South African Armsel Protecta 12 Gauge | Product-Improved Street Sweeper | European Collector

We’re back in Europe and visiting a collector with an incredible range of firearms. Here is an Armsel Protecta 12 Gauge, better known as a product-improved Street Sweeper.  This has to be one of the best-looking shotguns from the 1980s.

In 1989 the American firm Cobray (under the SWD name) began building a cheaper, less refined (and unlicensed) copy of the original spring-wound Armsel Striker and sold it in the US as the “Street Sweeper” from 1989 to 1993. To meet firearms rules and because we’re not allowed to own cool stuff, the Street Sweeper had an awkward-looking 18-inch barrel. An actually legit licensed U.S. variant, the Sentinel Arms Striker-12, also appeared. In 1994 the U.S. Treasury Department classified the Street Sweeper and Striker-12 and as destructive devices under the National Firearms Act.

The revolving-cylinder combat shotgun later known as the “Street Sweeper” began in 1981, when Rhodesian-born designer Hilton Walker created the Armsel Striker after moving to South Africa. Early models used a bulky 12-round drum that had to be wound with a clock-spring key, plus a slow manual process that required each spent hull to be punched out individually, leading to clunky reloading, spring-cylinder reliability problems, and awkward handling. In 1989 Walker discarded the winding mechanism for a simple twist of the foregrip and barrel shroud to index the cylinder, added gas-operated auto-ejection, and named the improved design the Protecta.