PC-9 or PC-45 anymore. That leaves the field to Hi-Point, Kel-Tec, and Beretta — all of which are “spacy” looking firearms. And opinions about Hi-Point and Kel-Tec vary wildly.

    Since Browning does make a lever-action rifle with a detachable box magazine — the BLR — I suppose it should be possible to make a .45 ACP (or 9mm or .40 SW) lever action using detachable magazines. Although I’m not sure how far out the magazine can stick before interfering with the lever.

  8. John Hardin says:
    December 25, 2011 at 12:38 pm

    I’d prefer a Henry in .357 Magnum and a Coonan .357 Magnum 1911, to get common ammunition and more-effective fire from the rifle.

    • Oleg Volk says:
      December 25, 2011 at 1:15 pm

      I agree! But what I have are 22s and a 44, so I hope that Coonan comes out with a 44Mag version before too long.

      • Sean says:
        December 26, 2011 at 3:49 pm

        Wouldn’t a .44 magnum just be too powerful for 1911 style semi-auto? I know the Desert Eagle exists, but it is huge. Making a reasonable sized, safe, reliable .44 magnum seems impossible. And I am not sure I want to hold on to it.

  9. RegT says:
    December 25, 2011 at 3:15 pm

    My Redhawk is slower to load that a semi-auto, but together with my 1894 Marlin in .44 Mag, it is capable of taking care of business. That’s what I used to carry when I rode my Appy in the Northern California mountains, northwest of Mt Shasta some years back. Mountain lions and bears were the main issue in that neck of the woods.

    Now that the game looks like it will probably be wearing black balaclavas instead of fur, my choices will be a little different.

  10. Lyle says:
    December 26, 2011 at 7:47 pm

    The bullet against the primer in front of it is easy enoiugh to solve– use truncated cones or large hollowpoints. Though the lack of a roll crimp may be an issue, tubular mag follower springs aren’t very stiff, and the recoil is mild enough I don;t see a deal killer there.

    anonymous; I’s not the extraction that’s the problem. It’s the headspacing on the case mouth. Cases that headspace oin the case mount, like the 45 ACP do not allow a good roll crimp into a groove in the bullet. If you were to roll crimp the case mouth into a groove in the bullet, it would not headspace properly. The Common Wisdom is that bullets will be set back (forced deeper into the case) in a tubular magazine unless there is a good solid crimp against a groove in the bullet, and since cases like the 45 ACP don’t allow for that sort of crimp, they are not considered as candidates for use in a tubular magazine.

    Again though; I don’t see as the mild pressure form the follower spring would be any worse than the force applied during feeding in semi autos, so that leave the issue of set bnack due to recoil. A 45 ACP carbine is not goiong to recoil much at all. I’d be OK with a 45 ACP tubular mag lever gun, but the lawyers may have a different opinion.

    Again; Common Wisdom says never do such a thing, and if Common Wisdom gets pissed off at you, he’ll try to kick your ass as he is a pertsnickety son of a bitch. Personally I’m not afraid of him as I think he’s mostly just a lot of talk.

    Then again, there are plenty of lever action rifles that feed from a box type magazine. Problem there is; they’re designed for longer cartridges.

    Then again, there are already several choices in a 45 ACP carbine, though they’ll have a semi auto action. So there you have it. Go semi auto for both, or go with a revolver and a lever gun.

    That is, if you want the common ammo thing. I figure that if I’m going to the bother of carrying a long gun, it will be in a caliber that’s far more powerful than I want in a handgun.

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