Italy legalizes .50 BMG for Civilians!

Those of you who’ve read our article about gun laws in Italy will be familiar with that Country’s system of classification – i.e. authorization to civilian sales – for firearms classified as “common”, “sporting” and “hunting.” (See Gun laws and Gun Ownership in Italy, Firearms News, February 2023, Issue 3, and Stopping by a Gun Store in the Caput Mundi, October 2023, Issue 19 – both articles at FirearmsNews.com.) They’ll also be familiar with the fact that some calibers are, or were, still banned from civilian ownership in the country, one of those previously being 9mm Luger (9x19mm) - fully legalized in 2021. Previously, all firearms in 9mm had to be chambered for 9x21mm which was a non-military caliber. Prohibition of .50 BMG for Italian shooters ended unexpectedly on September 9, 2024, when the Banco Nazionale di Prova – the National Proofing House, which has authority on the classification of firearms – type-classified the first ever .50 BMG caliber rifle to be sold in the Country. The rifle in question is the Corvo (“Crow”), a bolt-action long-range rifle manufactured in Italy by Victrix Armaments, one of Europe’s best and finest manufacturers of long-range interdiction and precision shooting rifles for civilian, law enforcement, and military applications.

Manufactured in Italy by Victrix Armaments, the Corvo bolt-action rifle weighs in at 29 lbs. and was previously available only to military and law enforcement in Italy.

Established in 2015 as a brand of ROME (Rottigni Officine Meccaniche), and owned by the Beretta Group from 2016 to 2019, before returning into ROME’s hands completely in 2020, Victrix Armaments (VictrixArmaments.com/en/) manufactures a broad range of precision rifles; the Corvo is the first .50 BMG rifle ever manufactured in Italy and has been available for export and MIL/LE sales for a couple of years now. The Corvo is a chassis rifle, built around an AISI 420 steel action machined from solid billet and featuring an AISI 420 steel 27-inch button-rifled, lapped and fluted barrel, equipped with a massive proprietary muzzle brake and compatible with a (likewise proprietary) sound suppressor. The action and the massive, fluted three-lugs bolt are entirely PVD-coated, and the trigger is a proprietary Victrix Armament adjustable model called the “Professional Plus” with a three-position safety and a factory pull setting of 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram approx.).

The Corvo bolt-action rifle in its basic configuration: the Match-grade barrel is 27” long, button-rifled, and lapped for accuracy. The Victrix Armaments Corvo with a few more accessories (middle): a chassis rifle, the Corvo is a mean machine, meant for maximum performance on the long range. Available in three colors, the Corvo rifle is also compatible with Victrix Armaments’ own, dedicated suppressor (bottom).

Feeding from a proprietary fice-round polymer magazine, the Victrix Armament Corvo also features a machined hexagonal M-LOK handguard, a full-length top 45 MOA Picatinny rail for optics, a black polymer AR-15 compatible pistol grip, and a folding stock that’s fully adjustable in height, drift, and length of pull, and comes with an integrated rear monopod. The Chassis itself is Cerakoted in dark grey, medium flat brown or dark olive drab green. Mostly hand-fitted and with a lot of hand-made components, the Corvo is a finely tuned, prime shooting machine, coming with a smorgasbord of ROME-manufactured accessories including a detachable carry handle, bipod, and scope mount, all in a dedicated transport case with two magazines and a dedicated sling.

The Corvo is the first .50 BMG bolt-action rifle to ever be manufactured in Italy. Other brands had previously offered .50 BMG rifles, but none were actually put in production. The buttstock of the Victrix Armaments Corvo can be finely adjusted in length of pull and height and comes with a screw-on monopod for additional stability. A close-up of the solid hinge for the folding stock: the Victrix Armaments Corvo will go from 46.2” to 55.9” in overall length, based on the position of the stock. The cheek riser of the Victrix Armaments Corvo dubs as a holder for three different hex tips, while the detachable buttpad can be used as a wrench, allowing the installation of accessories and any sort of adjustment on the field.

The retail price for the first .50 BMG rifle to be made available to civilian customers in Italy is set at 13,183€, including VAT; that’s just over $14,500 at the current exchange rate, which puts the Victrix Corvo in a very niche position on the Italian civilian market – but then again, that’s not a price level unheard of in the US for .50-caliber rifles. The most important takeaway of this all, however, is that an important taboo has fallen in a country whose gun laws are largely more restrictive than America’s; and with the National Proofing House authorizing the distribution of one rifle in .50 BMG, others will follow. Previously, rifles chambered in .50 BMG have been available on the Italian civilian market only in rechambered variants, for calibers such as .416 Barrett or .460 Steyr – arguably offering better long-range accuracy than .50 BMG, but still, something short of the originals.

A series of accessories – such as the massive factory-issued three-port muzzle brake – are manufactured under the ROME brand for the Corvo and other rifles in the Victrix Armaments line. Similar in design to the AICS (Accuracy International Chassis System) magazines, the Victrix Armaments’ proprietary single-stack polymer magazine used by the Corvo rifle holds up to five rounds of .50 BMG ammunition.

We don’t know what caused the Proofing House to diverge from a previously firm stance on the matter – and we may never know, as the National Proofing House isn’t legally required to justify their decisions unless an appeal against them is made in a court of law. We can however speculate that the Proofing House may have come to the conclusion that commercially available .50 BMG loads do not match the NATO specs for 12.7×99mm (indeed they don’t, they’re often much better), and that reloads by definition cannot match those specs either, thus not falling under the definition of “military ammunition” (read: military loads) prohibited by Italian law. Outside of the long-overdue legalization of 9mm Luger, the Italian civilian market has seen the legalization of many previously “verboten” calibers in the past few years, most notably 5.7×28mm and, just this year, 4.6×30mm (in case you’re wondering, no, Italy doesn’t have a civilian MP7: the gun in question is the CMMG Banshee Mk4 pistol).

And if .50 BMG is legalized in a country like Italy, there’s hope for those places whose gun laws have taken a turn for the worse in the past few years. Jurisdictions where .50 BMG was previously legal and is now banned (think Canada and the UK, not to mention California and New York state), may want to reconsider their choices; after all nobody has yet rushed to buy 15k rifles to “shoot down planes”, and we doubt they’re going start now. More generally, a lot of countries in Europe are slowly, but gradually, taking a different approach, as both the general population and the authorities come to the realization that legally-owned, legally-circulating firearms are the wrong target when criminals can equip themselves with full-automatic rifles and even rocket launchers on a rich black market fueled by literally every conflict fought everywhere in the last seventy years. Is Italy, slowly, winning? Time will tell, but being optimistic isn’t a crime yet.