Why Did The Lever Action Eclipse the Pump Action Rifle?

[Tabasco]

Pump action seems to have won in the shotgun manual repeater action race, why did lever action win for rifles? I have a great coffee table book called "The Age of The Gunfighter" (ISBN 0806127619) that has some pictures of Colt pump action rifles (circa 1880's) that were meant to compete with the lever offerings from Winchester, Marlin and others. For a manual repeater, I prefer the pump to the lever action, just my thing. I know Remington has/had one modern offering in the pump action rifle world. Theories?

[Malamute]

What little I know of the available pump action rifles of the late 1800s was they tended to be less reliable in general, and the lever action had a significant head start in use and popularity. Pump shotguns were a later thing developmental wise, and I dont think pump shotguns as we know them today, or at 1897 and 1912 levels of development can be directly compared with the early pump rifles for reliability. Pump shotguns also continued to develop and improve, but by the time they matured as a technology and were really catching on, bolt action rifles had cut into lever action market, but never entirely displaced them. The real niche of the pump rifle was in 22s in days gone by.

Realize effective lever actions became available in 1860, then improved with each model, 1866, 1873, 1876, 1886, 1892, 1894, 1895, as well as the Marlin models interspersed in there from 1881 on, and the various smaller lever rifle makers like Whitney etc. Thats a pretty tough head start to overcome for pump rifles by the time they started to be come available in 1884.

[peterb]

Ease of shooting from prone?

[fatdog]

.... Realize effective lever actions became available in 1860, then improved with each model, 1866, 1873, 1876, 1886, 1892, 1894, 1895, as well as the Marlin models interspersed in there from 1881 on, and the various smaller lever rifle makers like Whitney etc. Thats a pretty tough head start to overcome for pump rifles by the time they started to be come available in 1884.

That.

Have to remember that the 1860 Henry was practically the same gun as the 1866 Winchester, and there were so many of those, that lever action repeater is what people learned, and the 44 rimfire ammunition that was available in quantities as you went further west. By the time the 1873 came along the toggle lever action gun was the thing everyone knew how to shoot, it was the rifle people trusted, it was everywhere and then centerfire variants starting with the 73 flooded into the marketplace. More powerful centerfire cartridges were now available.

Without gun magazines, the internet, it was harder to get your message out. Without the numbers and distribution it was hard to get your product in the hands of people to compare. The sheer numbers of leverguns in the hands of people as cited. The marketing hurdle was large.

[JHC]

Interesting question. Back in the day I wanted one of these when they were cheap but procrastinated too long. Don't know much about them. I've generally assumed a pump to be mechanically more simple than the levergun. Don't really know that as a fact.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFDywy_N_eM

[BobM]

Interesting question. Back in the day I wanted one of these when they were cheap but procrastinated too long. Don't know much about them. I've generally assumed a pump to be mechanically more simple than the levergun. Don't really know that as a fact.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFDywy_N_eM

I wanted one of those too but seemed to be unobtainable by the time I decided to spend the money.

[Bigghoss]

Luck and timing solidified their place in history. Winchester got out a solid repeater and just became what everyone wanted because it worked. And I'm not sure but I think JMB may have even designed a pump rifle to compete with the Winchester repeaters and Winchester bought the patent and sat on it. I know they did that with several of his designs just to keep them away from the competition even though they had no plans to produce them. If you already have a good seller why retool to make something else if the other manufacturers aren't taking your market share?

Now if someone made a pump action rifle that was more than just a hunting rifle I'd be plenty interested. My understanding is that the Remington pumps didn't hold up too well to being run hard.

[SteveB]

I had a Brockman Remington 7600 .30-06 carbine that I got from GJM many years ago. It worked OK even with aftermarket plastic 10-rd mags (Eagle?), but I was much more comfortable hunting with bolt rifles. Since I was shooting 870’s a lot back then, I thought a pump rifle made sense, but field shooting where you get into jackass positions can interfere with your ability to run the slide. Sure was quicker to a follow-up shot than a lever gun, though. Ultimately, I made the same decision about lever guns; all my non-SA rifles are bolt guns.

[Rex G]

With my relatively long monkey arms, operating a pump gun while prone is a very clumsy and inefficient thing to do, whereas operating a lever rifle efficiently while prone is quite practical. If enough others have felt the same way, over time, it would seem to have had an effect on the market acceptance of slide-action rifles, as rifles are more likely, than shotguns, to be fired while prone. This is my non-expert opinion.

On practical field use of a pump gun, while prone: Minutes after a shoot-out between undercover Houston PD narcotics officers, and four suspects, with blood shed by both sides, a K9 alerted, and I dropped to prone, in the cold mud, with an 870P in my hands, and faced TWO suspects, hiding under a house. Two. Suspects. “Yo quiero mirar los manos! Venga! Venga! Venga!” I was so very glad that their hands were empty, and that they complied! I would have traded a kidney, at that moment in time, for my “back-up” GP100, that was pinned between my body and the ground, or the G22 that was in my duty holster. I started planning, that night, to buy a Benelli M1 or M2. Pump guns are nice while standing on my hind legs, but not so nice when facing two felons, while prone.