Ronnie Barrett

Ronnie Barrett is the founder of the Barrett Firearms Company, best known for the M82A1 and M107 sniper rifles.

Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 1954, Ronnie Barrett started his business career in 1972 as a professional photographer. While also owning and managing his photography studio, he decided in 1982 to manufacture and sell a unique .50-caliber rifle to sport shooters and collectors.

Although he had no prior experience in manufacturing, Barrett became a self-taught engineer, hand-drew the original design and built the prototype in his gravel-floor garage for what was to become the Barrett .50-Caliber.

Barrett rifles are now synonymous with civilian sport shooters, law enforcement agencies, the United States military and over 30 foreign countries considered American allies.

The rifles have appeared in motion pictures, sports magazines, military publications and even novels; also the topic of many national radio and television shows.

That success has also placed Barrett in the spotlight by some who support anti-gun legislation. He is often quoted and seen as a spokesman for Second Amendment Rights.

The United States Army recognized the Barrett .50-Caliber Rifle in 2004 as one of the Top Ten Greatest Inventions. In the last 100 years, only four individuals have invented firearms adopted by the United States military. Three had their designs turned over to another industry or the government for development and production. Those three were John Browning (BAR, M1911 .45 Pistol, M2 .50 Machine Gun, etc) John C. Garand (M-1 Garand), and Eugene Stoner (M-16, SR-25). Ronnie Barrett is the only one to create, manufacture, market and mass produce his firearm for the United States government, with exception of California Law-Enforcement agencies due to California's ban on .50-caliber firearms.

The story of Ronnie Barrett and the company that he founded, Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, is about a man who changed the face of applied long-range firepower.

Ronnie Barrett has an interesting background. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, he had a successful photography studio in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It was through photography that he got his initial inspiration to create what would become the Barrett signature product.

On January 1, 1982, when Barrett, age 28, was photographing a river patrol gunboat on the Stones River near Nashville, that he made an award-winning picture that got him thinking seriously about the .50 caliber cartridge because of two Browning machineguns mounted prominently on that boat.

Although Barrett had never fired a .50 BMG, he was impressed. Since no commercially available .50 caliber rifle existed at that time, he decided to make a semi-automatic rifle. He began by researching the .50 BMG and studying automatic small arms and cannon designs mostly from his worn-out copy of Small Arms of the World, edited by Ed Ezell. Working from his dining room table, with no background in manufacturing or engineering, Barrett sketched a cross-sectioned, full-size rifle, beginning with the .50 caliber hole in the barrel, adding different components to it. Near the end of February, he had designed a recoil-operated rifle that would be fired from a person’s shoulder.

At that time, Barrett was not considering any commercial application, but merely his own sporting pleasure. Once he decided on the concept, he approached some machine shops with his drawings. They told him that if his idea was any good, someone smarter would have already designed it. They all quickly brushed him away.

A few days later, Bob Mitchell, a tool and die maker and machinist in Smyrna, Tennessee, agreed to help. After their regular job responsibilities, the men would start working on Barrett’s ideas, sometimes laboring together all night in a one-bay garage using a small mill and lathe. Barrett also found support from a sheet metal fabricator who allowed him to visit the owner’s shop and work directly with one employee, Harry Watson. The resulting gun was the shoulder-fired Barrett rifle, which was created in less than four months.

The original big and heavy prototype would usually fire three rounds before stopping. While fine-tuning that rifle, Barrett also began designing a second prototype that featured an improved and sleek exterior with other improvements learned from the first prototype.

He made a video of the first prototype being fired; then prepared the second prototype, yet to be a working gun, so it would set on a table. He displayed the latter one at a Houston, Texas gun show. Three people gave him deposits to make a rifle for them. Barrett was off and running with his dream. With a limited amount of capital, Barrett set up a small shop at his residence in a gravel-floor garage. He began by building a batch of 30 rifles; mainly because the two wooden gun racks he made in his father’s cabinet shop held 15 rifles each. Using his hand-drawing of the new rifle, he placed an advertisement in Shotgun News and soon sold out the first batch. This was the beginning for what would become Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, Inc. The company has evolved and prospered into what is now a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, complete with modern CNC equipment.

Barrett rifles were initially designed with sportsmen and collectors in mind. However, after a few years of production, a small number of foreign militaries began to express some interest in the design. Through their feedback after testing it, and also suggestions from sport shooters, changes and modifications were made. The Barrett M82A1 offered today is basically the same design as the first Barrett rifle that was created back in 1982; hence the M82 designation. The M82A1 (alteration #1, introduced in 1986) is that same platform, with all improvements that had been made to that date. The modifications include weight reduction and cosmetic changes, as well as a larger diameter, fluted barrel. And a new accelerator system that shortened the stroke of the action. Further changes include a redesigned muzzle brake as well as accuracy and reliability tunings. The rifle is available with either a 29” or 20” barrel, with weights and overall lengths of 30.9 pounds and 57” or 29.7 pounds and 48”, respectively. It feeds from a detachable 10-round box magazine.

Although the rifle began as a sporting design, it has also become popular with the U.S. military. The United States Marine Corp, U.S. SOCCOM, U.S. Army EOD and Air Force EOD units began fielding the rifle at the time of Desert Storm. After exhaustive, competitive trials, the M82A1 was officially adopted by the U.S. Army in 2002 as the M107.

The M82A1/M017 established Barrett’s role in the civilian, military and law enforcement communities. However, the company has not limited its offerings to just that design.

In early 1990, Barrett Firearms introduced another .50 BMG rifle to complement the M82A1. This design, dubbed the Model 90, used many components of the M82. And was designed and hand prototyped by Ronnie Barrett himself in three days with no prints. The model number changed in 1995 when enough improvements were made to the rifle to warrant the design overhaul. The Model 95 is still offered by Barrett and is the official .50 caliber rifle for several allied governments. Designed for accuracy in a lighter and handier package than the M82A1, the rifle features a bolt-action system that feeds from a detachable five-round box magazine. Also notable is the fact that unlike the M82A1, the Model 95 is a “bullpup” design in which the action is located behind the pistol grip area of the rifle. The result is a rifle that weighs 23.5 pounds and measures 45” in overall length with a full 29” barrel. This rifle combines the accuracy of a bolt-action with the rate of fire from a magazine-fed .50 BMG rifle in a relatively light and handy package. An interesting note; the Model 95 was the original selection for the U.S. Army M107 rifle, much to the dismay of troops already carrying the M82A1 rifle fielded from Desert Storm use. Those troops produced real world evidence that the intended targets, sometime multiple and moving, required rapid second or third hits. In light of this information, the requirement document was actually strengthened to include the need for a higher rate of fire obtained with the semi-automatic M82A1. Both of Barrett’s children, Christopher and Angela, began working in the company following graduation from school. Chris brought modernization and technology into the manufacturing operation by introducing the first computers to the design process. Angela joined the team to set up a bona fide marketing and advertising department, which at that point was almost non-existent.

Ronnie and Chris Barrett worked jointly on the Model 98 semi-automatic design in 338 Lapua. It took a back seat in 1999 to a design project needed for a more affordable single shot .50 bolt-action. Also at that time, the younger Barrett became the dominant designer with most of the publicly-known work at Barrett Firearms; leading the way with product development.

The Chris Barrett designed Model 99 is a single-shot bolt-action rifle that has the prestige of being the first Barrett rifle designed by computer from start to finish, putting the company into the world of technology, and providing more diversity to the company’s product line. It also is one of the company’s most popular offerings. Available in either .50 BMG or the .416 Barrett cartridges (another Chris Barrett design), the rifle features the same bullpup-style configuration of the Model 95. It is available with either a 32” heavy barrel or a lighter 29” fluted barrel, featuring weights and overall lengths of 25 pounds and 50” or 23 pounds and 47”, respectively. Also, it has a significantly lower retail price than the company’s repeating .50 BMG rifle offerings, contributing to the Model 99’s popularity.

Barrett Firearms did not limit itself to just large-bore, long-range rifles. Recognizing the popularity of the M4-style AR-pattern rifle, yet also noting that many shooters have issues with some properties of the design, Chris Barrett took on a project. For many shooters, chambering the .223 of the AR-pattern rifle is perceived as being too small and underpowered, although the rifle itself offers a combination of compact size and light weight. Chris Barrett determined that a larger chambering would help alleviate the concern. He began developing a rifle to fire a new cartridge developed by the Army Advanced Marksmanship Unit and Special Forces in cooperation with Remington; the 6.8x43mm SPC cartridge that features a bullet weighing around 115 grains propelled at 2,600 feet per second.

With the same general overall length of a 5.56x45mm cartridge, the new 6.8 offers much better ballistic performance and power in a package that can still be used in the AR platform. The company’s first entry into this realm, the M468 rifle, was an M4-style AR carbine chambered in the new 6.8 SPC cartridge that features a Picatinny rail fore-end system and a flat-top upper receiver as well as the ability to accept muzzle devices such as suppressors.

Another complaint by many shooters against the AR-pattern rifle has been its system of operation, namely the direct gas impingement system in which gas is vented through a tube directly into the receiver of the rifle. Chris Barrett took a look at the 6.8 SPC rifle and determined that in addition to the upsized cartridge, it would also be good to adapt the design to employ a gas piston system to increase reliability and minimize fouling within the action. The result was the REC7 rifle, which stands for “reliability enhanced carbine.” This rifle, with its 6.8 SPC chambering and gas-piston system of operation is a means to correct many of the shortcomings of the conventional M4-style rifle.