You would be correct

As it turns out, their timing with what became the L96A1 could not have been better, as after a few small orders by the Special Boat Service, Special Air Service and the Sultanate of Oman, as well as a few police sniper units in the UK, the rifle was entered into a competition to replace the venerable Lee-Enfield L42A1.

The Ministry of Defence wanted Accuracy International to submit an entry, but when they won handily, suddenly the three men in Mr Walls’ shed were charged with producing over 1200 rifles and all of a sudden needed to prove they could make that many weapons.

What they did was rent out a workshop for a day and filled it with all of the guns they had made in the shed up to that point, claimed the rest of the staff were out to lunch and later found out when they went to eat with the requisitions lieutenants that the inspection was purely to ensure the operation was not just three men in a shed.

Correct, and at a fabulously low cost

It’s such a endearingly dogshit weapon design, purely meant to be as cheap and as producable as possible. It’s literally just some steel piping with a spring and some pins in it. A true testament to the British wartime “Fuck it, it works good enough 👍” philosophy.