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Our American Stories

John Moses Browning: The Mormon Inventor Behind Modern Pistols and Machine Guns

Our American Stories

iHeartPodcasts

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6817 Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this episode of Our American Stories, as a boy growing up in Ogden, Utah, John Moses Browning worked beside his father in a small gunsmith shop along the pioneer trails of the American West. Decades later, the rifles, pistols, and machine guns he designed would appear in the hands of soldiers around the world. From the legendary M1911 pistol to the weapons carried by American troops during two world wars, Browning’s inventions helped redefine modern firearms. Nathan Gorenstein, author of The Guns of John Moses Browning, shares the remarkable story.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:02.3

Guaranteed human.

0:14.0

And we continue with our American stories.

0:18.2

Few people are aware that John Moses Browning, a tall, modest man born in

0:23.6

1855 and raised as a Mormon in the American West, invented the mechanism used in virtually all

0:31.6

modern pistols. He created the most popular hunting rifles and shotguns and conceived the machine guns introduced in World War I

0:40.6

and which dominated air and land battles in World War II.

0:45.8

Nathan Gorinstein, author of The Guns of John Moses Browning,

0:50.3

is here to tell the story of this little-known American legend

0:54.0

whose impact on history

0:55.7

ranks right there with the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford.

1:03.4

This is a story about the most important American inventor. Most of your listeners have never

1:08.7

heard of. We grow up knowing about Thomas Edison,

1:12.1

the Wright brothers, Henry Ford. But missing from that list is another fellow, I'd suggest

1:17.0

should be on it, John Moses Brownie, who was born in 1855 on the far edge of the American West.

1:25.4

He died in 1926 in the offices of an industrial complex in Europe

1:29.9

that was created on the basis of his inventions. What did he do? He's a guy whose machines

1:36.1

started World War I and won World War II and influenced America and the world to this day.

1:44.2

Who am I?

1:44.9

My name's Nathan Gorinstein.

1:46.9

I've spent a career as a newspaper reporter and editor and now book author.

1:53.1

And I got interested in Browning when I was researching firearms for another book and I realized that this guy had changed the world.

...

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