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The Striker is a shotgun designed in 1981 by Hilton R. Walker. It is 12-gauge combat shotgun using a revolving cylinder feed.
History
It was initially designed by a Rhodesian national, Hilton R. Walker in 1981, who then emigrated to South Africa; he brought his design for the shotgun with him as well.
Design Details
The Striker is a short-barreled shotgun with a bulky drum. The drum is affixed to the receiver and cannot be removed. Reloading is accomplished by a port on the right side of the gun, in a similar manner to a revolver with a loading gate. It has no stock, but has a drum advance lever on the rear which looked like a clip. The drum has a winding key on the front. There is a lever on the right side of the barrel, which is a manually-operated ejector. The weapon, while successful, had its flaws; reloading was very time-consuming, the weapon was extremely heavy, and it had functional problems.
In 1989, Walker redesigned the gun and renamed it the Protecta. The most obvious changes were the addition of a stock, the removal of the winding key and the addition of an automatic cartridge ejection system.
While it is sometimes described as semi-automatic, no version of the Striker uses the energy of firing to perform a full cycle of function: the Protecta comes closest by using propellant gas to eject spent casings, but the drum is advanced manually. Other versions are operated by a manually-tensioned spring in the drum.
In 1993, all 12-gauge versions of the Striker were classified as Destructive Devices by the ATF after lobbying from the Brady Campaign, the ATF ruling that they had "no sporting purpose" and so were not subject to the caliber exemption normally extended to shotguns. This ended any unregulated future sales of the shotgun. [1]
Variants
- Striker
This was the original shotgun design. It was a short-barrelled, drum-magazine fed shotgun. The Striker can be distinguished from its variants by the drum advance lever at the rear of the gun.
- Protecta
This was the improved version of the Striker. Similar to the Striker, it was fed by the drum, but had an automatic ejector. It can be distinguished by the lack of a winding key on the drum, and a raised rectangular shell deflector around the ejection port. Instead of a clockwork drum mechanism, it is manually advanced by twisting the foregrip to the right and back after each shot.
- Street Sweeper
A variant produced by the Cobray Company. It looked rather similar to the Protecta, but the Street Sweeper had a winding key and a much longer 18-inch barrel to meet the dimensional requirements of the National Firearms Act. Most legally registered Street Sweepers in the US no longer have this extended barrel, as there is no minimum barrel length requirement for a Destructive Device.
- Sentinel Arms Striker-12
This was a version of the Striker made by Sentinel Arms, later Penn Arms. It is basically an improved Street Sweeper with a thumb tab drum advance. Later versions also added the drum advance lever from the original Striker and the auto-eject mechanism and shell deflector from the Protecta. [2]
- Ladies Home Companion
A reduced caliber "pistol" version of the Street Sweeper shotgun made almost entirely from components of the existing shotgun. Chambered for two different calibers, .410 bore shotgun shells or .45-70 Government rifle cartridges: this was simply done with sub-caliber chamber inserts, as the loading port in the drum is still 12-gauge sized. Weighing in at eight pounds (3.63 kg) about as much as a pair of .357 Magnum Desert Eagles, it sold extremely poorly and is widely regarded as one of the most ridiculous handguns ever produced. [3]