Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX

[Pauly]

The Inrange TV channel on youtube did a series on why intermediate caliber lever action guns weren’t adopted by militaries, despite them being very popular with non-military combatants, in the post Civil War west. Arguably the 44-40 lever guns could be considered the assault rifle equivalent of their time.

The series runs to 10 episodes of roughly 20-30 minutes each so there is a huge amount of info.
Even if you are to magic away the financial and logistical issues as well as the conservative military desire for full power rifles there are a number of issues that prevent their military adoption. The most significant of which were:
1) the difficulty of operating a lever gun whilst firing prone.
2) for sustained fire a trap door Springfield, or similar, offers the same rate of fire. Once the initial magazine is fired a lever gun has no advantage over a single shot gun.
3) you cannot ameliorate (2) by carrying extra magazines because the size and shape of the tubular magazine is too fragile for military use.
4) single shot guns were much more robust and reliable.

It would take the invention of the box magazine to resolve issues (2) to (4) by which time magazine bolt action rifles were available, and bolt actions trump lever actions because of (1).