Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on forgotten weapons dot com
I'm Ian McCollum and I am out here at the range today with
a South African 37mm stopper
appropriately named.
This was designed by a guy named Àndres Pique
Who has shown up, he was involved in several other
domestic South African arms production projects
in the 1970's and 1980's
and the origin of this, actually, well
it's for the South African police service,
and course they had 37mm riot control guns
for less lethal, rubber bullets sorta things,
tear gas, that type of application
and they had actually been used in grenade, uh, tear gas launchers
made by federal labs in the United States
that dated back all the way to the 1930's. Well by the 1980's,
the international embargo on South Africa prevented the South African police from being able to get parts
and do standard, routine maintenance on
their federal labs guns. So they
needed some replacement firearm that could take, well, take that thing's place.
So they turned to Àndres Pique and in 1980
he sat down, took two weeks, and developed: this guy.
There are only two different versions of this,
there's this one, with two pistol grips and there's a version that doesn't have the front grip.
So pretty much uhhhh, a
one and done sort of design, but it's simple,
and it works. We have a folding stock,
there's a little latch right here on the front,
that allows you to collapse the stock; there's a big
latch at the side, which if you are shooting this right handed would fall right under your thumb.
That pops the barrel open; load a round,
close it; manually cock the hammer
and fire away. So these were
adopted by the South African police in 1980.
They were manufactured from 82' all the way until 1999
and they are still in pretty common use today.
So, we're gonna try shooting some stuff.
We're gonna start with a couple of flash-bangs and then try some rubber baton rounds.
Here's the shell.
bloop
*Ian giggles*
*aside* Is it supposed to do that?
Alright, we need to change the camera so people can see that
Alright, we gotta do that again. So,
this is like a, uh, crowd control
bird bomb, and the different shells have different uh,
designated detonating ranges, so how long, there's a little
timed delay in this between
when you fire it and when it actually goes kuhploop.
This one is set for, uh, 70 metres, so
that fern is a little less than 70 metres
which means this is going to hit, delay a moment and then detonate.
And bounce up into the trees!
This is really cool stuff!
There is no extractor or ejector, there's just cut outs
on the side, so you just pull the case out by hand.
This thing is super freaking cool, these little rounds
have literally no recoil, they feel almost like firing
blanks, because they're
just meant to basically frighten and intimidate people.
When i say this detonates, it's like uh, almost
like a firecracker, it obviously doesn't produce shrapnel,
it's just there to make a bang, in or above
a crowd and get people to just disperse. So,
let's do another one, i don't think we've been able to see
either of the previous two detonations yet. hopefully with
this one we have a wide enough angle that you will. Sometimes,
it hits the backstop and ricochets.
There it goes!
*Ian and cameraman giggle*
Whup! That one went off!
We may have some U X O on the uhhh, shooting range here.
There it is
Whoooo! There we go!
So, cart, 37mm
cartridge 37 millimeter
aerial, sonic, so its just a bang. This is a 70 meter one.
Here we have the same thing , different colour coding,
that's a hundred and forty meter so this is the
"We're playing nice with the crowd" ammunition.
And if that doesn't make you go away, then they break out
the real stuff, uh, a riot irritant 37 millimeter
C S tear gas, and 37 mm
baton. This is a gigantic, uh
rubber, basically rubber bullet.
And uh, I have heard, allegedly
some of the guys would load baton rounds and then drop
D cell batteries down the front of the launcher as well
for extra persuasive power.
Those exploding airburst firecrackers we're pretty cool
Now we're gonna try the more serious thing, we have a baton round here,
and we have our human dummy, who is,
he's refused the order to disperse
probably because he has no legs, but that's not my problem.
Hopefully, this wont bounce back and hit me.
That hit him! Y'know I was expecting
the recoil from these to be pretty severe. I've
done some shooting with 37mm bean bags, and
those things kinda kicked. This? Is really not that bad.
So, that bean- rubber - bullet -
baton thing is this guy, and it,
I really quite honestly don't want to get hit by one of these.
That said, as long as you're on the shooting end of things,
this thing is really fantastically fun to shoot.
So a big thank you to my host, who made this all possible, hopefully you guys enjoyed watching,
and uh, tune in tomorrow for more forgotten weapons!