Armsel Striker

The Armsel Striker was designed in 1981 by Hilton R. Walker, a Zimbabwean citizen who subsequently emigrated to South Africa, taking the design with him. Production was undertaken by Armsel, and the shotgun was exported to several markets. The original action drew criticism for the bulk of its rotary cylinder, its slow reloading and flaws in the basic mechanism. Walker redesigned the weapon in 1989, deleting the cylinder rotation spring and adding automatic case ejection; the revised shotgun was marketed as the Protecta. The American manufacturer Cobray produced a copy sold as the SWD Street Sweeper between 1989 and 1993.

The defining feature of the Striker is its revolving cylinder. Because of the cylinder's size, it is not indexed by the trigger pull as on a conventional revolver but by a clock spring that must be wound by hand before firing. There is no automatic ejection: fired cases are cleared individually with an ejector rod mounted on the right side of the barrel, after which the cylinder is loaded one shell at a time and advanced by a lever at the rear of the weapon before the spring is rewound. The Protecta altered the mechanism considerably. The cylinder spring was deleted and the cylinder is instead indexed by rotating the barrel shroud and its attached foregrip, converting the weapon from semi-automatic to manual operation. The Protecta also introduced an ejection system that vents propellant gas into the cylinder to expel the previously fired case; the ejector rod was retained, as the final round must still be removed by hand. Licensed copies built by Sentinel Arms combined the spring-driven semi-automatic action of the Striker with the auto-ejection mechanism of the Protecta. The weapons were fitted with a top-folding stock and offered with three barrel lengths.

Recorded users include the Chilean Lautaro Special Operations Brigade, the Israel Police, the South African National Defence Force, the Sri Lankan Air Force and the People's Army of Vietnam. Variants comprise the original Armsel Striker; the Armsel Protecta, with simplified preparation for firing and improved reliability; the Armsel Protecta Bulldog, a shortened stockless version intended for building entry and vehicle crews; the Sentinel Arms Striker-12, a licensed and improved copy for the American market offered with an 18-inch barrel and in a stockless 7-inch form; the Cobray/SWD Street Sweeper, a lower-cost clone with limited parts commonality with the original design; and the Cobray/SWD Ladies Home Companion, a reduced-calibre derivative of the Street Sweeper whose trigger group is mated to a .410 bore or .45-70 Government cylinder and barrel. Following a 1993 proposal by the Brady Campaign, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen classified the Striker and Street Sweeper as destructive devices under the National Firearms Act the following year, placing their transfer and ownership under the regulation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.