wobblinwheel Posted March 2, 2011 Report Share Posted March 2, 2011 After participating in this forum for the last few months, after buying my Colt/Umarex M4 Carbine, it has suddenly dawned on me WHY I bought it! My only rifle I owned at the time was an antique US Springfield .45-70 "trapdoor" rifle. Not much good for "plinking" at about $2.00 a shot! So I decided to buy a .22, but I wanted to find the one I bought back in the MID 1970'S. Somewhere around 1977, I was really into black powder replica shooting. That's when I picked up my first NAVY ARMS catalog. At this time these guys made replica firearms of just about ANYTHING. Believe it or not Navy Arms made .22 caliber replicas of the original Colt M-16 rifle AND the AK-47! I bought the M-16, and my brother bought the AK. Obviously, the Viet-Nam War had a lot to do with this. Somewhere over the years, we both wound up selling our rifles, but I do remember the Navy Arms M-16 was a really FUN gun to shoot. I remember it looked IDENTICAL to the first M-16 rifles used in the jungle. How many of you knew a company was making a "TACTICAL" .22 m-16 RIFLE IN 1977?? Maybe it didn't catch on because we didn't know what the hell 'TACTICAL" was back then! (or why we wanted one). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deucegunner Posted March 7, 2011 Report Share Posted March 7, 2011 I just joined this site and mentioned the exact rifle you are talking about in my Introduce Yourself post as being the rifle that got me interested in tactical .22s near 30 years ago now. Those rifles were made by an Italian firearms manufacturer called Armi Jaeger. The M-16 replica was the AP-74. The AK replica was (and maybe still is) last imported into the USA by Mitchell Arms. I remember being able to shoot near ragged hole 10 shot groups at 25 yds (longest distance I had access to at the time) offhand with that rifle. Only gripe I had with it was the 15 rd mag it came with it, that had to be used because I guess that was the most Jaeger could make fit in the 20 rd simulated M-16 mag sized body, and nothing existed at the time to modify. They were quite nice, but I believe I traded it off for a 10/22 because 25-30 rd mags for those were just starting to be introduced. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michigan Joe Posted March 8, 2011 Report Share Posted March 8, 2011 There is a picture of the Armi here a little down the page. http://www.thefirearmsforum.com/showthread.php?t=46591 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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