Winchester 1911

The Winchester Model 1911 SL Shotgun was a self-loading, recoil-operated shotgun produced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company from 1911 to 1925. It was Winchester's first autoloading shotgun, but design flaws kept it from providing competition for the autoloading shotguns made by Remington Arms and Browning Arms Company. The novel method of charging the 1911 could be potentially lethal if done incorrectly. Shotgun cartridges of the time were often made of paper, which could make the cartridge body vulnerable to expansion when exposed to moisture in large quantities. If this happened in the 1911, the barrel would have to be cycled in order to open the chamber so that the swelled shotgun shell could be removed. Some users mistakenly cycled the barrel by placing the butt of the weapon against the ground and forcing the barrel down. In this position, the muzzle of the weapon would be pointing towards the face of the user, and the swelled shell could fire, injuring or killing the user. This safety issue led to the Model 1911 being nicknamed "the Widowmaker".  he sales of the "mechanically ill-fated" weapon lagged significantly behind those of Remington's and Browning's autoloaders, and Winchester ceased its production in 1925, after producing almost 83,000 of them. As recently as 2005, four people accidentally shot themselves with the 1911 while loading or clearing the weapon.