The SAFN, aka FN-49, is one of the classic post-war European battle rifles, and was sold to nine different countries in the early 1950s before the FAL became FN's primary combat rifle offering. What is often forgotten is that despite being limited to a fixed 10-round magazine, nearly half of all FN-49s produced were actually fully automatic AFN-49s. The Belgian Army, Luxembourg Army, Luxembourg Gendarmerie, and Belgian Congo all purchased the automatic pattern. So today, we're going to take a look at how it differs from the regular SAFN that we are used to seeing.

Interestingly, a batch of the Luxembourg Gendarmerie rifles were imported into the US without anyone realising that they were automatic until hey arrived and were being unpacked. InterArms went to the IRS (the NFA was a tax law administered by the Treasury; this was before the formation of the ATF) and proposed removing the selector levers and auto sears, as well as milling off their attachment points on the receivers. The IRS agreed that this would be an acceptable conversion to render the guns legally semiautomatic only, and the changes were made before the rifles were sold. They remain on the US collector market today as an interesting example of legal conditions prior to the adoption of a pointless and punitive decree of "once a machine gun, always a machine gun".

Many thanks to the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels for access to this very cool piece! Check them out here:

https://www.klm-mra.be/en/