Tag Archives: gwinn firearms

Return of the Arm Pistol

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Arguably the first large format AR-style pistol to hit the market is now set to make a return, no brace needed.

Firearms maverick Mack Gwinn Jr., a Vietnam-era Special Forces veteran, in the early 1970s acquired the rights to Colt-made IMP-221, a stockless, gas-operated bullpup pistol intended to provide aircrew with a compact survival gun chambered in .221 Fireball. While the Air Force had already scrapped the project, Gwinn made lemons into lemonade, adapting the design to use 5.56 NATO and accept standard AR mags, launching the Bushmaster Arm Pistol.

Bushmaster Armpistol ads started popping up in the early-1970s

The original Gwinn/Bushmaster Arm Pistol borrowed from both AR-15 and AK-47 designs, with its AR-style rotating bolt and AK-type long-stroke gas piston.

Based on the Colt IMP-221/ Air Force GUU-4/P air crew weapon originally designed at Eglin Air Force Base, the original Gwinn Firearms in Bangor, Maine produced the 5.56mm Bushmaster Arm Pistol “in limited quantities” for the USAF in the early 1970s before sending it to the consumer market. Just 20.63 inches long, the Arm Pistol had a lot of M16-style features in a very abbreviated bullpup format.

With the Arm Pistol long out of production and Bushmaster now in at least its third reincarnation since Gwinn sold the company in 1976, his son, Mack Gwinn III, has founded Maine-based Hydra Weaponry and returned a much-improved version of the design to production.

We caught up with the fine folks from Hydra at the recent 2024 NRA Annual Meetings in Dallas to “lay arm” on the new BMP-23.

Hydra feels the BMP-23 is the 5.56mm pistol that Gwinn Jr. would have built if he had access to today’s CNC machinery and technologically advanced materials.

End of a black rifle era

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Back in the early 1970s, there was really nobody in what is now known as the “black rifle” space other than Colt with its R6000 series rifles and carbines (the now extremely collectible “SP-1” AR-15 with no forward assist) and the hard-to-find (and often out of production) Armalite AR-180. Every now and then, an importer would bring over a few FALs, Valmets, or HKs, but that was it.

Sure, you could get a wood-stocked M1 carbine, a couple of different semi-auto M14 variants, or the Ruger Mini-14, but if you wanted an AR, you basically had to call Colt.

Then came Capt. Mack Gwinn, who started what was first Gwinn Firearms, located in Winston-Salem, NC, and then Quality Parts, and finally Bushmaster, after the name of their first marketable firearm, the AR-ish Bushmaster “Armpistol.”

Bushmaster Armpistol ads started popping up in the early-1970s

The company also marketed what was called the “Bushmaster Assault Rifle” for a time, with a pedigree that was very Stoner while steering clear of Colt’s patents

After Gwinn left the company, Bushmaster eventually began making legit Stoner/Sullivan-style AR clones in the early 1980s, along with Olympic Arms, which were basically the first two non-Colt names in that space.

Under Richard Dyke, the company moved to Windham, Maine, and kept at it until 2006, when he sold the firm to a holding company that eventually became the terribly-run Remington Outdoors. Fast forward to 2011 and “Big Green” had made the decision to move the concern “lock, stock, and barrel” out of Maine to its factory in Ilion, New York, leaving behind many of the old workers and the factory in Windham.

Dyke, only days out of his non-compete agreement, rebooted the old Windam factory (which he had the title to) as Windam Weaponry staffed it with experienced former Bushmaster employees looking for jobs, and just three months later was in production, making WW-branded ARs.

Windham Weaponry did a great job with “retro” builds such as these 20-inch A1s

This kept on trucking for 12 years, until Dyke passed away in March. Now, Windam says everything has basically gone south and the company has closed its doors, headed for “a full liquidation which should happen within the next month or so.”

Of course, Bushmaster has since died out and then been rebooted in Carson City, Nevada as a subsidiary of Franklin Armory, but, with AR production ending in Windam after 30 years, it just seems like the end of an era.

Plus, it leaves Maine without a major gunmaker for the first time in a very long time. The state had 21 other Type 7 FFLs – firearm manufacturers – on record in 2021, the most recent figures available, but none produced more than 100 guns, and most made under a dozen guns.