AK-type rifle, or AK-47 type rifle, was what we were told was in the hands of a potential Trump assassin on September 15th. We didn’t get much information. The few bits that came out told us it was at a golfing event, and the Secret Service engaged the shooter. The shooter escaped the golf course and fled northbound in an SUV but was caught on I-95 by a local Sheriff’s Department. A man named Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested and has been identified as the gunman. 

Information has slowly leaked out. Not much at first, but we’ve been fed snippets here and there. The man, Routh, seems a bit off his rocker. He is vocally anti-Trump but voted for him in 2016.

Routh flew to Ukraine to volunteer to fight Russians but was rejected by the foreign legion due to his age and lack of military experience. He supposedly ran a nonprofit type organization to get foreign fighters to Ukraine, even attempting some scheme to get Afghan soldiers out of Afghanistan to fight Russians. 

The Routh Rifle – What We Know

We know all this, but we know barely anything about his rifle. The FBI released a photo, which would be great, except the FBI uses potatoes to take photos. Seriously, my 2008 smartphone took better photos than that thing. Seriously, in an era of high-definition everything, I’m genuinely confused about why the photo released is so terrible. 

What we do see is not a traditional AK. We see a gun without a pistol grip, and with a more traditional Monte Carlo stock. However, the curved magazine certainly gives AK vibes.

If we had a better photo, Russian gun autists wouldn’t just have a model for us, but they’d have gotten us a production date and told us which factory and country produced it. 

There was much speculation about the blurry Routh Rifle. Due to the distinct curve, the magazine design certainly appears to be a 7.62x39mm mag. The current top contenders are an unmodified Saiga AK or an SKS. Back in the day, and we are talking Obama era, Russian rifles were imported in a neutered configuration. They had Monte Carlo stocks, and conversions were big business for gunsmiths. 

…drumroll….

It turns out the SKS guys were right. According to the criminal paperwork released on 9/16, an FBI Agent identified the rifle as an SKS in 7.62x39mm. Routh has a scope on his rifle, and it appears to be in an aftermarket stock. Plenty of cheap polymer stocks are available for the SKS. The bayonet appears to have been removed, and according to the court papers, the serial number was also obliterated. 

Heres the best part: the SKS had a scope that was attached via electrical tape. I’ve seen scopes attached in a lot of ways, but this is a first. It might be a fun experiment to see if this could work in any possible way. 

The (Wanna-Be) Sniper’s Nest 

Routh waited at a fenceline with his rifle. President Trump was golfing on the course. Routh positioned himself between 300 and 500 yards from a hole. That’s a very optimistic range for an SKS. After 300 yards, the round begins to drop exceedingly fast. 

Routh had brought a GoPro camera and two bags, which he zip-tied to the fence. It was later revealed that the bags contained ceramic floor tiles. My best guess is that he assumed this would work as adequate cover. Perhaps he had read something about ceramic body armor plates and assumed ceramic as a whole was bulletproof. 

Admittedly, if you stack anything deep enough, it becomes bullet-resistant. However, I don’t quite think ceramic floor tiles meet NIJ standards. Routh is facing charges for a felon owning a gun and removing the serial number, but nothing regarding attempted murder, discharge of a firearm, etc. It seems like he didn’t fire any shots. 

Routh In Court 

Routh made his first court appearance on Monday, September 16th. The hearing lasted only ten minutes, and Routh reportedly answered all questions. The Judge read the charges and maximum penalties for each. Additional charges are possible, and the formal arraignment will be on September 30th. 

Routh has a long history of felonies. Between 2002 and 2010, he had racked up quite the rap sheet, including a charge for possession of weapons of mass destruction. The weapon was a machine gun, according to reports. This machine gun incident included a multi-hour standoff with police. 

I think Ryan Routh is in for an interesting time in the next few days. Perhaps we’ll find out a bit more about the man, his motive, and maybe even a little more about his rifle. What’s the chance it holds zero? What scope? You know, all those nerd questions we are bound to have. 

If you run into one Madsen gun, it’s a fun story; if you run into Madsen guns every day, you might be a Brazilian police officer or criminal. The Madsen machine gun, a weapon designed in 1902, is still in service. If you’ve ever cruised South American police footage on YouTube because it’s 3 AM and you’ve gone down a few odd rabbit holes, you have seen Brazilian forces doing favela ops wielding the historic weapon like a rifle.  

When I was traveling down one such rabbit hole, I was amused to see the Madsen once, but then I kept seeing it. Different videos, different police officers, and different gunfights. It turned out the Madsen is quite common in Brazil and heavily used among police forces. 

History of the Madsen Machine Gun 

The Madsen is a pre-World War I machine gun designed by Danish engineers Julius A. Rasmussen and Theodor Schouboe. The weapon gained its name from Colonel Vilhelm Herman Oluf Madsen, the Danish Minister of War, who recommended the weapon for Danish military service and helped design the self-loading rifle that predated the Madsen machine gun. 

Inside the gun, we have a complicated mechanism that’s a bit of a combination of both short and long recoil designs. The bolt works on a short recoil principle that cams upward and away from the breech. The barrel and barrel extension continue to move rearward in a movement that exceeds the length of the cartridge, making it a long recoil system. 

The Madsen gun feeds from a top-loaded magazine offset from the receiver to the left-hand side. Throughout history, the guns have been adopted by dozens of different military forces and chambered dozens of different cartridges. Brazil adopted the weapon in small numbers after World War I. 

America supplied Madsen machine guns to Brazil for the Brazillian Expeditionary Force in World War II. These were .30-06 variants and saw combat with Brazil’s forces. 

The Madsen in Brazil 

The Brazilians clung to the Madsen Machine Guns, which remained in service with the military until 1996. In the 1950s, the Brazilian military converted their .30-06 and 7x57mm Mauser Madsens to .308. The police use of Madsen machine guns goes back to the 1930s. 

The military provided police forces with Madsen guns to fight the rise of the Cangaceiros. These Cangaceiros were violent bandits that constantly clashed with police forces. The police needed more and more firepower, and the Madsen evened things out. 

In the modern era, the majority of Madsen machine guns used by police forces were donated by the army when they got rid of the guns. Some also came from criminals who had stolen them or smuggled them in from other countries. Both regular police forces and the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais, aka the Special Police Operations Battalion, use them. 

Why the Madsen? 

The Madsen is an ancient weapon by all standards. The gun was designed and produced in 1902. For comparison, sliced bread was first sold in 1928. The Madsen is older than sliced bread, and with that age comes a novel and overly complicated design. If it breaks, it’s going to be tough to fix, but the guns seemingly don’t break. 

Second, the Madsen machine gun weighs 20 pounds. That’s not bad for a military weapon in 1902, but it’s hefty for an urban police rifle in 2024. It’s also 45 inches long, so good luck clearing rooms with it. Why are Brazillian police forces still wielding the gun? 

The first reason is that they have them on hand. Sometimes, you use what you have, not what you want. Second, the drug war in Brazil is a lot different than the drug war here. These cops are in full-on gunfights on city streets. It’s more Fallujah than Detroit. The weapon’s suppressive capabilities are appreciated and used as an automatic rifle to suppress the enemy. 

The slow rate of fire and ease of control allows for superior accuracy compared to other automatic weapons. Some sources, translated from Portuguese, claim the weapon’s sound plays a factor in its deployment. A machine gun firing full-power rifle rounds degrades enemy morale. 

One common factor I saw in these Brazillian police footage videos is failures with their varied M4 and FAL-type rifles. Guys were stripping their guns to get them fixed and back into the fight. The Madsen machine guns remained in the fight. They are more reliable than some of the overworked rifles. 

From Denmark to Brazil 

The Madsen machine gun lives on! Most of these videos don’t have dates, but one date I did see was 2018, which means even if the Madsen isn’t in service now, it was in use until at least 2018. That’s an insane lifespan. It’s not the best weapon for the role, but it’s clearly working when needed. 

Japan was an interesting place after World War II. After their surrender, the United States military occupied it, which is one of the few success stories we have from occupation. The Japanese military was disbanded. However, a Self-Defense force was allowed and formed. That self-defense force was initially armed with American WWII weapons but sought a domestically produced rifle option and turned to a company called Howa. 

Howa would produce three distinct rifles for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, representing three distinct eras in rifle development. These rifles have never been exported and reside solely with the Japanese military. They are an interesting series of rifles that are a bit of a curiosity to the Western world, and today, we’ll attempt to shine a light on those rifles.

The Howa Type 64 

In the early 1960s, the Japanese forces were looking to replace their M1 Garands with a more modern battle rifle. The rest of the world was moving toward the FAL and G3—the Howa Type 64 is the final product of a somewhat scrapped-together program. Reportedly, the Japanese wanted to chamber the weapon in 7.62 NATO but had none. According to a Japanese website roughly translated, the US Marine Corps provided ten rounds for the Japanese to reverse engineer. 

The resulting battle rifle used a short-stroke gas piston with a tilting bolt. It used modified M14 magazines and was selective fire. The rifle had an integrated bipod and shoulder rest for automatic fire purposes. The Japanese decided to use a reduced-power 7.62 NATO round because their troops found the full-power round difficult to control. The weapon could safely fire standard 7.62 NATO, but that accelerated wear and tear. 

The Howa Type 64 designers made some interesting choices. The rifle featured a three-position selector that required the user to pull outward, rotate, and then release to swap firing modes. The gun featured a top-mounted charging handle and a wide-operated ejection port. The rifle is also reportedly difficult to disassemble and has several small parts. Rifles are often seen taped up to prevent pins from exiting their slot. 

The rifle was reportedly an okay design, but it had serious weaknesses. As the future came fast, the Japanese were more than willing to replace the Type 64 with the Howa Type 89. 

The Howa Type 89 

As the name implies, the Type 89 was adopted in 1989. The Type 89 rifle series was the Japanese entry into the modern assault rifle world. This 5.56 caliber rifle utilized a short-stroke gas piston with a rotating bolt. The AR-18, a rifle Howa directly influenced the Type 89, was licensed to produce. The rifle uses STANAG magazines and standard 5.56 ammunition. Standard STANAG mags will not trip the last round bolt hold open. 

The Type 89 trimmed two pounds compared to the Type 64, and the reduced ammo weight allowed the individual soldier to carry more of it. The rifle typically used fixed stocks, but folding steel stocks were produced for AFV crews and paratroopers. The Howa Type 89 has selector settings for safe, auto, 3-round burst, and semi-auto. A simple thumb movement can manipulate the selector. 

Over the years, the rifles were modified to use ambidextrous safeties, red dots, foregrips, and more. The Type 89 proved to be a reliable and capable rifle for the Japanese Self-Defense Force, and Japanese soldiers did deploy to Iraq during the GWOT.  The rifle had some odd ergonomics and an unforgiving magwell, and it lacked the modularity of weapons like the M4, which led to the Type 20. 

Howa Type 20 

The latest rifle adopted by the Japanese Self-Defense Force is the Howa Type 20. It was unveiled in 2020 and would replace the Type 89 full stop. The first soldiers to obtain the rifle were the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade. Much like the Type 89 the Howa Type 20 uses a short stroke gas piston design and fires the standard 5.56 round from a STANAG magazine. 

With the Howa Type 20, Japan has obtained a very modern rifle. It’s complete with an M-LOK rial, a collapsing and folding stock, a monolithic optics rail, ambidextrous controls, and a heavy use of polymer. It’s one of the rifles that fall into the AR-18 modern derivatives, such as the SCAR, HK 433, and similar rifles. The barrel is trimmed to 13 inches, making it a very carbine-like weapon. 

Howa ditched the 3-round burst, and it uses a standard safe, semi, and automatic setting. Japan has also adopted a 5.56 cartridge known as the J-3 High-Power cartridge. It’s supposedly better at piercing armor and is made from steel and red brass with an increased powder charge. I’m curious to know more, but there isn’t a ton of information on the cartridge. 

Howa’s Rifles 

Howa certainly had a bit of a rough start with the Type 64. However, they quickly learned, adapted, and produced two purportedly very respectable rifles. Due to Japanese export laws, we’ll never see a Howa Type 89 or Type 20, which is sad because a semi-auto version would be an interesting collectible. So until we get a Japanese version of Tommy Built I wouldn’t hold your breath.