M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle - Criminal and Law Enforcement Use

Criminal and Law Enforcement Use

Although the Colt Monitor version of the BAR failed to interest U.S. civilian buyers in the midst of the Depression, the underworld was a lot more interested: in 1936, the going price for a black-market Colt Monitor was $5,000, with military BARs going for somewhat less. The Army's M1918 was a favorite of gangster Clyde Barrow, who obtained his examples through periodic robberies of Army National Guard armories in the Midwest. Barrow liked to use armor-piercing (AP) .30-06 ammunition he obtained from armory stores, and frequently modified his BARs to suit his own needs. Barrow taught his 90-lb. girlfriend Bonnie Parker to fire the M1918 as well, and by all accounts the latter was an excellent BAR operator. Parker used a M1918 on full-automatic to pin down unsuspecting law officers after the latter confronted the gang at a house in Joplin, Missouri. A Missouri highway patrolman at the scene, forced to dive for cover behind a substantial oak tree after Bonnie Parker opened up on him, would later state: "That little red-headed woman filled my face with splinters on the other side of that tree with one of those damned guns!".

As the use of automatic weapons by gangster elements in the United States became more widespread, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover ordered the FBI to acquire and commence regular training with automatic shoulder weapons, including the Thompson submachine gun and the BAR. For its BARs, the FBI turned to Colt, which sold 90 Colt Monitor automatic machine rifles to the agency. Some of the FBI's Monitors were distributed to FBI field offices for use as support weapons if needed on a particular operation, while the remainder were retained at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia for training purposes. Colt sold an additional 11 Colt Monitors to the U.S. Treasury Department in 1934, while 24 guns were sold to state prisons, banks, security companies, and accredited city, county, and state police departments.

Although it has sometimes been alleged that the M1918 or M1918A2 Browing Automatic Rifle was used by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in their wild shootout with Los Angeles police on 17 May 1974, no SLA members ever used such a weapon. The confusion arose out of Browning's decision in the 1970s to also designate its semiautomatic hunting rifle the Browning BAR. The SLA converted a .30-06 Browning BAR hunting rifle and a .244 Remington Model 742 to automatic fire by crudely filing down the sear, and it was these weapons that were used in the shootout.