Verney-Carron Speedline rifle australia .308
Courtesy Verney-Carron and YouTube

The UK’s Daily Mail is sounding the alarm about a dangerous new weapon:

A rifle promoted as having an ‘unequalled rate of fire’ of military-style ammunition is now freely available to hundreds of thousands of Australian gun owners.

The Verney-Carron Speedline can fire six shots in about three seconds and is being sold with little restriction because of what its opponents say is a legal loophole.

That “military-style” ammunition is otherwise known as .308 Winchester, originally designed and sold as a hunting round. And they’re calling the new gun a “license to kill.”

Verney-Carron calls the Speedline a “semi-semi-automatic” rifle. When a round fires, the bolt locks back in the open position. The shooter can then release it with the flick of a thumb, chambering a new round and putting it back into battery, ready to fire another shot. To wit . . .

Aussie gun controllers aren’t amused. Neither is the Daily Mail’s Stephen Gibbs.

The Speedline .308 was specifically designed for Australia and is being cynically promoted as a ‘semi-semi-automatic’ weapon, a description coined by its critics.

Because the ‘revolutionary’ French-made rifle is not technically semi-automatic it has been deemed a ‘Category B’ firearm along with bolt-action centre-fire rifles, requiring only the second-easiest type of licence to obtain.

Oh noes! Under Australia’s strict gun control regime, category B firearms are centerfire bolt, pump or lever action rifles (including muzzleloaders). The only category that’s less regulated are rimfires and non-semi-auto shotguns.

Category B licences are held by hundreds of thousands of Australians including farmers, target shooters and recreational hunters.

But as the Daily Mail reports, the Speedline really isn’t new at all.

The rifle has previously been available in Australia chambered to take .300 and .30-06 ammunition.

https://youtu.be/p7eYuI739Tw

 

That video was from 2017. So why all of the hyperventilating now over the new .308 version of the rifle that’s due to hit Australian stores in October?

The .308 Winchester ammunition which the latest Verney-Carron rifle fires is the commercial cartridge from which the military 7.62 round was derived.

OMG! That’s the same round AR-10 rifles fire! And the FN-FAL!

(Yes, .30-06 packs more ft.lbs of energy than .308, but don’t tell the Aussies that.)

[New South Wales Greens MP David] Shoebridge has previously referred to the Verney-Carron Speedline as a ‘semi-semi-automatic’ and objected to its relaxed classification.

It was designed for ‘an extremely rapid cycling through of shot after shot’ and should not have a Category B classification.

‘These guns are designed and marketed as being able to send out a spray of military-calibre bullets and they should not be available for sale in Australia.’

Samantha Lee of Gun Control Australia said the Verney-Carron had slipped through a legal loophole because it was a new category of firearm.

‘They push the law as far as they can but still comply with it,’ Ms Lee said of firearm manufacturers and importers.

‘The problem is the law itself is so outdated in terms of the categorisation system we have here in Australia.

In other words, a manufacturer has looked at the laws in Australia and designed a rifle to comply with them. The Speedline has been legally sold there for years. But Oz’s gun grabbers are in a tizzy because the rifle will now be chambered in a caliber that’s almost just like 7.62 NATO!

You can’t make this stuff up. As a learned man once said, there is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not promptly be enacted before your very eyes.

 

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103 COMMENTS

  1. Innovation. I likey muy mucho.

    Not the actual gun so much, but the creativity and chutzpah at getting around the laws and regulations.

    It’s kinda like California. We invent all kids of stuff every time Sacramento and the Keystone Kops come out with the next slew of gun control nonsense. Every once in a while, one of those inventions turns out to be rather cool.

    (I’m not referring to the infamous Shark Fin AR grip, though…that’s just butt-ugly no matter how you butter your bread).

    • The idea of freedom and liberty will find a way even in the former colonies of the crown. They Can’t Stop The Message.

      • This is why ultimately I’m not worried about things like gun control or net neutrality in the long run. Governments can pass whatever laws they want and people will always find ways to technically comply, which is the only type of compliance that matters.

    • I applaud the innovation and the “in your face” marketing to the Aussie govt., but they could include one really great additional innovation: Put the bolt release/lever action on the left side so you do not have to move your thumb and break your grip in order to release the locked-back bolt.

      That would be sweet.

    • Shark fin grips are part of my plot to make gun owners look stupid. Plus, ol’ Willie was a huge fan of my shark fin grip, if you know what I mean.

  2. It took some real thinking to get around the law but the Government will ban it shortly because they know what it really is i.e. a rapid fire weapon that really should be banned before some maniac gets a hold of it and causes another massacre.

    • Proving my point. You are to damaged to be trusted to make your own decisions. You need a state appointed minder.

    • Good thing that we live in a country where loons like you aren’t consulted on policy choices and we have these little things called “constitutional rights”.

      • I am calling for a Vlad ban since Ze is not identifiable as a single individual and for culturally appropriating Romania’s national hero.

        • Personally I think this forum needs accounts and better moderation as well. I am all for freedom of speech, but this is not a public place… it’s a privately run website. You are free to create a ghost email so you don’t receive any junk and such, or so you can attempt to troll through multiple accounts, but it’s definitely better than allowing idiots like him in. All up to the mods how they would handle it.

        • …or everyone can simply ignore him, and he’ll eventually go away. The only reason why we keep seeing dozens of comments by this Vlad persona is because he posts two or three, and then the same small group of sensitive people get all hurt and lash out at him. Just ignore him, and we’ll only see a few, which you can scroll past.

          Pretty simple, people. Stop giving the obvious troll what he obviously wants. You’re all dancing to his tune.

        • I think Haz has a good solution. Just ignore him and don’t give him the attention he so desperately craves. He’ll eventually fall by the wayside.

        • Lol… no he won’t.

          maybe for short periods at a time, but he’ll continue to rant negatively about shit he disagrees with and has no understanding of. It’s why people still have facebook, and why facebook does so well. It literally bred these kinds of attitudes online and they continue to feed off it. The attention does not matter. They just have to be heard. I assume he does not get notifications to his posts either, because he doesn’t care. He said what he wanted to whine and complain about that day and it’ll be that way for a long time.

    • When are you going to figure out that you are more likely to be hit by lightning that shot in a masscre by a crazed gun man? the average number of people killed in a mass killing in the US is roughly 30 over the last decade.

    • there we go again….who left the idiot door open again

      Yep you talk from a high horse while posting under the name of a man that was Infamous for impaling babies, that is a sure sign of a sane person…NOT!

    • This gun has been available in .30-06 and probably .270 as well. And Greens get their panties in a twist over the gun being available in a lower powered (by about 10%) caliber?

      The Greens knowledge of firearms rivals mine of meso-american pottery shardsm

    • They said the same about the Adler lever action shotgun. In 3+ years not ONE has been used in a criminal offense, much less a mass shooting.

      • But it could be! And it’s fast.Think of the danger! Think of the children!
        Only government agents are to be trusted with fast shooting rifles… and shotguns. Never mind the piles of millions of corpses killed by their own governments in last 100 years.

      • Don’t forget about the guy who literally told the court that because he could not get a gun he waited until a family was sleeping and murdered them in their sleep with a knife or blunt object (don’t remember exactly) then burned their house down.

    • You should have a 10 day waiting period on expressing your opinion. Anything you wish to express needs to be vetted and approved before you state or publish it. Actually you should have to register your thoughts prior to dissemination. You’ll be notified when you can submit your speech for analysis. While this program is instituted please cease all communication with the outside world.

      • You are forgetting taxes. We can’t have just anybody to spread their ideas. Before the speech is even considered to be approved and registered, before we run a thorough background investigation on the would-be speaker, he has to pay at least $200 per sentence and get a tax stamp that proves he paid it. That’s for normal, everyday speech. High caliber words and letter-bombs are so destructive, they need to be approved, taxed and registered word by word.

        Unless we decide that there was enough of that dangerous fast speech and close the registry altogether. After that, only old, already used ideas are to be spread. But they will still be taxed and re-registered to each new speaker.

  3. I’m starting to think asteroid 2020 isn’t such a bad thing.. How is the human race to continue with the apparent voluntary mass retardation of the left? Are we to declare all of the leftists to be minors and wards of the .gov so that they can do less harm to themselves and humanity?

    If you’re shocked and offended by a legally produced firearm being sold through legal channels to law abiding individuals you are likely to irrational to be allowed to vote, sign contracts, make business deals or even to decide what color socks you’ll wear in the morning.

    Honestly, we don’t need concentration camps for the left. We need day care camps for them.

    • Well said, bravo. +1 (Except for the Asteroid, i’m not taking an Asteroid because of their unlimited stupidity.

    • We are talking about the Australian Greens, who are largely the former Australian Communist Party rebadged and rebranded to appeal to the youth vote. One commentator noted the Greens as “idiots, imbeciles, and undergraduates”.

    • They are all for finding the cracks in the laws… but only if it benefits them and you are not able to defend yourself against it.

      I say we just give them an island. Since they don’t want weapons or a military/police force of any kind… I am sure they will be just fine.

      • B.D., I agree. Let’s see how Vlad the Idiot, and his compatriots, deal with the Lord of the Flies.

    • If we could just get the left wing nutcases to sign up for the next comet trip to the alien spacecraft hiding in the comet tail. I sure don’t want to wait till Hale-Bopp comes back around to collect them!

  4. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the 7.62 NATO come first? The U.S. military wanted a round ballisticly close to the M-2 round, but shorter for greater reliability in semi/automatic actions. This was possible because of improvements in powder since 1906. Anyway, I believe the 7.62 NATO became the .308 Winchester commercial round the same way the M-2 became the 30-06 Springfield. Not the other way around.

    • No, the .308 Winchester came first. The Army liked it because the shorter cartridge allowed for a faster cyclic rate of fire.

        • Tiddvina and Southern, I defer to you and I haven’t Googled a thing. Upon reflection, didn’t Winchester begin to develop the 7.62 NATO, but release the .308 Winchester first. The whole chicken and egg thing. But again, I may be wrong.

      • And the .30-06 came long before any of them, just in time for its use by American troops in WWI. Talk about a cartridge that was specifically designed for military use, yet the Aussies aren’t complaining about it? Idjits.

    • It was my understanding that the 7.62 NATO was developed with a thicker rim for better use in machine guns and a shorter overall length to reduce the amount of precious brass used during wartime. Modern powders enabled performance within approximately 100 fps of the .30-06 while achieving the primary goals.

  5. Well, that’ll be banned in about ten minutes, just like lever-release rifles in the UK.

    Grabbers don’t give a shit if you’re “complying”. They’ll just change the law to make you illegal again.

      • quote——————In a 3rd world shithole like england the individual has no rights.————-quote

        You got that backwards JW because when you point the finger at Britain you have 3 fingers pointed right back at your own shit hole country. At least over there they have workers rights, they have the right to health care and affordable drugs and the right to walk down the street and not get mowed down by a maniac with an assault rifle with a 100 round drum magazine. They also have affordable education something unknown in your shit hole country. They have retirement plans, almost extinct from an employer in your shit hole country. They get holidays off and paid vacations again almost extinct in your shit hole country. The get job retraining again almost extinct in your shit hole country. They do not spend 54 cents of every dollar on the military so they have money to repair roads and bridges while unsafe roads and bridges falling down and killing people are now the norm in your shit hole country. They had a green technology plan which they implemented immediately over a decade ago while we are still arguing over even what plan we will adopt. I would say that puts us at the top of the shit hole countries JW.

        Try again JW you never cease to make a fool out of yourself.

        • That’s why I don’t use a finger to point like an emaciated commie. I use a knife hand. Because it’s 5 times more effective at pointing out that you’re a retard and that the UK is a third world shithole.

        • Only assholes point with one finger. But I do have a finger I’d like to extend your way to let you know that I’m an asshole who doesn’t give a fuck about your opinion. It’s not widely considered a finger use to point with, unless it’s aimed in an upwards direction, with all the other fingers folded to a fist. Also, you present it with the back of your hand. Like this:

          https://media1.tenor.com/images/97eb120794007d525b46c6af3f1fd595/tenor.gif?itemid=5033018

          You know what I always find amusing about people like you, is you seem to think that after all these “military weapons” are “banned” that other things possibly even that you enjoy, like double sided fist sized dildos, might be banned too. Just cuz they feel like it. All your socialist heros did it. Oh, I almost forgot, here is the evidence that gun control does not work:

          https://media1.tenor.com/images/6df5dd00aac330d220793465cfc260b2/tenor.gif?itemid=12141556

        • ‘your shithole country’. Touched a nerve, didn’t I, vlad. You’ve been lying, nothing unusual from you, about living here. On the dole and with free time to troll another country.

        • “Vlad Teppes says,” Well no one gives a shit. Have anyone of you ever actually finished reading one of his posts? Well, maybe I do give a shit. About three sentences into one I go defecate.

        • Anddddddd … B.D. wins the Intertubez for best comment of the day!

          I am still laughing out loud!

        • The sweetest victory is when you told the truth and the proletariat were forced to face it. Their responses prove it.

        • Nah, the sweetest victory will be watching clowns like you take a swan dive out of a helicopter.

        • What’s going on Vlad? With all the silly little screeds you post, I thought your writing would at least show some kind of improvement. But it seems to be getting worse.

        • Vlad Tepid,

          I’ll say one thing, this site would be somewhat boring without your presence.

          As we have stated on this website before, Western European nations have a LOT of extra tax revenue available for their “free $hit” programs because the United States bankrolls their national defense. And while that was probably the right thing to do for the first 10 to 20 years after World War II (which decimated western European nations and left their infrastructure and economies in shambles), it has been entirely unnecessary for a long time: western European nations have been fully capable of bankrolling their own national defense for at least the last 35 years. If the United States had scaled back our national defense accordingly for the last 35 years, our fiscal situation and standard of living would be even better — significantly better at that — than it is now. Perhaps most importantly, if Uncle Sam had not been taking all that cash out of our pockets over the years for Europe’s national defense, our economy would be so hot that only a fool would claim to want/need Europe’s entitlements over the opportunities and standard of living in the good old U.S. of A.

          And, Vlad, your constant harping about the unparalleled destructive potential of semi-automatic rifles with 100 round magazines is a flat out lie. As I clearly illustrated in an earlier comment today: a spree-killer armed “only” with a commonly available pump-action shotgun, loaded with six (6) commonly available Magnum shotshells (which hold a total of 90 lethal projectiles), can easily expel all 90 lethal projectiles from those six (6) shot shells in six seconds. THAT destructive potential exceeds even your demonized semi-automatic rifle with a 100 round drum magazine (not even counting the fact that those 100 round drum magazines almost always jam well before they are empty). Why are you not demanding — DEMANDING I TELL YOU! — that government ban pump-action shotguns?

        • pwrserge,

          That seems like a waste of perfectly good helicopter (aviation) fuel. Why consume several dollars of aviation fuel when a single .22 LR cartridge is just as effective and costs less than five cents?

        • If you wake up worried that you might be mowed down by a machine gun every day, you either live in the middle east, or you are severely paranoid.
          This leaves you with 2 options.
          1. Move somewhere else. I hear Venezuela is nice.
          2) Go see a psychologist. You irrational fear of inanimate objects is stunting your ability to function.
          There is a third option. One that you seem incapable of using. Quit whining and live with the fact that not everyone agrees with your socialist utopian ideas. Which never work by the way.

  6. Doesn’t sound like a B I G deal. . Sounds pretty s l o w…like Aussie lawmakers😄

  7. I actually have wondered why a AR hasn’t been modified to do the same thing for gun hating states. Don’t get me wrong I am glad it hasn’t been because I would love to see the looks on Dems face if they passed a sweeping gun law just to have these roll off the assembly line the next day. Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to see that happen but this is something the French came up with could imagine if you took the American gun companies and let them run wild with designing “loophole” guns on a national level. If California can’t stop companies without passing a new set of gun laws a year then the federal government won’t stand a chance.

      • This one locks back after each shot, so you only have to hit the release to chamber a new round. These have been sold in England, as I recall, for quite some time. All Franklin did was to pull the gas tube so the rifle doesn’t cycle at all, while these cycle “half way.”

        • Yep, same as when I shot a buddy’s new AR build and it didn’t cycle because the gas tube wasn’t pinned properly. Nevertheless, the CA-7 isn’t worth the effort. After trying one, I wouldn’t take it if someone offered it to me for free.

        • They were sold in England. The sale and possession of both “lever release” and M.A.R.S. rifles were banned for in England earlier this year.

          If memory serves, TTAG covered the ban.

      • Haz, I don’t know. I had to manually cycle the bolt the first M16A1 I was issued. It was also the best shooting M16 I was ever issued. Except on the automatic rifle range. Kind of sucked there. In fact, every M-16 I was ever issued sucked. Wait! M-16. Sucked. I repeat myself.

  8. They delude themselves thinking they are free and at liberty. They elected masters who will ban this gun tomorrow because someone wet their pa btw over the caliber it comes in.

    How sad.

    • But but but they don’t have to worry about gun crimes in a country that didn’t have that many to begin with and was following declining trends in violent crime before the sweeping bans, and are under an amount of surveillance that would give the NSA wet dreams. They aren’t kept awake at night by the thought of people saying “boys can’t be girls” on social media and pugs doing Nazi salutes, unlike the US and it’s pesky Constitution….
      (Sarc)

  9. To any fence sitters lurking here, this is why we oppose gun control;
    they won’t stop with astetics, magazine compacity, action type, caliber, etc. they will winge and cry until they get their way and ban all firearms, whatever their purpose or use. The key word of gun control is CONTROL.

    Anybody with even the slightest bit of common sense can see this is the slippery slope happening in real time.

  10. I give it a month before the Australian government bans it. I’m honestly surprised they haven’t already banned ALL centerfire firearms and all centerfire ammunition that doesn’t go into a shotgun. That will be the next thing there: complete total blanket ban on centerfire rifles and there ammunition. Making ALL rifles that shoot any kind of centerfire rifle cartridge blanket illegal. Complete and total ban of EVERY SINGLE rifle in the country. No grandfathering.

    Of course our democratic presidential candidates will have to go even father since there current proposed ban isn’t far enough. They will have to call for banning rifles. ALL rifles. Centerfire, rimfire, pinfire, needlefire semi, bolt, lever, and single shot; breech and muzzleloader. With door to door confiscation.

    • As I recall, one of their Muslim terrorist attacks involved a shot gun. And though shot guns are fine for some purposes, at others they kind of suck. Like long range shots on dingos killing your sheep.

      • The shotgun in that case had the barrel shortened to the end of the magazine tube and stock cut at the base of the wrist. A highly restricted firearm was made more illegaller.

  13. “The Verney-Carron Speedline can fire six shots in about three seconds and is being sold with little restriction because of what its opponents say is a legal loophole.”

    Until Jerry Miculek gets a hold of it.

  14. Ok I just got back to Australia from several months away but I had not heard about this rifle before this. Not sure if I have room in the safe for it but I can try.

    As Southern said above the “greens” are just communists by another name who pretend to care about environment to hook young people.

    Writing this at rest break on way to late season deer hunt with two 30-06 in the 4wd.

      • Hi Southern,
        Maybe I wasn’t clear. I am now back in Qld Australia after about 3 months away. Trying to get deer for meat before knee replacement next week.

  15. Would it be possible to have the release of the trigger be the thing that releases the bolt? Sorta like a binary trigger for semi semis?

    • That sounds suspiciously like an open-bolt semi-automatic system. With that system, the bolt is retained to the rear by the sear, is released by the trigger to fly forward under spring pressure and fire the cartridge, whereupon the bolt is forced back by recoil energy to be captured once again by the sear and held there, and so on.

      It’s been done. Governments frown upon such devices, as they’re just one simple step removed from an open-bolt machine gun.

  16. I know someone in Australia who is licensed for a Glock 19. She can keep it in a lock box bolted down in her home, and transport to a shooting range. Gun and ammo locked up separately. That’s it though. There is no possibility of having it on her person when out and about. There is no concealed carry for mere civilians. Took a long time to get it, hoops and loops and crawling thru the red tape. Multiple permits. Cash money. An ugly business to put it mildly.

    Australians have had to be very clever in gun design trying to get around insane bans, such as on pump action shotguns. They’ve come up with some impressive lever actions, for example. Naturally the forces who believe that guns cause humans to engage in bad behaviors move rapidly to ban each new invention or adaptation.

    Even with all that going on, Australians today own many more firearms than they did when the ban and forced buy-backs began in 1996. Australia continues to have a strong problem with organized crime and gangs having guns. Including the ocassional home made sub-machine gun.

    Stupid laws, results as anyone with a lick of sense on the issue would expect.

  17. I have read that even possessing the New Z. shooters manifesto is illegal and jail time. I believe they have already charged a guy for sharing it with others.

    New Z. and Australia have some nerve lecturing anyone about Freedom.

  19. I’m an American but lived in Australia for years. The primary problem in my mind is that regardless of how remote parts of Australia are, there is a majority urban population living in a few population centers along the coast, essentially no different than what you would find in London or New York City or Berlin or (insert name of any major “progressive thinking” city), which has repeatedly chosen political masters who have the mentality of kindergarden staff and it has created a nanny state. And if you gave Australian citizens all manner of freedom, that same urban population would immediately start clamoring to have their new freedoms “properly regulated” or eliminated.

    • Sounds like the Aussies are more intelligent than the Americans. Why don’t you leave and come home to insanity you would love dodging all the bullets here at the malls and if you survived die years before your time due to lack of health care and life saving drugs.

      • I said I lived there for years. I returned to the USA, specifically TEXAS, after my wife died a few years ago. And for what it’s worth, the only time I ever saw anyone get shot was in a Sydney suburb.

      • The healthcare thing again. Americans get the drugs first because almost all are developed here. All the European drug companies do their R&D in the US. The rest of the world gets those drugs only after the companies have recouped their R&D costs or the patents expire.

        And I have been going to malls for 50 years and never encountered all the bullets you claim are flying about. I was in Chicago this summer to see the White Sox and the only noise I heard was when James McCann and Jose Abreu hit home runs. I was sorely disappointed that nobody shot at me.

        • Well, it’s true that there is no “lack of health care and life saving drugs” in the US. But you can’t force other people (at gunpoint through government agents) to pay for them when you need them! You have to buy your own health insurance. Disgraceful!
          Health care provided involuntarily by others is a human right! I shouldn’t pay for it. Or for dental care, hair care and clothing and shoe care. Just ask Bernie.

      • How did that comment make Australia seem smarter than the U.S.?

        It was literally the opposite, stating that inner city dwellers need to appoint people to positions of power to feel safe, regardless of the country. It had nothing to do with I.Q. at all actually… more of a comment regarding freedom and safety or right to self defense.

        I guess you can turn anything into your agenda when you want to punish innocent people, right Vlad?

        The most amusing part of all your bullshit here, is your name. How many hundreds of thousands did your hero murder to push his agenda? Did he not have a reputation for cruelty?

        Tuck your fucken tail loser. Your days here are numbered and no one is putting up with your psycho babble. Your entire existence here simply because of your name is utter hypocrisy.

        • I think Vlad is one of those infamous Russian Trolls. His posts sound like old Soviet style propaganda. He us probably not one person.

        • I have to agree with both of you in that I believe Vladamere to be a Russian Bot and a troll to spread disinformation amongst us. It shows that it is not here to have a conversation about firearms, only act superior and condescending. The proper response to it is with a big “Yawn”.

    • You nailed it. Entire countries have been turned into shit holes due to the insanity that develops in large population centers and the left wing disease takes over. Humans don’t do well when they are all crowded together and the resulting insanity as they quickly become infected.

  20. Maybe even here we can benefit from innovation should neoNAZIs ever come to power again passing gun control.

    • Innovations like this will not do much good if the left controls the country because their desire is to totally ban all firearms completely.

  21. My goodness….another killing machine. ALMOST like that kiling machine..THE MACHETE. This tool massacred about one million Tutsies in Rwanda back in 1994. No guns,mind you and that was a blessing…guns hurt people.

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