Carcano Rifle

The Carcano is an Italian family of bolt-action, en bloc clip-fed military rifles and carbines, designed in 1890 by Salvatore Carcano at the Turin Army Arsenal, formally approved by the Kingdom of Italy in March 1892 and first issued to troops in the spring of 1894, remaining Italy's standard service rifle from that year until 1981. Chambered for the 6.5x52mm Carcano cartridge and loaded via a six-round en bloc clip using a modified Mauser-type bolt action combined with a Mannlicher-pattern magazine, the rifle measured roughly 1,289 millimeters overall with a 780 millimeter barrel, and between five and six million examples were produced across its long production life, seeing service in both World Wars and numerous smaller conflicts. The Carcano is widely known outside Italy chiefly because a Carcano rifle was the weapon Lee Harvey Oswald used to assassinate United States President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963, an event that later contributed to the passage of the American Gun Control Act of 1968.