The police in parts of India (including places like Bombay and other urban areas, as well as rural ones) are indeed known to carry Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III rifles; a design dating from 1907 (and some of the rifles they’re carrying are almost certainly WWI vintage). I belive the Pakistani and Bangladeshi police are have Lee-Enfields (as well as more modern equipment, obviously).
The SMLE rifle has the distinction of being the oldest miltary rifle still in official, non-ceremonial use, FWIW.
Purdeys have been making rifles since the early 1800’s. I think they tend to be used for hunting so I’m not sure they would qualify as weapons in the sense that the OP was looking for.
I’m not going to mention any 1920’s style weapons, that’s been done to death…
Mosin-Nagants have been used in the war in Afganistan. There has hardly been a year since the First World War when some variant of the Mosin-Nagant was not in use in a war somewhere.
Hm, hubby has a couple Moisin Nagants, I would have to ask him to dig them out and check on the serial numbers to get their ages. I happen to own a 1917 p.08 [wrongly called a luger] and a 1939 Sauer 38h. The Sauer is my normal carry weapon. I also have the cutest little Iver Johnson model 2 safety automatic that mrAru’s great grandmother carried to keep looters away from the house after the San Francisco earthquake and fire. She had particularly snide comments about that “dago looter” apparently. [I would say that half our bang sticks are modern and half antiques, being 50 years old or older.] I think other than the Brown Bess, they are all in usable condition. I suppose that in the theoretical sense the Bess would be the only legal weapon as it was the weapon they were discussing as the military militia firearm :dubious:
It’s an interesting OP question but why are so many people jumping in without bothering to read the other replies first? The thread’s only onto its second page.
It could go either way. The OP seems focused (almost fussily so) on weapons that are in active use by standing armies as supported battlefield weapons vs mainly ceremonial weapons. The old 60+ year old guns referenced are mainly used for training or ceremonial purposes they are not really main battlefield ordinance used to go out and efficiently kill the enemy. The B52 is all about this. If the OP is going to accept primarily ceremonial, training or accessory non-battlefield weapons the older guns would be the winners.
We are not talking about ceremonial weapons. We are talking about weapons used by serving police officers as their firearm for self defense purposes. We are talking about weapons used by serving soldiers.
I can’t quite see why a rifle carried by a Bangladeshi police officer or a LMG used by a Kenyan soldier is considered “ceremonial”.
The Lee-Enfield and Mosin-Nagant rifles already mentioned in the thread are active-use weapons, not purely ceremonial or training items - as Blake has noted.
At least in 2008 there was controversy in India over the use of aged Lee-Enfield rifles during the Mumbia terrorist attacks of that year. They were generally described as “303s” in the press (e.g. here), but they were probably post-WWII Ishapore 2A1s, which were freshly-built in the 1960s for 7.62mm. If you’re not being that picky you could stretch the Lee-Enfield’s genesis back to the Lee-Metford of 1888, which trumps the Colt 1911 by a couple of decades.
The 1902 Madsen light machine gun is or was still in use by Brazilian police until a couple of years ago, e.g. slide ten in this presentation at the Wall St Journal.
The thread got poisoned by a vague OP (I still don’t know if he’s looking for models of weapons, or the age of the specific weapon), and several people jumping in with their “witty” replies. Then the off-topic about people replying without reading the entire thread first.
So far the best answer, assuming the OP was looking for specific weapons, is the M116 Howitzer mentioned. Late-20s beats out the B-52.
Anyway, the question should really be cleaned up and re-posted because it is an interesting question and this thread is a total loss.
I did a bit of asking around amongst my fellow arms historians at the time and although the information was sketchy, it seemed they really were using .303 Lee-Enfields, although others noted there were some 2A1s there too (You can tell the difference between a .303 SMLE and a 7.62mm 2A1 by the magazine; the 2A1’s is square while the SMLE’s is rounded off).
The Indian Ordnance Factory Board still makes .303 ammo and .455 revolver ammo as well, so there’s undoubtedly some Colonial-era Webleys still in official use in India and in sufficient quantities for the government to consider it worthwhile making ammo for them.
Also, I was told the guards on the Trans-Siberian Railway were carrying Nagant M1895 revolvers a couple of years ago, so there’s another contender for “Really, reakky long-serving military/police weapon”.
And just for some historical trivia: The Brown Bess musket was in official use for more than 130 years, from 1722-1854 or thereabouts. I’m sure they were still going floating around in use for some time after that, just in the hands of people shooting at the British in various Colonial wars.
