Good to find that a lever gun still has a place

[holdencaufield]

21. Absolutely right!

I got started in levers when I live in Australia. The 1997 Gun Ban make it almost impossible to have any self-loading or pump action rifles or shotguns. But, and this is a plus, because people who write gun laws rarely if ever know anything about guns, they left lever actions out of the ban. So, the only shotgun you could get in Australia that wasn't breech loading double barrel was the IAC/Norinco replica 1887. Soon, because of the popularity of the lever, they started selling the Italian made Armi and Puma, which are much better quality.

This led me to get into Single Action Shooting so now I have a Winchester 1892 in .357 and a Winchester 1886 in .45-70. The 1892, in my opinion, is the best design ever and was Winchester's most popular gun by far (over 1 million sold) and is featured in just about every Western movie ever made (even if it's not historically accurate).

If you're looking for a good lever, unfortunately, quality control on many of the replicas is poor. Rossi and Norinco in particular are known for actions that are very rough out of the box and need to be cycled continuously to remove metal from poorly machined part. I can recommend buying from Winchester or Cimmaron Guns. Cimmaron are a small company who take modern caliber replicas from Italy (Armi mostly) and do their own quality control and custom gun-smithing to make sure the actions are smooth and sights aligned.

One more thing, because these weapons are historical, not black, and have no accessory rails (although they are easy to add) they tend not to frighten the "wimmin-folk" as much as would an AR or AK.