The Guns of The A-Team: Every Weapon Identified

The A-Team fired more rounds per episode than almost anything else on 1980s television and hit approximately nobody. That’s the joke, and it’s also the reason the show’s gun work is more interesting than it looks. Every choice was driven by budget, network standards and the practicalities of hauling firearms around the United States in 1984.

Let’s start with the thing nearly everyone gets wrong.

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The Ruger Mini-14, not the AC-556

Ask any group of gun people what the A-Team carried and someone will say Ruger AC-556, the select-fire military version of the Mini-14. It’s the single most repeated claim about this show and it isn’t right.

From season two onwards the team standardized on the stainless Ruger Mini-14 with a factory folding stock, semi-automatic only. The producers had decided not to swap hardware every week, mostly for cost reasons, and those rifles were bought outright for the production and stored in the show’s prop containers for the entire run.

The evidence is on screen if you slow it down. The actors are pulling triggers rapidly, and only a few cases eject during bursts that sound like sustained automatic fire. The full-auto was added in the sound mix, with squib hits and dust impacts cut in to sell it.

The clincher is the barrel. The show’s rifles wear plain barrels with flash hiders. A real AC-556 has the government-profile barrel with both a flash hider and a bayonet lug. Look at any clear shot of the muzzle and there’s no lug there.

Why semi-autos? Because in the mid-eighties, before any assault weapon bans, a Title I Ruger crossed state and county lines with no paperwork. A registered machine gun did not. For a production constantly on the move, that was the whole argument.

Hannibal’s oddities

George Peppard’s Hannibal Smith gets the strangest hardware in the show, which suits a character whose plans always involve building something in a barn.

In the season two episode “Deadly Maneuvers” he uses a Wilkinson Arms Linda pistol converted to full-auto, which is about as obscure as eighties television gets. In “The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas” he carries a suppressed Star Model B. He turns up with an Interdynamic KG-99 Sport in “Recipe for Heavy Bread,” and defends a mission with a Smith & Wesson Model 65 in season four’s “Mission of Peace.”

There’s also a running gag made literal: Murdock rigs multiple firearms to fire by remote control, triggered from a transmitter Hannibal carries. Which is, in fairness, the most A-Team solution possible.

Face and the Smith & Wesson Model 29

Templeton “Face” Peck carries a Smith & Wesson Model 29 in numerous episodes, which is a fairly enormous revolver for a man whose actual skill is talking his way into places. Colonel Decker, the recurring military antagonist, also runs a Model 29.

The Model 29 was riding high in the eighties for obvious reasons, and it turns up on both sides here.

We tested the current one in our Smith & Wesson Model 29 review, and it leads our best .44 Magnum revolvers list. The same gun anchors the guns of Dirty Harry.

The Browning Hi-Power

Hi-Powers appear across four seasons, in the team’s hands and against them. It was the sensible high-capacity 9mm of the era, and it photographs well. Browning discontinued it, then the design came back through other makers. Springfield’s SA-35 is the modern version and it’s a properly good gun rather than a nostalgia exercise.

Colt 1911s, Micro Uzis and the M60

The Colt M1911 runs through four seasons as the team’s default full-size pistol. Micro Uzis handle the close work. And then there’s the M60, which appears in four seasons plus an M60D variant in five, usually mounted on something B.A. has just welded together.

The rest of the armory is a tour of eighties action television: Intratec TEC-9s, MAC-10s, Steyr AUGs, HK P9S pistols, Norinco Type 56 rifles, Colt Trooper and Lawman revolvers, Remington 870s, a Daewoo K2 in Murdock’s hands in “Wheel of Fortune,” and the Federal gas riot gun in four separate seasons.

Why nobody ever got hit

This wasn’t laziness, it was network policy. Standards and practices in that slot required that the violence stay bloodless, so the show developed a house style: enormous volumes of fire, cars flipping, everyone crawling out of the wreck unhurt. The guns are loud props in what’s essentially a comedy about competent men.

Which is worth remembering when people call the show unrealistic. It was never trying.

Frequently asked questions

What rifle did the A-Team use?

A stainless Ruger Mini-14 with a factory folding stock, semi-automatic only, standardized from season two onwards.

Did the A-Team use Ruger AC-556 machine guns?

No. That’s the most common myth about the show. They were semi-auto Mini-14s. The automatic fire was sound effects, rapid trigger pulls and editing. The rifles have plain barrels with flash hiders rather than the AC-556’s government barrel with a bayonet lug.

Why did the show use semi-automatic rifles?

Cost and logistics. The rifles were bought outright and kept in the production’s prop containers, and Title I semi-autos could be moved across state lines in the mid-eighties without the paperwork a registered machine gun required.

What handgun did Face carry?

A Smith & Wesson Model 29 in numerous episodes, alongside the Colt M1911 and Browning Hi-Power the team used generally.

Can you still buy a folding-stock Mini-14?

Ruger still builds the Mini-14 in Ranch and Tactical configurations. Factory folding stocks are no longer catalog items, but the rifles themselves are current production and aftermarket stocks exist.

Nobody ever hit anything, but the hardware was real enough. The Mini-14 and the Colt 1911 are both still made, and the 1911 side is covered on cheap 1911 pistols under $500 with the rest on handgun deals.

Keep exploring

Part of our guns of TV legends series. See also Magnum P.I. and Miami Vice, or read up on Hollywood gun myths.