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John Moses Browning (January 21, 1855 - November 26, 1926), born in Ogden, Utah, was an American firearms designer who developed many varieties of weapons which were used in the US Military for decades in the 20th century.
In addition to designing several versions of lever action rifles for the Winchester Firearms company, the weapons he developed included:
- semi-automatic shotgun
- pump action shotgun (including the US Army issue M97)
- .22 caliber rifle
- M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun
- water-cooled machine gun
- Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR)
- Browning Hi-Power 9mm semi-automatic handgun
- Colt Model 1911 .45 semi-automatic handgun
The last three weapons saw use in World War I, World War II and the Korean War. The Colt 1911 had the longest period of service from 1911 to 1986, and a variant is still used by spec. ops units of the USMC and FBI's HRT. Browning had a long standing relationship with Fabrique Nationale to build many of his guns. In 1927 he founded the Browning Arms Company.
Browning belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a served a two year mission for the church beginning on March 28, 1887. His father was among the thousands of Mormon pioneers in the mass exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois to Utah.