Browning Recoilless

Firearm Friday the 5th of July is about The Browning Recoilless!

We have just the 1 in the Museum and we believe them to be a very unique design, an attempt to furnish shooters with a 12 gauge trap gun with minimum recoil.

Quote from a shooting forum was it felt like a “BB gun” to shoot. They were built and marketed for only two years--between 1993 and 1995, today collectors and shooters find them to be scarce. It is believed that there was some negative feedback about it’s looks, weight and trigger (too heavy). Browning apparently didn’t market them very well and so they never gained traction and fell to the way side.

The design of the Recoilless shotgun eliminates most recoil before it even starts. The Recoilless consists of an inner mechanism, composed of an inner receiver, bolt, striker system and barrel. This inner mechanism is driven forward, inside of an outer re­ceiver by a drive spring when the firing mechanism is cocked and released. A large portion of the recoil force is expended overcoming the inertia of the moving mass of the inner mechanism. After firing, the inner mechanism recoils to the rear while com­pressing the drive spring until it strikes the buffer in the inner receiver, this absorbs additional recoil forces. The Recoilless is a bolt action design and is loaded through the use of a bolt handle. Locking lugs on the bolt provide exceptionally tight lockup and strength. Because trapshooting demands intense concentration on shooting technique, no manual safety is provided on the Recoilless shotgun.

A trap shooter does not load his or her gun until moments before a bird is called for. For this reason, and because trapshooting demands intense concen­tration on shooting technique, no manual safety is provided. There is then no chance for a lost bird by reason of the safety being inadvertently left "on safe."

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