Browning's Guns

Browning invented the slide and tilting barrel locked breech action that is the basis of essentially all modern automatics. The resulting pistols produced by f n, for fabrique national, were wildly popular all over europe. Military buyers didn't think much of them, but average citizens bought them by the illions perhaps it was no surprise then that gavrilo princep used one of browning's three 80 a c p pistols to assassinate the archduke franz ferdinand. High profile crimes and yellow journalism led in the early twentieth century to occasional efforts at gun control in the united states - never aimed at heavier weapons. In a way, therefore, american gun control was