Armsel Striker and variants

The Armsel Striker shotgun and its variants appears in the following films, TV shows, and video games used by the following actors:

Specifications

(Mid-1980s ~ Present)

Type: Shotgun

Caliber: 12 gauge

Capacity: 12-round revolving cylinder

Fire Modes: "Clockwork" tension-operate drum on most models, manual operation only on Protecta

Armsel Striker

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Armsel Striker - 12 gauge

The original Armsel Striker is a South African-manufactured cylinder shotgun, designed by Rhodesian Hilton Walker in the 1980s. Production was financed by the Armsel company, but actual production was done by another company called Aserma Manufacturing. Various versions existed, some with the top-folding stock, and others without.

The Striker featured a unique revolver-like cylinder drum, giving it a rather high capacity for the time at 12 rounds. Unlike a revolver, the cylinder isn't turned by the trigger itself (which would give the weapon an extremely heavy trigger pull); instead, the drum is wound up with a clockwork mechanism, and every time the trigger is pulled, the tension from the mechanism turns the cylinder.

Reloading the Striker is a long and drawn-out process; the Striker lacks an automatic extraction system, and the user needs to manually extract spent casings with an ejector rod, load in new rounds one by one (manually advancing the drum with the rear drum advance lever), and finally wind up the drum with the knob in front of the drum.

Strikers are identified not only by the unique 'knob' that serves as the winding key in front of the drum, but also the drum advance lever on the back of the receiver. The Cobray guns don't have this lever.

Film

Title	Actor	Character	Notation	Date
Observe and Report		Yuen Brother		2009
District 9		Gunman	barrel extension; laser sight	2009
House of the Dead	Jürgen Prochnow	Captain Kirk		2003
In China They Eat Dogs	Slavko Labovic	Ratco		1999
The World Is Not Enough	Maria Grazia Cucinotta	Cigar Girl	extended barrel	1999
Bulletproof	Jeep Swenson	Bledsoe	full automatic sound effects	1996
Escape from L.A.				1996
Fair Game				1995
Point of No Return		One of the thugs		1993
RoboCop 3	Daniel von Bargen	Moreno		1993
Patriot Games	Patrick Bergin	Kevin O'Donnell		1992
Hard Boiled	Anthony Wong	Johnny Wong		1992
Point Break (1991)	Vincent Klyn	Warchild		1991
RoboCop 2		Gun store robber		1990
Laser Mission	Brandon Lee	Michael Gold		1989
Hostage		South African Soldiers		1987

Television

Title	Actor	Character	Notation	Date
Strike Back - Season 3
Strike Back - Season 2
Primeval
Tremors: The Series
Miami Vice

Video Games

Game Title	Appears as	Mods	Notation	Date
Enter the Matrix				2003
Cross Fire	"Armsel Striker"			2007

Armsel Protecta

Armsel Protecta with 12" barrel - 12 gauge

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Armsel Protecta with 7" barrel - 12 gauge

The Armsel Protecta is an improved version of the original Striker designed for quicker reloading. It features an auto ejection mechanism, whereby some of the propellent gasses are vented off into the chamber and used to blast the previously fired shell backwards out of the ejection port into a large shell deflector, which is the most obvious external difference between the Protecta and the original Striker (the original Striker had to manually eject its fired rounds via an ejector rod).

In order to prevent a live shell being ejected when a fully loaded Protecta is fired, a special loading gate was added which prevents the first round being ejected, but opens as the drum rotates after the first shot so subsequent empty shells are ejected. Because a used shell is only ejected when the next round is fired, the last shell in the drum still has to be manually advanced to the ejection port position and ejected with the ejector rod.

The clockwork mechanism on the drum was also removed in order to speed up reloading (resulting in the deletion of the winding key and also the rear drum advance lever). The drum of the Protecta is manually advanced after each shot by rotating the entire barrel shroud and attached forwards grip slightly to the right and then back again. Due to this the Protecta is not actually a semi-automatic shotgun so any depictions of it as such are incorrect.

Film

Title	Actor	Character	Notation	Date
Kick-Ass		Thug	M4 style stock	2010
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan				2009
Doomsday	Chris Robson	Miller		2008
Battlestar Galactica: Razor				2009
The Punisher	Mark Collie	Harry Heck		2004
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever	Antonio Banderas	Ecks		2002
Rapid Fire		Mobsters		1992
American Ninja 4: The Annihilation		Commandos and rebels		1990
American Ninja 2: The Confrontation	Steve James	Curtis Jackson		1987

Television

Title	Actor	Character	Notation	Date
Battlestar Galactica				2004 - 2009
Stargate: Atlantis				2004 - 2009
Stargate: SG1	Richard Dean Anderson	General Jack O'Neill	Configured to fire grenade rounds	1997-2007
Stargate: SG1	Ben Browder	Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell	Configured to fire grenade rounds	1997-2007
Alarm für Cobra 11 - Die Autobahnpolizei	.	Thugs	.	1996-present

Video Games

Game Title	Appears as	Mods	Notation	Release Date
Söldner: Secret Wars				2004
Army Of Two	DAO-X		Automatic	2008
Grand Theft Auto V	Sweeper Shotgun		Automatic	2013

SWD/Cobray Street Sweeper

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SWD/Cobray Street Sweeper with short barrel and top folding stock - 12 gauge. Note the Cobray logo on the side.

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SWD/Cobray Street Sweeper with 18 inch barrel - 12 gauge. Because all legally owned Street Sweepers in the United States are "destructive devices," very few remain in this configuration as there is no law governing the required barrel length of a DD.

The Street Sweeper is the American-made copy of the Striker; the standard commercial version was recognizable by its longer 18" barrel, which was necessary to comply with U.S. firearms laws for over the counter shotgun sales. There were short barreled versions of the Street Sweeper, but like all short barreled shotguns, it required a tax stamp and was a strongly regulated device. When the Clinton Administration declared the civilian version of the Street Sweeper to be a 'destructive device' (like a mortar or a rocket launcher) in 1993, nearly all commercial sales ceased, all existing owners were contacted by the ATF with demands to register their weapons, and the remaining samples in the chain of commerce could only be sold to holders of Federal Destructive Device Permits.

Although it is a copy of the Striker, there is a relatively low interchangeability of parts between the two guns. The Sweeper lacks the rear drum advance lever of the Striker and has its own distinctive key in the front of the drum to wind the 'clockwork' mechanism like the original Striker shotgun.

The Street Sweeper is usually seen in American action films, whereas the Striker and Protecta are more likely to appear in films made outside of the U.S.

Film

Title	Actor	Character	Notation	Date
Class of 1999				1990
Another 48 Hrs.	David Anthony Marshall	Willie Hickok		1990
Total Recall	Michael Ironside	Richter	Heavily Modified	1990
Total Recall		Mars Colony Troops	Heavily Modified	1990
Hard Hunted	Bruce Penhall	Bruce Christian		1992
Hard Hunted	Dona Speir	Donna Hamilton		1992
Rapid Fire		Henchman		1992
Fit to Kill	Dona Speir	Donna Hamilton	Footage from Hard Hunted	1993
Men of War	Dolph Lundgren	Nick Gunar	added muzzle-brake	1994
The Dallas Connection	Gerald Okamura	Fu		1994
Bad Blood	Lorenzo Lamas	Travis Blackstone		1994
Top Dog		A Neo Nazi terrorist		1995
Set It Off	Dr. Dre	Black Sam		1996
Godzilla		U.S. Army Soldiers		1998
American Dragons	Don Stark	Rocco	wielded with Desert Eagle	1998
Return to Savage Beach	Cristian Letelier	J. Tyler Ward		1998
In China They Eat Dogs	Kim Bodnia	Harald Blixen		1999
In China They Eat Dogs		A gangster		1999
A.T.F.		US Senator		1999
The Crew	Mike Moroff	Jorge		2000
Route 666		Russian mobster		2001
In Her Line of Fire	David Keith	Vice President Walker		2006
In Her Line of Fire		The rebels		2006
Death Sentence				2007
Smokin' Aces	Kevin Durand	Jeeves Tremor		2007
The Interceptor (Zapreshchyonnaya Realnost)		Kurylo's special forces soldier		2009
Elephant White	Djimon Hounsou	Curtie Church	modified with unknown custom-made attachment	2010
Jerry Cotton	Oliver Kalkofe	Big Morrow	gold plated	2010
New Kids Nitro		female Schijndel gang member		2011
Wicked Blood		thug		2014
Tokarev	Nathan O'Neil Smith	Anton's thug		2014
Tokarev		Russian Mafia		2014

Television

Title	Actor	Character	Notation	Date
Burn Notice				2007- 2010
Supernatural - Season 5	Bruce Ramsay	Paul	Short barreled / "99 Problems" (S05E17)	2010

Video Games

Game Title	Appears as	Mods	Notation	Release Date
Enter the Matrix	Street Sweeper Shotgun			2003
Resident Evil 4	Striker		With Protecta automatic ejection and no wind-up key	2005
Resident Evil 5	Jail Breaker			2009
Alliance of Valiant Arms			With Protecta automatic ejection and shell deflector	2007
Battlefield 3	DAO-12	8-round default magazine, various optics	With Protecta automatic ejection and shell deflector	2011
Battlefield 4	DAO-12	correct 12-round magazine, various attachments	With Protecta automatic ejection and shell deflector	2013

Anime

Title	Character	Note	Date
Desert Punk			2004

Sentinel/Penn Arms Striker-12

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Sentinel/Penn Arms Striker-12 (early model) civilian-legal 18" barrel with top folding stock - 12 gauge

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Sentinel/Penn Arms Striker-12 (early model) with stubby 7" barrel - 12 gauge

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Sentinel/Penn Arms Striker-12 (later model) - 12 gauge

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Sentinel/Penn Arms Striker-12 (later model) - 12 gauge

The Sentinel Arms (later Penn Arms, now a part of Combined Systems) Striker-12 is a licensed American version of the Armsel Striker (Cobray's Street Sweeper was a cheap knock-off copy of the Striker). Patent rights to produce and sell the Striker in the United States was purchased from Armsel by Grant W. Stapleton of Sentinel Arms Corporation in the early eighties, who then upgraded the shotgun to commercial U.S. standards.

The Striker-12 improved on the Armsel design, featuring an improved winding key and the addition of a thumb tab on the right side of the drum magazine next to the trigger guard, used to open and close the ejection port (which is the distinguishing feature differing the model from all other variants). Unlike the original Striker, initial models lacked the rear drum advance lever; the manual instead tells the users to advance the drum with the winding key during reloads.

Later models also adds the auto ejection mechanism from the Protecta and the rear drum advance lever from the Striker, essentially combining all the best parts of all the variants into one variant. This variant can be distinguished by having the thumb tab on the side of the magazine, and the rear-mounted drum advance lever from the Striker, and the large shell deflector from the Protecta.

A large number of video games depict the ejection port button as a drum advance lever, following its depiction as such in the 2009 video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. There is no evidence that this works in reality.

Film

Title	Actor	Character	Notation	Date
Desperado	Antonio Banderas	El Mariachi		1995
Spawn	John Leguizamo	The Clown	Short barreled version portrayed as a grenade launcher	1997

Video games

Game Title	Appears as	Mods	Notation	Release Date
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne	Striker	w/ 7 inch barrel	Later model	2003
Battlefield 2	DAO-12		Early model	2005
Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned	Assault Shotgun	w/ cut-down 18-inch barrel, full auto mode and 8-round drum	Later model	2009
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2	Striker	Various optional attachments	Early model with Armsel Protecta automatic ejection and shell deflector; ejection port button depicted as drum advance lever	2009
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3	Striker	Various optional attachments	Later model; ejection port button depicted as drum advance lever	2011
Payday 2	Street Sweeper	Various optional attachments	Later model; ejection port button depicted as drum advance lever	2013