FN
Authorized Dealer • Herstal, Belgium • Founded 1889 • FAL / SCAR / P90 / Hi Power
Fabrique Nationale d'Herstal — founded 1889 in Liège, Belgium to manufacture Mauser rifles for the Belgian government — grew into one of the most important military-firearm manufacturers in the modern Western world. FN produced the Browning Hi Power (1935–2017), the FN FAL battle rifle adopted by 90+ nations, the MAG 58 / M240 and Minimi / M249 machine guns still in current US military service, the 5.7×28mm Five-seveN pistol and P90 PDW, and — through FN America's Columbia, South Carolina facility — the current-production M16A4, M249 SAW, M240B, and SOCOM's Mk 17 SCAR-H battle rifle. Keep Shooting carries factory FN SCAR-17 / PS90 / FNS-series magazines and FNS pistols.
About FN at Keep Shooting
Keep Shooting is an authorized FN dealer carrying factory FN magazines and pistols across four of the brand's most significant modern platforms — the SCAR 17S battle rifle (factory 20-round magazines in black and FDE), the PS90 civilian carbine (factory 5.7×28mm magazines in 10-, 30-, and 50-round capacities), the FNS-9 and FNS-40 striker-fired service pistols (the pistols themselves plus spare factory magazines), and the FN FAL (TekMat cleaning mat). FN is one of the three or four most important military-firearm manufacturers in the Western world — the producer of record for the Browning Hi Power, the FN FAL, the M240 and M249 machine guns currently in US military service, the Five-seveN pistol, the P90 PDW, and the SCAR family of modern SOF battle rifles.
Fabrique Nationale d'Herstal — universally known as FN — was founded in 1889 in Herstal, Belgium, a suburb of Liège in the Walloon region. The founding mandate was narrow and specific: a consortium of Belgian arms dealers secured a government contract to manufacture 150,000 Mauser Model 1889 rifles for the Belgian Army and needed a factory to produce them. The Mauser contract was fulfilled by 1894, but by that point FN had established itself as a serious arms manufacturer and began pursuing commercial production for other markets. FN's strategic breakthrough came in 1897 when John Moses Browning — by that point already the most prolific firearms designer in American history but frustrated with the licensing terms available from US manufacturers for his newer designs — began licensing designs to FN for European production. The partnership between Browning and FN lasted 30 years until Browning's 1926 death and produced the foundational pistols of FN's commercial lineup: the Browning Model 1899 / Model 1900 (.32 ACP blowback, the first successful commercial semi-auto pistol design), the Model 1910, the Model 1922, and culminating posthumously in the Browning Hi Power — the pistol Browning began designing in 1921, never finished, and which Dieudonné Saive completed at FN after Browning's death. The Hi Power entered FN production in 1935 and remained in continuous FN manufacture through 2017 — 82 years, longer than any other commercial firearm in continuous production.
FN's WWII history is unique in the industry. After Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940, the FN factory at Herstal was seized by the Wehrmacht and continued arms production under German control for the duration of the occupation — producing Browning Hi Powers under the designation Pistole 640(b) for Wehrmacht paratroopers, SS units, and armored troops, alongside German-pattern rifles and machine guns. Simultaneously, Saive escaped Belgium to England with the Hi Power's complete design drawings and licensed the design to John Inglis and Company in Toronto, Canada, which produced Hi Powers for the British Commonwealth armies, Chinese Nationalist forces, and Canadian paratroopers. The Hi Power is the only firearm in modern military history that was in active production by both sides of a major world war simultaneously. When Belgium was liberated in 1944, FN resumed sovereign Belgian production and has operated continuously from Herstal ever since. The factory buildings at Herstal today include structures dating to FN's 1889 founding still in active industrial use — one of the oldest continuously- operating arms factories in Europe.
FN's post-WWII era was defined by two Dieudonné Saive designs that together reshaped the world's infantry arsenal. The FN FAL (Fusil Automatique Léger, "Light Automatic Rifle") was designed by Saive and Ernest Vervier between 1946 and 1953 — a 7.62×51mm NATO battle rifle with a long-stroke tilting-breech action, adjustable gas regulator, detachable 20-round box magazine, and a service-rifle ergonomics package that would become the template for post-WWII Western battle-rifle design. Adopted by the British Army (as the L1A1 SLR, standard issue 1954–1994), the Canadian Forces (as the C1A1/C2A1, 1954–1984), and the armed services of Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Germany (as G1), Brazil, Argentina, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, South Africa, Israel, India, and approximately 90 other nations through the decades from 1954 through the present, the FAL earned the nickname "The Right Arm of the Free World" for its dominance of Cold War-era Western infantry armament. The United States was famously not an FAL adopter — the US military chose the Springfield M14 over the FAL in 1957 — but every other major NATO and Western- aligned military issued the FAL or a licensed variant. Keep Shooting carries the FN FAL TekMat cleaning mat for FAL owners doing home maintenance on their rifles.
The second Saive-era breakthrough was FN's move into machine-gun design. The FN MAG (Mitrailleuse d'Appui Général, "General Purpose Machine Gun"), introduced in 1958, is a belt-fed 7.62×51mm NATO GPMG designed by Ernest Vervier. Adopted by 80+ nations. The US military adopted the MAG as the M240 family in 1977 and it remains the US military's standard medium machine gun today — the M240B (infantry variant, current issue), the M240H (helicopter), M240G (Marine Corps), and M240L (lightweight). FN's next major machine-gun design was the Minimi (Mini-Mitrailleuse), a 5.56×45mm NATO squad automatic weapon introduced in 1974. The US military adopted the Minimi as the M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) in 1984 and it remains standard issue to US infantry fire teams today, 42 years later. The M240 and M249 are both manufactured under contract by FN America at Columbia, South Carolina for the US military — FN's US subsidiary and contract production facility.
FN's 1977 acquisition of Browning Arms Company completed the corporate consolidation of the FN-Browning partnership that had defined both companies for 80 years. Today, all firearms sold under the Browning brand — the Buck Mark, 1911-22/380, X-Bolt, BLR, A-Bolt, Citori, and the Auto-5 Legacy revival — are produced by or under license from FN Herstal (with long guns primarily manufactured by Miroku in Kochi, Japan). For factory Browning magazines, see our Browning Magazines category and the Browning brand page.
FN's 1990s innovation arc produced the most distinctive small-arms cartridge ecosystem of the modern era. The 5.7×28mm cartridge — a small-diameter high-velocity round designed to defeat Level IIIA soft body armor at pistol velocities while remaining controllable in a small-framed handgun — was developed by FN between 1986 and 1990 to replace 9mm NATO for personal- defense-weapon (PDW) and secondary-arm applications. The cartridge launched two platforms: the FN P90 (1990), a compact bullpup PDW with a top-mounted 50-round magazine, issued to special operations units of 40+ nations and to the US Secret Service, and the Five-seveN pistol (1998), a 20-round 5.7×28mm service pistol adopted by Secret Service, FBI HRT, and various military and law-enforcement special units globally. The civilian semi-auto variant of the P90 is the PS90 — a 16.04-inch-barreled NFA-compliant carbine that retains the P90's bullpup layout and top-mounted magazine. Keep Shooting carries factory FN PS90 10-round, 30-round, and 50-round magazines ($52.20 each) for the PS90 carbine; FN's PS90 magazine is proprietary to the platform and not cross-compatible with any other 5.7×28mm firearm.
The FN SCAR family — covered in depth on our SCAR-17 Magazines category — emerged from FN's 2004 win of the USSOCOM Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle program. Two variants entered US SOCOM service in 2009: the SCAR-L / Mk 16 (5.56×45mm, cancelled 2010) and the SCAR-H / Mk 17 (7.62×51mm NATO, current issue). The SCAR-H remains in active use with US Navy SEALs, US Army Special Forces, and the Tier 1 SOF units of 40+ NATO and Western- aligned militaries. The civilian SCAR 17S is a semi-auto-only version introduced in 2009 alongside the military rollout; Keep Shooting carries factory FN SCAR-17 magazines in black and FDE (flat dark earth) to match the two factory SCAR 17S finish configurations.
FN's service-pistol lineup entered the striker-fired polymer era with the FNS family, introduced in 2012. The FNS is a full-size striker-fired service pistol in FNS-9 (9mm) and FNS-40 (.40 S&W) configurations, with ambidextrous controls, interchangeable backstraps, and a trigger pull FN engineered as a direct counter to the Glock and S&W M&P dominance of the 2010s service-pistol market. The FNS competed unsuccessfully in the 2015 US Army Modular Handgun System (MHS) trials and was discontinued in 2019 in favor of the FN 509, which is directly derived from FN's MHS submission. Keep Shooting carries both the FNS-9 and FNS-40 pistols (the FNS-40 also available with factory Trijicon night sights) plus spare factory magazines — the FNS is discontinued from FN's current catalog, so factory-production magazines are a scarce and declining market and owners building out long-term magazine inventory should stock accordingly.
FN America — FN Herstal's US subsidiary, operating from Columbia, South Carolina since 1981 — is the manufacturing arm that produces FN's US-contract military firearms. FN America is the current contract producer of the M16A4 rifle for the US Armed Forces (the M16 contract FN won in 1988 and has held continuously since), the M249 SAW, the M240B/H/G/L machine gun family, and the M2A1 .50-caliber heavy machine gun (the current-production update to John Browning's 1933 M2 design). FN America also manufactures all US-market Browning commercial firearms and the SCAR 17S / SCAR 20S civilian platforms. For FN's catalog-adjacent SCAR-17 magazine specifics, see our SCAR-17 Magazines category; for the Hi Power, covered in depth on our Browning Hi Power Magazines page.
Keep Shooting ships all FN firearms and magazines from our Pennsylvania warehouse with free shipping on orders over $49.95 and hassle-free returns. Pistol and magazine shipments comply with destination- state capacity and firearm restrictions — the 15+ round FNS magazines and 20-round SCAR-17 / 30-round and 50-round PS90 magazines will not ship to capacity- restricted states (California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Vermont, Washington DC; state rules vary — verify before ordering). FNS-9 and FNS-40 pistols ship only to FFL dealers in the buyer's state per federal law. Whether you're an FN SOCOM-platform operator building a civilian analog of a service weapon, a Five-seveN / PS90 owner stocking factory-spec magazines for the platform's proprietary 5.7×28mm cartridge, an FNS owner building up magazine inventory before discontinued- platform supply dries up, or a FAL owner maintaining a Right-Arm-of-the- Free-World service rifle with the FN FAL TekMat, every FN product in our catalog is factory production from Herstal, Belgium or Columbia, South Carolina — traceable to the manufacturer of record for nearly every foundational military firearm of the past 130 years.
Frequently Asked Questions — FN
Yes, we maintain inventory of the most popular FN products. Each product listing shows real-time stock status. If an item is temporarily out of stock, you can sign up for back-in-stock notifications on the product page.
Yes! All orders over $49.95 qualify for free shipping, including FN products. Orders typically ship within 1–2 business days.
Keep Shooting offers hassle-free returns on FN products. If you're not completely satisfied, contact our customer service team for a return authorization. All products must be in original, unused condition.
Yes, Keep Shooting is an authorized FN dealer. All products are sourced directly and include full manufacturer warranty coverage.