#cobray

The Armsel Striker, Cobray Street Sweeper, and Ladies Home Companion

Invented by a Rhodesian national named Hilton Walker in 1981, the Armsel Striker is a unique weapon in that it is a modern revolving shotgun.  Chambered in 12 gauge, what looks like drum magazine is actually a revolving cylinder with twelve chambers, thus holding 12 shells. Shells are individually loaded into the cylinder on the right hand side of the weapon, with an ejection rod included for ejecting empty shells. Later models replaced the ejection rod with an auto ejector. The Striker has a double action only firing mechanism, meaning a pull of the trigger both rotates the cylinder and fires a shell. This led to a problem in early prototypes because the large, heavy cylinder of the Striker resulted in a very heavy trigger pull. To compensate, Walker integrated a clockwork mechanism which aided the rotation of the cylinder. The mechanism was manually wound for it to work.  Other interesting features include a folding buttstock, forward grip, and construction mostly made from stamped metal and plastic, making the Striker very economical.

The Striker did have some drawbacks, namely that it was a time consuming process to load the weapon and wind it’s clockwork mechanism. Regardless the Armsel striker has been adopted by the South African military and police. In the United States a company called Cobray manufactured a low quality clone called the Street Sweeper. Cobray was a company known for producing low quality copies of other firearms, dirt cheap derringers, and some original designs of questionably quality that were often unique, bizarre, and mostly impractical. Today Cobray has been succeeded by Leinad. Cobray experienced some legal troubles when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) classified the Armsel Striker as a destructive device, thus making it illegal without a special NFA license. With this designation, the Cobray Street Sweeper was likewise illegal since it was a clone of the Striker. Thus Cobray redesigned the Street Sweeper to conform with the law. The forward grip was removed as was the folding stock. More important, caliber was changed from 12 gauge shothell to .45-70, and later .410 shotshell/.45 Colt. With removal of the stock, forward grip, and change of caliber the new weapon was now legally considered a pistol, thus free of NFA  regulation. To avoid attention of the new weapon by the BATF and gun control groups the new weapon was given a more benign, less harmful sounding but very tongue in cheek name; The Ladies Home Companion.