At the SHOT Show last weekend, we has the opportunity to interview Charles St. George, designer of the Leader T2 rifle we have previously discussed. We ended up having to run this interview twice, as background noise made the first take unfortunately inaudible – but our second take came out quite well.
We very much enjoyed speak with Mr. St. George both on and off camera, and quite impressed with his new bullpup Leader 50 rifle. It may not be a Forgotten Weapon, but we’re definitely looking forward to a chance to try one out at the range once they go into production this summer.
A few resources mentioned during our interview:
The Leader T2, with its triangular bolt, was patented in 1982. You can download the full patent here: US Patent 4,358,986 (Charles Giorgio, “Rifle Bolt Assemblies”, November 16, 1982)
You can find more information on the T2 on our Leader T2 page in the vault, including our previous video showing disassembly and function.
You can also see an article on the centripetal DREAD system here, published by New Scientist.
Finally, you can check out the new Leader 50 semiauto bullpup rifle being built by Micor Defense.
Nuts. I thought he wrote they were going to start remanufacturing the 5.56 T2.
He did actually (we mentioned it in the first take, and neglected it in the second. He is looking into the economic feasibility of re-releasing the Leader T2, made in the US. It would be available in 5.56, 6.5, and 6.8, and possibly scaled up to .308 as well (I really like that idea). It’s just a question of whether they can be made efficiently enough to compete with the other rifles already on the market.
Cost efficient enough to compete?
I don’t see why not! Made out of off-the-shelf,,,shelf tubing? No molds nor stampings. I would make the new model using a wood buttstock like the German MP44 and its competitors.
Plenty of Americans just want a simple sporter to shoot and not play sniper !
I would love to get in contact with him, I have just acquired a AAA SAP in 9mm which is rumored to be one of less than 100 produced and I cannot find any information on it.