John Browning’s Guns Hit The Bull’s-Eye

One day in 1889, John Browning was on a firing range when he noticed that when a friend fired his rifle, a clump of weeds in front of the muzzle swayed with the blast.

“His inventor’s mind immediately told him that this represented energy which might well be put to productive use,” David Miller wrote in “The History of Browning Firearms.” “That night, John designed a rudimentary gas-operated gun in his head.”

The next day, he had a prototype of a rifle that automatically reloaded.

This became the Colt 1895.

Suddenly the U.S. Marines had a huge upgrade from the hand-cranked Gatling…-[source]