Vintage Trombone-Action Marlin pop guns
Back around the turn of the century, slide-action rifles were all the rage. You see this was before the age of the reliable semi-auto and many makers had jumped on the pump gun bandwagon. No less a company than J. Marlin’s firearms factory was no exception, turning out no less than a half dozen models before World War Two.
In the 1900s, if you wanted a fast handling rifle, you went pump action. With no reliable semi-automatics on the market, bolt-actions reserved for military use, and lever actions seen by many to be a holdover from the “Old West” the slide or pump-action rifle was cutting edge for the time. Companies from Remington to Winchester were fast on the slide gun concept, marketing both plinking guns for sideshow shooting galleries and small game hunters, and versions in larger calibers to put meat on the table and vanquish predators on both two and four legs.
In a move to give the public what they wanted, Marlin started work on pump-action rifles around 1905. The company made pump-action shotguns for almost 90 years, beginning a decade before that date, so they had the basics of the technology down pat. In all they made eight models of these takedown capable guns before the Great Depression shut the line down on these guns, which were often referred to in ads of the day as “Trombone Action.”
