303 Charlton Machine Gun C-Cat

We used to have some NZ posters on here like Fenix.

This appears or appeared to be for sale in NZ...with the correct licence are they able to purchase a FA arm?
 
We used to have some NZ posters on here like Fenix.

This appears or appeared to be for sale in NZ...with the correct licence are they able to purchase a FA arm?

This i recently posted on another forum.

"I only have the Basic firearms licence which entitles me to own & shoot what are class as A category sporting firearms, which covers all bolt-action, pump-action, lever-action & some semi's rifles, there are no restrictions on numbers owned (i have 40+) there are no permits required to purchase & no registration.

Endorsements, This is only a basic run down.
B: Pistol. own & shoot Handguns only on approved ranges ie no hunting, many restrictions & permits required, registration.
C: Collectors. Covers all firearms, anything put against a C cannot be fired, many restrictions & permits required, registration.
D: Dealers.
E: MSSA (Military Style Semi-Auto) own & shoot semi's with certain features such as a free-standing pistol grip, bayonet lug & have the capacity to hold more than 7 rounds center-fire or 15 rounds rim-fire, many restrictions & permits required, registration.

Weapons held on a C endorsement (which includes machine guns etc) while not allowed to be fired are not required to be de-activated, in fact there is no such thing as a de-act in NZ law, they are all classed as functioning firearms.
We also have Antique Arms which require no licence to own but of course still covered by the Arms act."
 
@ 5THBATT:

THANK YOU for that very succinct rundown on NZ firearms laws. A lot of us have been curious about that for some time but I don't think anyone wanted to be regarded an idiot for asking. I know that includes me!

(I can be enough of an idiot without making it painfully obvious!)
 
I got to play with a Charlton for some time at the Pattern Room, many years ago.

A MOST interesting Beast for certain.

It is based on an old heavy-barrel Magazine Lee-Enfield. The "cooling fins" are alternate pieces of aluminum conduit and washers, swaged onto the Barrel. Gas system is a straight piston working against the slide. Much of the old Action is enclosed to permit mounting of the parts for the automatic mechanism.

The Trigger Group is COMPLETELY new and radically different, keeping only parts of the original Trigger and Sear, provides for SA and FA fire both.

It is a most interesting example of what CAN be done in a hurry, starting only with basic workshop tooling, some antique rifles and a great deal of ingenuity.

I REALLY want one but, alas!, I live in a Free Country in which the Government punishes US for what someone else MIGHT do.



A quote from my Millwright friend Charlie, many years ago: "George, I can make the BACK AXLE out of your '54 Buick into a machine-gun! All I need is a Lathe, a Mill and 48 hours!"
 
5TH, more reason to be jealous of you fellows in NZ. Your gun laws have common sense. I'm afraid I've got my doubts that they would work here though. Being able to own FA and not shoot it takes responsibility. Mind you, I bet a lot more people in Canada own full auto illegally and take the responsibility and risk of hiding it than our government will ever know. Thanks for the insight.
 
@ 5THBATT:

THANK YOU for that very succinct rundown on NZ firearms laws. A lot of us have been curious about that for some time but I don't think anyone wanted to be regarded an idiot for asking. I know that includes me!

(I can be enough of an idiot without making it painfully obvious!)

Smellie, we have some silly little quirks with the laws, i can fire a B-cat handgun while under supervision but not a E-cat semi & while i can touch C-cat machine guns etc, i can not even touch a E-cat semi so if someone has two M16's, one on E & one on C even though they are both fully functioning firearms i can only touch the C-cat even if the C is full auto.
 
There might be SOME hope for Canadian firearms owners.

For example, there is a new Federal political party getting itself organised. It is called the Canadian Action Party and it is about to post its National Firearms Policy on its FB page.

I think this policy is mostly what we would like to have in Canada.

I wrote it, as I wrote the policy for the original Canada Party, 20 years ago.

It might be worth checking out.
 
There are quite a pile of Maxim patents in the US Patent Office and there should have been a LOT more.

Fact is, Maxim's brain was looted at every opportunity and by every hustler and promoter who got close enough to find something they could steal.

Maxim lit NEW YORK with electric lights while all the ballyhoo and publicity was about what the glorious Edison was GOING to do. Maxim was making the first electric light bulb with a coiled, drawn platinum filament in an inert-gas atmosphere while Edison was using Maxim's old filament carboniser and vacuum pump to make the "First Electric Light" and get the patents filed before Maxim could file his application for a FAR superior light. Fact is, Edison patented one of Maxim's EXPERIMENTAL types while Maxim was designing the FINISHED PRODUCT: the electric lights we use today.

By the time Maxim got into making guns, he had learned a simple lesson: patent EVERYTHING.

There is NO automatic firearm which has ever been built, anywhere, which does NOT violate one or more BASIC MAXIM PATENTS. He worked on every type which it is possible to build: straight blowback, retarded blowback, short-recoil, long-recoil, gas-operated, even primer-actuated. He patented toggle locks, sliding breech-locks, wedge locks, magazine feeds, open feeds, belt feeds, pretty much you-name-it. If it could be used to make an automatic gun mechanism, it is highly likely that Maxim worked with it, built it and patented it. This includes boosters, rate-of-fire regulators, feeds, bolts, buffers, cooling, even the SHAPE of the crank handle (which countered the recoil thrust of the gun, assured a strong loading cycle and simultaneously prevented battering). When they were capitalising Vickers, Sons and Maxim Ltd., Maxim contributed patents valued at $4,500,000 at that time: nearly $150,000,000 in today's debased 'money'.

Maxim's very FIRST automatic Machine Gun was built in 1883. It worked rather well and fired more than 150,000 rounds in public and private demonstrations. It is in the Imperial War Museum in the reserve collection. I identified it for them positively in 1976 when I was in England (the GUN was in the IWM, the documentation still was in the Science Museum, being kept on file when the Gun was disposed-of) and I have had my own two hands into its sacred guts. It uses the T-slot extractor which "everybody KNOWS" was invented by that great 'Merican designer John Moses Browning..... in 1895: TWELVE YEARS LATER. Browning also stole Maxim's (patented) belt feed, water cooling, booster, flash hider, short-recoil system and a few other little things.

By the way, the Improved Maxim Machine Gun also introduced an interesting little idea into manufacture: MODULAR CONSTRUCTION. Anything goes wrong with a Maxim Gun in the field, the Gun can be rebuilt in NINETY SECONDS OR LESS.

Maxim also built an airplane the size of a World War Two heavy bomber and proved that it could fly and could be controlled, in 1896: seven years before the plucky AMERICAN Wright brothers (who had read up on Maxim's experiments) got theirs off the ground.

The Nineteenth Century produced TWO absolute GIANTS in Engineering. They were Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Hiram Stevens Maxim.

It is indeed a tragedy that neither is known or honoured today.


BTW, yes, I DO drink Maxim coffee. He invented the stuff, didn't he? Likely the manufacturers don't even know!
 
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I'd vote for anything Smellie is running for!!
There might be SOME hope for Canadian firearms owners.

For example, there is a new Federal political party getting itself organised. It is called the Canadian Action Party and it is about to post its National Firearms Policy on its FB page.

I think this policy is mostly what we would like to have in Canada.

I wrote it, as I wrote the policy for the original Canada Party, 20 years ago.

It might be worth checking out.
 
Great info smellie! Typical examples of Yankee thievery and greed. Edison was a no-mind compared to Tesla.

Sir Hirim Maxim was American as well. He moved to England after Edison paid him a handsome sum to keep him out of his hair. Also Maxim's airplane was steam powered! It is said that after it crashed in a test flight Maxim gave his notes to the Wright brothers which saved them years of testing.
 
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