{"id":8293,"date":"2017-10-25T13:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2017\/10\/25\/bm59-the-italian-m14\/"},"modified":"2020-07-22T15:16:41","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T20:16:41","slug":"bm59-the-italian-m14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2017\/10\/25\/bm59-the-italian-m14\/","title":{"rendered":"BM59: The Italian M14"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"youtubomatic-video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"580\" height=\"380\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/438rkWSylJo?controls=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Sold for $20,125 (transferrable).<\/p>\n<p>After World War Two, both the Beretta and Breda companies in Italy began manufacturing M1 Garand rifles. When Italy decided that they wanted a more modern selective-fire, magazine-fed rifle, they chose to adapt the M1 Garand to that end rather than develop a brand new rifle. Two Beretta engineers, Vittorio Valle and Domenico Salza, began work in 1957 on what would become the BM-59. Prototypes were ready in 1959, trials were run in 1960, and by 1962 the new weapon was in Italian military hands.<\/p>\n<p>The BM59 is basically an M1 Garand action and fire control system, but modernized. The caliber was changed to 7.62mm NATO, and the barrel shortened to 19.3 inches. A simple but effective selective fire system was added to the fire control mechanism, and the en bloc clips replaced with a 20-round box magazine (and stripped clip loading guide to match). A folding integral bipod was added to allow the rifle to be used for supporting fire on full auto, and a long muzzle device was added along with a gas cutoff and grenade launching sight to allow the use of NATO standard 22mm rifle grenades.<\/p>\n<p>In this form, the BM59 was a relative quickly developed and quite successful and well-liked rifle. In addition to the Italian military, it was purchased by Argentine, Algeria, Nigeria, and Indonesia. A semiautomatic version was made for the US commercial market and designated the BM62, and a small number of fully automatic BM-59 rifles &#8211; like the one in this video &#8211; were imported into the US before the 1968 Gun Control Act cut off importation of foreign machine guns.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! <a href=\"http:\/\/shop.bbtv.com\/collections\/forgotten-weapons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/shop.bbtv.com\/collections\/forgotten-weapons<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/InRangeTVShow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/InRangeTVShow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sold for $20,125 (transferrable). After World War Two, both the Beretta and Breda companies in Italy began manufacturing M1 Garand rifles. When Italy decided that they wanted a more modern selective-fire, magazine-fed rifle, they chose to adapt the M1 Garand to that end rather than develop a brand new rifle. Two Beretta engineers, Vittorio Valle&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2017\/10\/25\/bm59-the-italian-m14\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">BM59: The Italian M14<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":8294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[89,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14641,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8293\/revisions\/14641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}