WA2000

The WA 2000 is a semi-automatic bullpup sniper rifle that was produced by the Carl Walther GmbH Sportwaffen company.Production of the rifle was limited and it was shortly stopped because it was too expensive to achieve widespread sales and not robust enough for military use as a sniper rifle.Only 176 were built due to the high cost of the rifle making it currently rare and valuable.The WA 2000 was designed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in response to the 1972 Summer Olympics Munich massacre.The bullpup design was chosen because it would allow a standard length barrel to be used whilst the overall length would be shorter than a conventional rifle. The WA 2000 had a quick-detachable scope mount with a weight of 0.96 kg (2.1 lb). The rifle did not have iron sights.The most commonly used optical sight was a Schmidt & Bender 2.5–10× telescopic sight. Without scope the rifle has an unloaded weight of 6.95 kg (15.3 lb) and a loaded weight of 7.35 kg (16.2 lb). Only 176 total rifles were ever produced (approximately 15 of which were imported into the United States), and in two different variants. The two variants can be differentiated by the type of flash suppressor used: the first, the older model, uses a "can" type flash suppressor; whereas the second generation and newer model uses the more conventional "flash-hider/compensator" design. The second generation incorporated several changes improving the rifle's accuracy, making it more suited to its intended job.