Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "AFN-49: The Forgotten Full-Auto Brother of the FN-49" video.

Also in the Belgian Congo, and afterward when Belgium supported Katanga's failed attempt to secede from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (And the UN then idiotically insisted that Katanga had to remain part of Congo. Because for some reason the arbitrary borders imposed by the 19th century colonizers needed to be kept intact, even though it meant that groups who violently hate each other have to be in the same country and ruled by a dictator.)
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@vincentmueller3717 Not FAL mags, it was a unique 20-round 7.62 mag. Somewhat longer and narrower than the FAL mag. I assume the using actual FAL mags, which would've been obviously advantageous to a nation using the FAL, wasn't feasible for whatever reason.
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@joetaylor486 He was John Browning's successor for a reason.
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I can see why they required a tool to unlock the fun switch. There's basically no situation in which it'd be actually useful.
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@george2113 Yes, all Luxembourg FN-49s were in .30-06.
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They were designed by the same guy, after all. Dieudonne Saive was working on them in parallel, with the FN-49 being the culmination of his experimental work for Britain on a semi-automatic rifle during WW2 (chambered in 7.92x57, because that's what Britain was already using for their BESA machine guns), and the FAL being an evolution of his 1946 assault rifle prototype (chambered in 7.92x33, as a placeholder for whatever would be adopted post-WW2).
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@sentinel7122 Very, very few Argentine Navy FN-49s escaped conversion to 7.62x51, and most of those are in museums. I'm not sure if any of them in the original 7.65x53 were ever imported to the US (assuming that's where you live). But I'd consider the 7.62 conversions with their 20-round mag to be the most desirable from a shooting perspective, because the ammo is so easily available. And $550 was really good price assuming there were no missing or broken parts.
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@WALTERBROADDUS Saive was actively working on the FAL at the same time he was finishing the FN-49. With the FN-49, he was completing his wartime work on what the British had designated SLEM-1. But at the time, the FAL prototypes were chambered in 7.92x33mm and 7x43mm, so adapting a FAL magazine to it wasn't exactly an option. By the time the 7.62x51 FAL existed, the FN-49 was already in production with its fixed 10-round mag. At the time the FN-49's design was completed, the assumption was that the FAL would be an assault rifle firing an intermediate cartridge, and the FN-49 would be for anybody who wanted a more conventional full-powered semi-auto rifle.
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