La France Specialties

Founded by Tim La France, who built a business out of shortening service rifles for buyers who needed something smaller than a full-length carbine but did not want a submachine gun. The M16K, an M16 cut down to a 21 cm barrel with a reworked twin-tube gas system, was the company’s best-known product; a .45 ACP version and a shortened M14 followed. La France Specialties sold directly to police and military buyers rather than through retail, and it never displaced the pistols and submachine guns it was pitched against in volume. SureFire acquired the company in 2004.

No source states a founding year for the company itself, only that the M16K was under development by the early 1980s, so that field is left blank rather than guessed.