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Jack Warne spent over 50 years in the gun industry across two continents. (Photo: Warne Scope Mounts)

Firearms designer and gun culture legend John “Jack” Llewellyn Warne, responsible for the birth of at least three iconic shooting industry brands, has died at age 96.

Raised in the small town of Kimba, South Australia, a 23-year-old Warne went on to found Sporting Arms Limited, best known as Sportco, in 1947. At the time, Sportco was the only private gun maker in Australia and over the next three decades produced dozens of rifle models, with Warne at the drawing board for their designs.

Of course, he would later leap the Pacific in a single bound and, with his son, found Kimber of Oregon and Warne scope mounts.

Vale, Jack. You were one of a kind.