The crackling of a campfire. The feel of worn leather. The sizzle and sear of a steak. The dry dust in the wind and smoke in the air.
While John Wayne Westerns don’t have the draw they used to, you’ll still find their themes all over American media, from the overt Yellowstone to the more-subtle Star Wars.
The mythology of the Old West can be infectious, and even those with no love for country music or cows can find themselves drawn to that transitional time in history — that space immediately before and after slavery all the way to industrialization.
And there isn’t a gun more emblematic of the American frontier than the lever gun — how the West was won.
Though a cynic might say modern lever actions are made in anticipation of bans, cynics always say that sh*t about anything that isn’t automatic. It’s true that they’re legal in every state in the Union, but that’s not a downside.
Today, they’re made much better — lever actions were originally designed and produced in the days where the custom labors of man were cheap but the precision and predictability of machines were expensive. Now, even mid-level companies have access to machines only available to major automakers just a few short years ago.
It’s also fun to run cartridges and calibers of the past you wouldn’t otherwise entertain in yet-another-AR, like .30-30 Winchester you see here, or .45-70.
And while virtually all major modern racecar drivers are running automatics that produce better performance than manuals, a stick shift is still fun as hell to run — and a lever action is like a stick shift on a gun.
It seems fitting that in another time of transition, a place where you can feel the future but can’t quite touch, that lever-action rifles are having another moment.
ROSSI R95 TRIPLE BLACK SPECS
- Caliber: .30-30 Winchester
- Capacity: 5 + 1
- Barrel Length: 16.5 inches
- Overall Length: 35.5 inches
- Height: 7.4 inches
- MSRP: $1,288
| BassPro | $1,099 |  |
| Guns.com | $962 | |
| Bud’s Gunshop | $930 (CASH) | |
TRIPLE BLACK
With all this talk of Americana, why does Rossi, bellowing from Brazil, make our cut? It’s actually appropriate that the Rossi is made in Brazil. Not because of their improved facilities and cold-hammer-forged barrels (though they help), but because Brazil is a spiritual successor to America.
Brazil’s bustling bovine boom followed ours. This inflection to the Wild West lives on in there, imported by former Americans themselves. It’s been said all of the stereotypes foreigners have of America are actually true in Brazil, and that includes their love of cowboys and gauchos.
With the R95 Triple Black, Rossi is doing their best to bridge the gap between the future and the past. It combines the classic lever look with some practical Picatinny upgrades, and even a threaded barrel.
Our R95 example is chambered in .30-30 Winchester, but by the time you’re reading this you’ll be able to get a bigger bore .45-70 in the same.
It has a right-side loading gate to fill the tube, which is traditional but not exactly the most ergonomic choice for most. Similarly, the crossbolt safety isn’t hard to hit but isn’t as ambidextrous as it could be. Speaking of the safety, when it’s engaged it prevents the hammer from touching the firing pin, making the whole lowering-the-hammer-when-hot thing far more safe and far less stressful.
The included peep sights are quite nice, but also easy to remove if you don’t want the clutter.
CUSTOMIZING & OUTFITTING
While the Rossi R95 Triple Black is cross-compatible with already-established Marlin 1895 stocks and accessories, manufacturers like Midwest Industries and Ranger Point Precision already have you covered anyway. Want it skeletonized and covered with M-LOK? You can do it. Attaching accessories like lights is one of the places where the aftermarket brings a clear advantage over the standard factory offering.
But the Rossi stock is sufficient in most cases, the extra-long top Picatinny rail doing a lot of lift. As the name implies, the finish on the furniture is all black. Black enough that upon initial inspection you’d actually suspect they’re synthetic, but it’s all real wood under the hood.
Still, some modifications were made. One place for improvement was with the antiquated sling studs. Just fine in grandpa’s time, but we wanted some more-advanced ergonomics. Two QD sockets were sunk into the stock, one on the upper-right-rear and the other forward and left. The new positions not only allow it to lay flatter on the chest when hands-free, but it also enhances using the sling as a shooting aid.
There was some debate about optics. On the one hand, an LPVO would look more classic, but it was determined a dot sight plus magnifier makes more sense with the 7.62×39-like ballistics of .30-30 fired from a 16.5-inch barrel. If Rossi could thread the needle between the historic and new, we can too. An EOTech EXPS 3-0 paired with a G43 flip-side magnifier would end up being the answer.
Also from EOTech is the OGL – On-Gun Laser, which took home a SHOT Show Award back in 2023 and graced the cover of RECOIL Issue 66.
And, of course, we gotta have a light. A SureFire M640DFT Pro Turbo has the lumens we’re looking for paired with the candela we want for throw, and it’s a snap to run both the WML and OGL with a dual switch. A dual-fuel light, this SureFire Turbo can run off either a pair of CR123s or the provided rechargeable 18650. The SureFire was sunk directly in the side of the stock with screws, and a Picatinny was placed on the opposite side for the dual switch to ride.
It’d practically be a crime to not suppress a lever action with a threaded barrel — it can be exceptionally quiet with no gas expressing from the ejection port. One of my favorite things about silencers is that virtually all available are made in America. It’s one of the firearms frontiers where it’s still possible to go from a garage shop to a giant. An accidental advantage, and unintended positive side effect of NFA items, is the relatively limited imports. Manufacturing is essentially domestic-only, keeping the Chinese cheapies away and at bay.
Anechoic, featured in RECOIL Issue 74, is a great up-and-comer. They’re bigger than a garage but not yet a giant; their silencers are nicely engineered. While the all-titanium affair of an AnechoX suppressor isn’t the best on something higher pressure or with a faster rate of fire, with five rounds plus one of thirty-thirty before reshucking? It does much better than merely fine. The Anechoic AnechoX has a HUB mount, so all it took to thread onto the rifle was a flush 5/8×24 adapter.
An Armageddon Gear suppressor cover cuts down on the mirage carrying off the can, but remember that holding in heat works both ways — push it back over the barrel when it comes time to cool. It made sense to pair Armageddon Gear’s can cover with one of their slings, too.
There’s almost nothing that you can do to better bond with an inanimate object faster than to put a piece of your personality in it.
Any personalization is good, but performed with respect is much better, even if it’s just spray paint. Here we do it with rattle can Rust-Oleum and painter’s tape. Preparation and degreasing are the most important things when it comes to paint, but the great thing about getting color in a can is that while it will still scratch with use, you can always easily touch it up. It’s best practice to keep paint within the same brand, even the same line within a brand, because they can all have different solvents and activators inside — and they don’t always play well together.
A clear coat on top will protect the whole mess, with the additional advantage of slicing down the shine.
HOME ON THE RANGE
It’s not entirely inaccurate to think of a lever gun a bit like a pump-action shotgun. They are antique-action manual affairs with lower rates of fire and corresponding capacities. And thus, they share some similar lessons. Be as intentional as possible when you’re running the action. Just like a pump gun, this can take some practice. It’s a good example that just because something is simple it doesn’t mean that it’s automatically easy.
The mechanics are visceral, and double-so with steel. Plick. Pow. Ping. The steel rings. Clink. Thwack. Shuck.
Plugging measured data from a preferred load into an Applied Ballistics calculator let us determine a 50-yard zero was close to ideal. The drops are reasonable up close, and all fall within the average height of a man out to 350 yards.
After you spend a lot of time on the range you’ll come back with some newfound respect for cowboy action shooters — it’s not that the Rossi Triple Black is hard to shoot (it isn’t) or that the R95 is inaccurate (it’s not), but that your fingers and knuckles brush, bang, and pinch in places you aren’t used to. Not unlike gaining your first Glock knuckle.
Many older lever guns are gunked up from whatever weird lubes and preservatives were used in the past. With the Rossi R95 Triple Black and similar? Just use something modern and you’ll be fine.
This isn’t a Glock or an AR-15, so you don’t want to detail strip it willy-nilly. Not unless you want to visit a gunsmith with an inoperable rifle and a Ziploc full of parts, pieces, and shame. A sign of modern engineering is simplicity, and these came out right before modernity. Not too terrible if you know what you’re doing, but for most it’s a puzzle of pieces.
If you’re taking it outside the house, having more than five could be considered wise. You can get everything from a bandolier that holds half a hundred to a quiver for a pair, but something onboard is easy to always have — be it a butt cuff or a hard-side holder. Ideally topping off instead of running totally out between reloads.
In terms of prepping for defensive use, you can either keep it “cruiser ready” with the safety off and the hammer down on an empty chamber, ready to go hot with a quick swing of the wrist, or you can give yourself an extra by using the safety to safely lower the hammer — then thumb it back before you fire.
LOOSE ROUNDS
No, the Rossi R95 doesn’t have the magazine capacity or the rate of fire of an AR-15. And if it did have the capacity, you’d probably want to cut your hands off before you went through a full thirty. An AR, in the hands of an experienced user, can shoot much faster and farther. The lever-action rifle was the AR of its day but there’s a reason select-fire M4s and variants thereof are in the hands of militaries around the world.
But — aside from scenarios so extreme and unlikely that they’d involve me getting my own Wikipedia page — I can’t think of many practical problems that can’t be solved with this rifle, in my hands. And that’s true of every pair of capable hands, in every state of the union.
To those who live in states with neutered ARs and weird work-arounds and fins and strange stocks: if you’re not going to move, give one of these a try instead. No more double-checking legality prior to posting pictures and no more “I’m sorry! HukkaHukka” IG replies either.
You don’t want to fight a war with a lever gun, but you know you could if you had to.
I’ve never been much for Westerns, though I’ve seen a few over the years. And as for horses, I can’t even begin to get on one before being bucked off. If a rugged Western rider is what you’re looking for, our Editor-in-Chief Iain Harrison fits the bill. As for me? I’m much more at home on the city streets.
And, yet still, I found myself connected to this rifle. In part because I appreciate both the deep history and mechanical nature, but also because it represents a dream of the future flowing through from the past. Beyond great-grandpa’s wildest dreams.
What does a rifle made in the 21st century look like? Here’s one.
| BassPro | $1,099 | |
| Guns.com | $962 | |
| Bud’s Gunshop | $930 (CASH) | |
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