Disassembly of the rifle no longer called a PUMA.

by Chick Blood

There are two large and several smaller reasons why the MEXSAR Semi-Auto Rifle is not longer called a PUMA. Looming large are Legacy Sports and their established Puma Firearms offerings. These include a PUMA lever action that is a clone of the Winchester Model 92, a duplicate of the Winchester Model 1886, a “mare’s leg” version of the 1892, the Model 1897 Winchester shotgun, a .22 caliber rimfire rendition of the legendary Model 1873 and, lest I omit in gross error, the Buntline revolver.

All of the above evidently escaped notice of the gun-moniker brain trust at Century International Arms in their hunt for a sexy name after shopping around for an economical, well-built, tube-fed, caliber .22 semi-auto youth rifle. It also escaped several others at CIA. Owners manuals got printed and an ad campaign announcing it to trade and public came close to seeing the light of day.

Oh, Sturm und Drang. What to do? Trademark infringement litigations can drag endlessly on, costing hundreds of thousands. The solution was obvious: Don’t call the rifle a PUMA. The brain trust went back to work. I think I can simulate how they expressed their collective line of thoughts: “We’ll dream up an anagram!” “Lessee, the gun is manufactured by Mendoza. Start with ‘M’ and call it a ‘Mendoza’.” “No, sounds too much like a dance.” “OK, Mendoza is based in Mexico so add ‘EX’ to the ‘M’ for ‘MEX’.” “How about ‘NUMEX’.” “Nope, too close to ‘NOMEX.’” “OK, add ‘SAR’.” “ What’s that stand for?” “Semi Automatic Rifle. MEXSAR. Get it?” “Let’s go with that!” And so they did.

Introducing The MEXSAR

Read more in our February 2015 issue. Back issues are available.

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