Tag Archives: shot 2024

In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison…

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The 1980s-1990s stainless Mini-14 GB-F is an enduring work of beauty that hails from an age of VHS tapes and when MTV played music. (Photo: Chris Eger)

The original .223 caliber Ruger Mini-14 “180” series as debuted in 1974 had all-wood furniture – even atop the handguard – and was only sold to the public with five-shot magazines.

A few years later, it was offered with 20-round mags, the option for a factory folding stock, and a select-fire variant (the AC556) for government (military and LE) contracts. These guns were also offered with what Ruger described as a “Government Barrel,” which included a flash hider and bayonet lug. These appeared in as far-off places as the Bermuda Defense Forces and Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Then, starting in the second season of the “A-Team” in 1984, in which the factory-outfitted folding stocked stainless commercial Mini-14 with aftermarket flash hiders made a regular appearance, the gun marched into everlasting pop culture status.

Eventually, the stainless Ruger Mini-14 Government Barrel, Folding Stock, or GB-F, was added to Ruger’s commercial catalog, at least until the mid-1990s when it was killed off by the Federal “Assault Weapon” Ban. After the controversial AWB expired in 2004, the original Mini-14 and Ranch Rifle were discontinued in favor of an improved variant that allowed the easy mounting of optics and had an improved barrel profile and twist rate that improved accuracy and decreased heat sensitivity.

This “pre-ban” 186-serial prefix stainless Mini GB .223 in the author’s collection dates to 1994, has the original 1-in-7 twist barrel, a short rounded rear sight, and has a stainless Sampson folding stock installed, making it something of a faux GB-F. Until very recently it saw service in the Maryland State Corrections system. (Photo: Chris Eger)

Everything old is new again

With all the aesthetic of the old-school classic 1980s stainless Government Barrel Folder model, Ruger has reached into the vault to bring back an updated icon.

The new model Mini-14 Tactical variant includes a throwback style protected blade front sight with “ears” and an underbarrel bayonet lug, a factory-installed flash suppressor, and an integral stainless side-folder stock along with walnut furniture and a polymer pistol grip.

Unlike the guns that look like it from a couple of decades ago, it is chambered in 5.56 NATO, has integral scope mounts machined directly on the solid steel receiver, carries a tall ghost ring rear aperture sight, and has a threaded barrel with a 1-in-9 twist rate.

The MSRP is $1,849, which is about $500 more than other current Mini-14 models in the company’s Tactical series. But keep in mind those other models don’t come with a folding stock – which Sampson makes for $300 and are sometimes tough to get – while Ruger-branded stainless 20-round Mini-14 mags are basically unobtainium, so there’s that. Plus none have a GB-style barrel. 

Yankee Kalash Updates

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While at CANCON 2023 in Savannah, Georgia a few weeks ago, I stopped by the Kalashnikov USA booth and ran into John Cason, KUSA’s director of sales. He told me that the company wouldn’t be in Vegas for the SHOT Show later this month, but he did have several sweet new models they had queued up for 2024.

Among them is the long-promised American-made 7.62x39mm AK101 sporter (KR101), a 5.56 NATO AK102 sporter (KR102), side folding wood-stocked (not a misprint) KR103s, and a tiny Vityaz.

KUSA’s “Micro 9” Vityaz, made for an Indonesian military contract but soon to come to the U.S. consumer market

Developed for an overseas military contract, KUSA had what is tentatively just called the “Micro 9” at the show. Now don’t confuse that term with a micro compact 9mm pistol such as a P365 or Hellcat. This is a 5-inch barreled semi-auto KP-9 Vityaz clone rather than the standard 9.25-incher that the company intends to market as both a pistol (that can either use a triangle brace or be Form 1’d later should the user want) and as a factory SBR.

PSA Krinkov (no, really, they say)

Palmetto State Armory has been teasing the public for years that they have an American-made Krink headed to market while not delivering.

Well, Cameron surfaced over the weekend on social media and said the company is in their final testing phase for the gun, expecting to launch it in February (yes, of 2024).

They intend to have five variants at launch– all in 5.56 with included side rails.

These will include a plum gloss, a Vudu version, a JMac railed option, a redwood version, and an SBR-ready variant. PSA says that they will work on 5.45, .300 BLK, and 7.62×39 variants after the 5.56s have been released. No pricing is available.

Color me excited.

A Rost What?

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If you have followed this blog for more than five minutes, you’ll get that I like new guns, which come around almost every day.

Something rarer are new gun companies, and I always take an interest in those and they can sometimes prove a bigger and more complex story.

The first new gun company of the year this year appears to be Texas-based Rost Martin, who has what at first appears to be a G19-sized vanilla striker-fired polymer-framed 9mm pistol, but at closer look seems to be a little better (and for a better price).

Their flagship RM1C pistol is a compact-sized double-stack 9mm, that sports a 4-inch hammer-forged barrel, 7.1-inch overall length, and a 21.1-ounce unloaded weight with a 15+1 round magazine. This puts it a hair smaller than the Glock 19 Gen 5. It is optics-ready on all models, shipping with an RMR footprint, while plates for “all other popular optic footprints” will be available.

Other features include aggressive front and rear slide serrations, ambidextrous surface controls including slide catch and mag release, and what is described as “a smooth, light 5-pound trigger pull with a clean break and a short reset.” Added to this are non-glare top slide serrations similar to what is seen on S&W and Walther pistols, an inherent low bore axis, and a Tenifer-treated nitrocarburized slide. It has interchangeable rear grip inserts.

The Texas-made RM1C will be offered in black, gray, and FDE, and has a very AREX Delta Gen 2 vibe.

Don’t worry about support, as it uses CZ P10 pattern mags that are free, and accept XD pattern sights.

Of note, it has a Glock-style takedown albeit with arguably better ergos.

All right, so enough of the windup – how about the pitch? The MSRP on the new Rost Martin RM1C is set at $459 across all models, a price that will probably be a little lower at retail. That puts it on par price-wise with an optics-ready Turkish-made Stoeger STR-9C or Canik TP9SF but about a hundo more than a PSA Dagger, but then again it has a feature set better than the basic Dagger.

The folks at Rost Martin are sending me one to test and I am meeting with them at SHOT next week to get some more background info, so watch this space.

Back Again: Inglis Hi-Powers

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The original John Inglis and Company dated to 1937 (and even further back to the 1850s as the Mair, Inglis, and Evatt concern) and was based in Toronto.

Primarily a maker of home appliances – the firm was bought in 1987 by Whirlpool, Canada, and still operates there under the old banner – during World War II they did their part to help win the war and produced Bren light machine guns and Hi-Power pistols, making over 100,000 of each for the Allied cause, largely for KMT China and the Commonwealth. 

The Canadian Browning-Inglis production was aided during WWII by FN’s exiled staff, with the BHP’s co-designer, Dieudonné Saive, helping with the technical package, making these guns unofficial clones. Ultimately, an agreement was reached to pay FN a royalty of 25 cents after the war for each gun produced. (Photos: Library and Archives Canada/City of Toronto Archives/Canadian Forces)

A WWII-era Canadian-made Browning-Inglis No. 2 Mk1* Hi-Power, as found in the Guns.com Vault. Note the internal extractor and “thumbprint” slide, hallmarks of 1940s BHPs. These were imported in the 1980s by Navy Arms for like $300

Browning-Inglis No. 2 Mk1* Hi-Powers that had been produced in Toronto during the conflict remain in service with the Canadian military and are set to be retired shortly by a variant of the SIG Sauer P320, which will be type classified as the C22 in Canadian service.    

Other Inglis Hi-Powers went to the British military, who liked the pistol so much that it went on to adopt a slightly improved Belgian-made model in 1963, type classified as the L9A1, to finally kick the wheel gun habit the Brits had picked up back in the Crimean War with the Adams revolver. These Hi-Powers remained in service with the Brits until very recently when they were replaced by the Glock 17 while the Australians opted to go with a SIG-based replacement in 2022. 

The British (and Australian) L9A1 Hi-Power was generally more along the lines of the post-WWII Browning “T” series Hi-Power, typically with an external extractor and plastic grips. (Photos: Imperial War Museum/Australian War Memorial)

Now, SDS Imports, the Tennessee-based firm that includes the brands Tisas USA, Tokarev USA, Spandau, and Military Armament Corporation (MAC), has rebooted Inglis and intends to bring some period-correct Hi-Powers to the American consumer market.

The new company plans an L9A1-ish clone to include a black Chromate finish and plastic grips as well as three more commercial models: a black Inglis P-35B with walnut grips, the satin nickel Inglis P-35N with black G10 grips, and a color-case hardened Inglis GP-35. 

The planned Inglis L9A1 clone. Likely made by Tisas in Turkey but, if their past work is anything to judge, it is probably well-done

“The market demand has not been met for historically accurate Hi-Powers,” said Military Armament Corporation/SDS CEO Tim Mulverhill. “We’re planning for the L9A1 to influence the Hi-Power market the way the Tisas U.S. Army did in the 1911 market.”

Prices will range from $489 for the L9A1 to $649 for the GP-35. 

I’ll have the full details from SHOT Show later this month.

A New Carry 10mm?

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Earlier this year SIG Sauer followed up on its first striker-fired 10mm handgun with something a bit more compact – and I’ve have all the details and some insights after kicking one around for a couple of months.

In early 2022, SIG debuted the new caliber option for its hugely successful P320 platform of pistols: the 15+1 capacity 10mm XTen. I extensively evaluated one with box after box of punishing 10mm loads and was impressed with it, the biggest complaint being that its size limited carry options.

Well, the company has an answer to that with the new XTen Comp.

Still chambered in potent 10mm Auto and using the same 15-round flush-fit magazine as the full-sized XTen, the (gently) smaller XTen boasts a 3.8-inch bull barrel instead of the standard 5-incher as seen on its big brother. This also shortens the slide and takes some weight (a quarter pound) off the scales.

Compare in size the XTen Comp, left, with the full-sized XTen. Note they have the same height and width but a shorter frame and top half in terms of length.

Plus, it has an open-top “integrated expansion chamber” that runs past the muzzle of the 3.8-inch barrel, a design that turns it into a ported compensator that cannot come loose with firing. SIG uses this on lots of its Comp model pistols, including 9mm P320s and the P365, and the company says it drops felt recoil by as much as 20 percent.

In initial testing, I found the compensated slide on the XTen Comp to have a better recoil impulse than either the full-sized XTen or the FN 510 Tactical which I tested recently.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Kicking around the Tisas Raider

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So I’ve spent the past couple of months putting 500 rounds through the SDS Imports Tisas-made Raider B45 M1911A1 railgun, which strives to emulate the Colt M45A1 CQBP used by the Marines until just very recently.

In a nutshell, the Raider looks good, shoots good, and faithfully recreates the aesthetic railgun used by the Marines in recent years without just slaughtering your bank account. I’d personally like some better sights and a trigger job to remove the “bounce” in the trigger, or a swap out for a shorter aluminum trigger but then again that would start cutting into that aesthetic that it so clearly strives to meet. It is ready for the range or for home defense but beware that, if carrying, holster fits could be funny due to the rail. 

The wonderful thing about the price is that you can use that saved cash to buy more ammo, a Kabar, and contribute the Toys for Tots program.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Ruger and Rabbits from Hats…

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You may not remember this, but FN coughed up the 5.7x28mm round in 1990 after nearly a decade of R&D. The Belgian gunmaker had a wrap on the cartridge and the guns– the Five-Seven pistol and P90 PDW– that used it for decades. This made it very niche and, by 2019, was close to falling out of production.

Then swooped in Ruger with their 57 pistol and it became a hit.

Soon, everyone was talking about 5.7 again.

In the past few years since, CMMG, Diamondback, KelTec, PSA, and S&W entered the 5.7 game while Ruger expanded their offerings to include carbines, forcing FN to release an updated Mk3 variant of the Five-Seven pistol. In the same period, ammo makers saw the writing on the wall and started making the rounds in quantity and variants never seen in the caliber, both increasing supply and halving the cost.

Amazing what can happen when someone takes an almost forgotten round and, through the introduction of a new gun, breathes life back into it.

Well, Ruger may be trying to do a repeat with a new chambering for an old revolver. Last week they announced a new variant of the vaunted double-action Ruger Super Redhawk in .22 Hornet.

I did not see this coming, at all

That’s an odd move for a wheel gun that was typically chambered in big hunting grade/counter bear calibers such as .44 Rem Mag and .454 Casull. Heck, Ruger created the .480 Ruger in 2003– then the largest-diameter production revolver cartridge– just for the Super Redhawk.

Further, it is the only new .22 Hornet handgun on the market anywhere. The last was the old bolt-action Savage Arms Striker bench gun that went out of production in 2005.

What’s so special about the .22 Hornet?

Developed by Townsend Whelen a full century ago, the .22 Hornet is not rimfire like the .22 Magnum and .22 LR but is instead a centerfire round that is about a half-inch shorter than a .223/5.56. The longer 35mm case of the .22 Hornet (the .22 Mag has a case length of 26mm) allows it to carry a heavier bullet at a faster speed, typically twice the velocity of a .22 Mag, while generating almost three times the energy downrange. In short, the .22 Hornet is a blistering fast little round (Hornady’s 35-grain VMax load has a released spec of 3,060 feet per second) and is ideal for use by varmint hunters and in survival guns– a use the military had for it for years.

The old M6 Aircrew survival weapon, which was a .22 Hornet over a 410 shotgun

However, today, the .22 Hornet is still around but should be listed as being on life support.

As far as I can tell, the only production guns in the .22 Hornet these days are bolt action rifles: the Savage 25 in several different finishes and barrel lengths, and the Ruger 77/22. Browning-owned Winchester still markets a Japanese-made Model 1885 Low Wall Hunter in the caliber, but production can’t be very brisk, and odds are they just pulling from a batch made years ago that is sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

Keeping these new guns and legacy models fed is likewise slim-picking but not impossible. The round is still in commercial production both in the U.S. by Federal, Hornady, and Winchester, and overseas by PPU and Sellier & Bellot.

Has Ruger been reading the tea leaves on this one and seen an opportunity to pull another rabbit out of the hat, caliber speaking, when it comes to the fading .22 Hornet? We’ll see.

Kicking around an A4 Dissipator– that works

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The Dissipator concept came about briefly during America’s involvement in Vietnam. Early slab-sided Colt 601 AR-15s, Colt 602 XM-16s, Colt 604 M16s, and forward-assist equipped Colt 603 M16A1s all had full-length 20-inch barrels with a good portion of that being past the gas block/forward sight assembly. 

A circa-1962 layout from the U.S. Army’s Springfield Armory showing an early Colt 601. Note that the last 6 inches of its 20-inch barrel are past the forward sight assembly, with overall length hitting just shy of 39 inches.

 

Troops in tight situations, such as crammed into helicopters and pushing through triple canopy jungle, found themselves wanting something handier. This led to a “field modification,” which saw some simply hacksaw a few inches off the barrel to make the rifle shorter. This mod even became semi-official, with in-country workshops whittling down the barrel a couple of inches and then threading the muzzle to attach the flash hider. 

The hacked Dissipator was born – although there is no evidence that it was ever called this in military service. The mod made the 6.5-pound early M16 more compatible in overall length to the 35-inch long M1 Carbines which, while not in U.S. frontline service at the time, were often “acquired” from local South Vietnamese troops due to their ease of carry. 

The unwelcome news was that the Dissipator mod killed the rifle’s dwell time and made a gun that was already of questionable reliability at the time even more prone to fail. Doh.

Left is a workshop wall at the U.S. Army’s Springfield Armory with a Dissipator M16 second from the top. Its formal industry replacement, the Colt 610/XM177, can be seen above the Dissipator on the wall. Right is a Fleet Marine Force M16 workshop in South Vietnam apparently reworking guns to make them shorter ala Dissipator style, in April 1968. (Photos: Springfield Armory National Historic Site/National Archives.)

Colt even made the Dissipator concept refined with the Model 605, which included a bayonet-lug-less 15-inch barrel whose flash hider started right where the front sight assembly ended and a full-sized fixed buttstock and a rifle-length gas system. However, it was very soon superseded by the Colt 610/XM177/GAU-5A, which entered service by the late 1960s. With its adjustable two-position buttstock and a 10-inch barrel with a carbine-length gas system, it only took up about 28 inches of real estate and would go on to be the go-to shorty M16 for generations. 

While the military walked away from the Model 605, it turned out the concept of an AR-15 platform with a full-length fixed buttstock and handguards with a rifle-length gas system on a trimmed-down barrel made for a smooth-shooting rifle while still coming in (a little) shorter than a traditional 20-inch full-length rifle. 

A niche for sure, but one that black rifle makers took a chance on over the years with Adams Arms, ASA, Bushmaster, Delton, Doublestar, KAK, PSA, and Windham Weaponry all selling their own assorted takes on a Dissipator for the commercial market. The thing is, most of these are “mock” Dissipators, as they actually used carbine or mid-length gas systems with a low-profile gas block under the handguard. The A2 sight was pushed out as far as possible to give the short look of the Dissy while getting away from the old dwell time issue the Vietnam-era guns suffered from.

Faux Dissipator: top mid length 16inch, 2nd is a standard 20-inch rifle length pencil, bottom is a true dissipator with a rifle length system on a 16in HBAR

The latest Dissipator comes from Anderson, of all people, and they got the dwell time right without resorting to faux-ing it up.

I’ve got 500 rounds through it thus far and I think I am falling in love. 

The recoil impulse on this thing is smooth. I just wish it had a carry handle upper

More in my column at Guns.com.

Archon Actually Inbound

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As part of my trip to CANCON in Savannah earlier this month, I ran into the folks over at PTR and, besides their new and interesting Vent series of suppressors in three calibers, they are also now working with the Czech Republic-based Archon (pronounced arK-ahn) Firearms to manufacture and distribute that company’s line of pistols in the U.S.

The origin story goes back to the Russian-Italian Stryk pistol that debuted in 2017 by Arsenal Firearms – which soon rebranded to Archon. After appearing at SHOT Show in 2018 and 2019 with production shifting to RUAG in Hungary and Germany, the brand sort of went under the radar for a minute, but now PTR has the pistols in production in a new second-generation design.

The Archon line uses a patented breech locking system, the AF-Speedlock, which eliminates the need for a tilting barrel and allows the entire slide of the firearm to be dropped lower into the grip. Think CZ75 but with an even lower bore axis.

Like, really low bore axis. This helps reduce muzzle rise, allowing, in theory at least, for less felt recoil and faster target re-acquisition.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Glock Finally Dropped a Factory 19L: Meet the New (To Glock) G49

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The so-called Glock 19L, using the compact G19 grip with a full-sized G17-length slide and barrel, has been a thing for years, with folks typically hacking a Glock 17 grip to make it a 15-shot capacity pistol that accepts G19 mags. Others used a standard G19 frame with an aftermarket G17-length slide that was compatible with the shorter frame.

The benefit was that, for many, the G19 is considered easier to conceal with its shorter grip/height than the G17, while the longer barrel and slide give the user a longer sight radius.

The Glock 49 Gen 5 MOS was first leaked back in May 2022 by Vickers Tactical in a post that had over 3,000 likes and comments. A popular rumor on Glock groups at the time was that it was a spinoff of the company’s large 2019 CBP contract that saw the federal agency purchase $85 million worth of pistols including the crossover G47, which was designed to run a shorter Glock 19 recoil system in a Glock 17-sized slide and barrel with a slightly shorter dustcover on the frame.

For the last year, the G47 allows the user to make a more or less OEM 19L pistol, by swapping a Gen 5 slide and barrel from a G19 over to the G47 frame.

For instance, take a look at this:

Showing off that modularity, I give you the “you got chocolate in my peanut butter” that is the G19X and G47 MOS with swapped uppers. Both guns shoot and cycle fine. You could do the same between the G47 and the G17 Gen 4/5, G45, and G19 Gen 4/5. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)

Now, the G49 is finally a real thing, as Glock announced it Wednesday.

Chambered in 9mm Luger, it holds 15+1 rounds in standard magazine capacity, has a 4.49-inch barrel, all the standard Gen 5 characteristics like the accurate Glock Marksman Barrel, and the company’s MOS system for mounting optics. (Photo: Talo)

Hopefully for Glock, there is still interest in this concept. Even if there isn’t, they’ll probably sell a million of them.

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