 | |
| Company type | Firearms Manufacturer |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1995 |
| Founder | Mark Serbu |
| Headquarters | |
| Owner | Mark Serbu |
| Website | http://www.serbu.com/ |
Serbu Firearms is an American manufacturer of firearms based in Tampa, Florida, founded by mechanical engineer Mark Serbu. [1]
After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of South Florida in 1990, Mark Serbu found employment building flight simulators, founding Serbu Firearms as a part time occupation in 1995. In 1999, he quit his job as a flight simulator designer entirely to dedicate to his firearm business full-time. [1] [2]
The company is known for manufacturing simple and affordable .50 BMG rifles, such as the single-shot bolt-action BFG-50, [3] [4] the semi-automatic BFG-50A [5] [6] and the single-shot break-action RN-50. [7] [8] [4]
Serbu Firearms is also noted for its now discontinued production of the Super-Shorty, a compact 12 or 20 gauge pump-action shotgun with front and rear pistol grips. In the United States, it is regulated as what is called Any Other Weapon under the National Firearms Act. [9] [10]
In 2013, Serbu refused to sell their model BFG-50A semi-automatic .50 rifles to the New York City Police Department after the passage of the NY SAFE Act that classified their weapon as an assault weapon. Instances like this, in which a firearms manufacturer refuses to supply state entities with weapons that are forbidden to their private citizens, have become more common. Following their refusal to sell the rifles, Serbu then had T-shirts printed with an image of the classic Seinfeld character The Soup Nazi, played by actor Larry Thomas, and the words "No Serbu For You". Thomas, a gun control advocate, contacted Facebook and the T-shirt printers to have the shirts removed. Serbu has since removed the image of Thomas and replaced it with one of himself. [11] [12] [13]
On April 9 2021, firearms YouTuber Scott DeShields Jr., known for his channel Kentucky Ballistics, suffered critical injuries while recording a video shooting the model RN-50 rifle using old .50 BMG SLAP rounds. The gun exploded as DeShields fired the last round, sending shrapnel into his face and torso, lacerating his jugular vein, breaking his nose and puncturing his right lung. He went through extensive emergency surgery at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and was discharged after eight days, referring to the malfunction as a "freak accident" and blaming it on a faulty cartridge. [14] [15] [16] Mark Serbu released a video statement on the incident in his YouTube channel, to "assure people that the RN-50 is a safe gun", saying "It's a terrible thing. I’ve got 10,000 guns out there with my name on them and I don’t want anybody getting hurt with them". [17] [18] DeShields later recreated the accident with a remotely-fired RN-50, and found that other rounds from the same batch were also loaded to excessive pressure. [19]
A firearm is any type of gun that uses an explosive charge and is designed to be readily carried and operated by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries.
In firearm designs, the term single-shot refers to guns that can hold only a single round of ammunition inside and thus must be reloaded manually after every shot. Compared to multi-shot repeating firearms ("repeaters"), single-shot designs have no moving parts other than the trigger, hammer/firing pin or frizzen, and therefore do not need a sizable receiver behind the barrel to accommodate a moving action, making them far less complex and more robust than revolvers or magazine/belt-fed firearms, but also with much slower rates of fire.
A semi-automatic rifle is an auto-loading rifle that fires a single cartridge with each pull of the trigger. It uses part of the fired cartridge's energy to eject the case and automatically loads another cartridge into its chamber. This is in contrast to bolt-action or lever-action rifles, which require the user to manually chamber a new round before they can fire again, and fully automatic rifles, which fire continuously until the trigger is released.
John Moses Browning was an American firearm designer who developed many varieties of military and civilian firearms, cartridges, and gun mechanisms, many of which are still in use around the world. He made his first firearm at age 13 in his father's gun shop and was awarded the first of his 128 firearm patents on October 7, 1879, at the age of 24. He is regarded as one of the most successful firearms designers of the 19th and 20th centuries and a pioneer of modern repeating, semi-automatic, and automatic firearms.
BFG may refer to:
The .50 BMG, also known as 12.7×99mm NATO, and designated as the 50 Browning by the C.I.P., is a .50 in (12.7 mm) caliber cartridge developed for the M2 Browning heavy machine gun in the late 1910s, entering official service in 1921. Under STANAG 4383, it is a standard service cartridge for NATO forces. The cartridge itself has been made in many variants: multiple generations of regular ball, tracer, armor-piercing (AP), incendiary, and saboted sub-caliber rounds. The rounds intended for machine guns are made into a continuous ammunition belt using metallic links.
The National Firearms Act (NFA), 73rd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236 was enacted on June 26, 1934, and currently codified and amended as I.R.C. ch. 53. The law is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes an excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. The NFA is also referred to as Title II of the federal firearms laws, with the Gun Control Act of 1968 ("GCA") as Title I.
A semi-automatic firearm, also called a self-loading or autoloading firearm, is a repeating firearm whose action mechanism automatically loads a following round of cartridge into the chamber and prepares it for subsequent firing, but requires the shooter to manually actuate the trigger in order to discharge each shot. Typically, this involves the weapon's action utilizing the excess energy released during the preceding shot to unlock and move the bolt, extracting and ejecting the spent cartridge case from the chamber, re-cocking the firing mechanism, and loading a new cartridge into the firing chamber, all without input from the user. To fire again, however, the user must actively release the trigger, and allow it to "reset", before pulling the trigger again to fire off the next round. As a result, each trigger pull only discharges a single round from a semi-automatic weapon, as opposed to a fully automatic weapon, which will shoot continuously as long as the ammunition is replete and the trigger is kept depressed.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was a prominent American manufacturer of repeating firearms and ammunition. The firm was established in 1866 by Oliver Winchester and was located in New Haven, Connecticut. The firm went into receivership in 1931 and was bought by the Western Cartridge Company, a forerunner of the Olin Corporation. The Winchester brand name is still owned by the Olin Corporation, which makes ammunition under that name. The Winchester name is also used under license for firearms produced by two subsidiaries of the Herstal Group – FN Herstal of Belgium and the Browning Arms Company of Ogden, Utah.
Laurence Tomashoff, known professionally as Larry Thomas, is an American actor, best known for his guest role as Yev Kassem/the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. In addition to making personal appearances as the Soup Nazi, Thomas has appeared in a number of films, TV shows, and commercials, and appears at autograph-signing shows across the country.
The Barrett M82 is a recoil-operated, semi-automatic anti-materiel rifle developed by the Australian-owned company Barrett Firearms Manufacturing and produced in the United States.
"The Soup Nazi" is the 116th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, which was the sixth episode of the seventh season. It first aired in the United States on November 2, 1995.
The .50 Caliber BMG Regulation Act of 2004 is a law in the state of California that effectively banned all .50 BMG-caliber rifles from being sold in the state. The law took effect on January 1, 2005.
The .416 Barrett (10.4×83mm), centerfire rifle cartridge is a proprietary bottlenecked centrefire rifle cartridge designed in 2005. It is an alternative to the large-caliber .50 BMG in long-range high-power rifles. It was designed in response to a request for a medium/heavy rifle cartridge combination that was issued from Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division in late 2004.
The M30 Luftwaffe Drilling ("triple") was a survival weapon issued to Luftwaffe pilots during World War II. It was used by airmen operating in Northern Africa. The M30 was intended to be used for hunting and self-defense against a variety of natural predators.
The Serbu Super-Shorty is a compact, stockless, pump action shotgun chambered in 12-gauge. The basic architecture of most of the production models is based on the Mossberg Maverick 88 shotgun, with Mossberg 500 and Remington 870 receivers also available. The shotgun features a spring-loaded, folding foregrip. A 20-gauge model is available on special order.
The Roberti–Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989 (AWCA) is a California law that bans the ownership and transfer of over 50 specific brands and models of firearms, which were classified as assault weapons. Most were rifles, but some were pistols and shotguns. The law was amended in 1999 to classify assault weapons by features of the firearm. Firearms that were legally owned at the time the law was passed were grandfathered if they were registered with the California Department of Justice. The law was overturned in June 2021 in Miller v. Bonta; the ruling is stayed pending appeal.
To buy a firearm in France, in line with the European Firearms Directive, a hunting license or a shooting sport license is necessary depending on the type, function and magazine capacity of the weapon.
Ukrainian law allows firearm ownership on may-issue basis. With approximately 10 civilian firearms per 100 people, Ukraine is the 88th most armed country in the world per capita, and 22nd overall.