Innehållsförteckning för Sept/Oct 2019 #44 från Recoil

Way back last century when I moved to the U.S., the prevailing wisdom among firearms aficionados was that you never wanted to invite “The Man” into your life. According to popular lore, owning NFA items virtually guaranteed the midnight knock, followed by a request for papieren, bitte. The reality is, of course, worlds apart from the tinfoil-hatted fantasies of yore, and if you’re really worried about government intrusion into your private life, then ditching your cellphone would be a better place to start. While the National Firearms Act was, and remains, an unjust imposition on the rights of firearms’ owners, complying with its requirements has become less onerous in recent years. Originally conceived as a means to price naughty guns and accessories out of the range of the common man,…

MIL-SPEC AUTOMOTIVE HUMMER H1 6.6L LBZ DURAMAX ALLISON 1000 TRANSMISSION WWW.MILSPECAUTO.COM Think about the various flare-ups in the automotive industry you’ve lived through. Many vehicles debut to great fanfare, but their flame is often extinguished just as quickly as it began. Outfits independent of the Big Three like DeLorean, Vector, Tucker, and Fisker certainly burst upon the scene to tremendous optimism. Unfortunately, they found themselves added to a growing list of names that automotive enthusiasts wax philosophically about what could’ve been. The public is also left to wonder if anyone’s got the cojones to resurrect the brand and improve where others fell short. The tale of Hummer also falls into this category of missed opportunities, but perhaps now the elements have aligned for it to finally reach its intended potential.…

The Mk18 is as iconic as it gets when it comes to SBRs. THIS IS NOT AN MK18. This is what we think the Mk18’s punk-ass little half-brother would turn out like if its NSWC Crane papa stepped out and knocked up a young mistress. The Mk18’s developmental roots go back to the 1960s and the original shorty AR, the Colt Commando. NSWC Crane took inspiration from the Colt Commando when it made its CQBR drop-in upper receivers for U.S. Special Operations forces. These were 10.3-inch Colt-barreled uppers that eventually became the Mk18 when combined with surplus M16 rifle lowers from the Navy’s stocks. One of the most distinctive parts of the Mk18 is the flat dark earth RIS handguard. This was originally a Knight’s part, but Crane would later…

While the term Virtus dates at least 600 years before the birth of Christ as a way of describing the virtues of Rome’s fighting men, it feels like it took the 7.62 x 39mm version of SIG’s namesake MCX Virtus nearly as long to reach the market. But, it’s arrived. And, like Horatius at the bridge, the MCX x39 earns the heroic Virtus commendation by standing tall amid an onslaught of thousands … of rounds … of mostly garbage ammo, that is. LOOKING BACK This isn’t SIG’s first rodeo building a modular platform with the ubiquitous Russian cartridge in mind. It’s hard to ignore the company’s redheaded stepchild, the SIG556xi and its stillborn AK magazine compatible variant. Yet, leave out the misguided attempt to capture the nobility of SIG’s SG…

WHY If you Form 1 an NFA item, disregard whatever purported “truth” a low-information trash weblog told you and listen to what we’ve heard directly from the BATFE: You have to mark any personally manufactured NFA item. The BATFE has gotten so many questions due to this garbage rumor they’ve even been stamping some forms reminding folks it needs to take place. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS The depth must be no more shallow than .003 inch with a text size no smaller than 1/16th of an inch. But we actually recommend going deeper and larger. Here’s why: If you only engrave to the minimum size and depth, it’s incredibly easy to inadvertently cover the marking with paint or something like Cerakote. And so long as you place it someplace inconspicuous, the marking…

Let’s face it: Integral silencers are cool as hell. Who doesn’t want an OSS HD-Military, the (mostly) silent pistol used to dispatch Nazi officers? No real Americans, that’s for sure. But are they worth it? Many different integrals have graced the pages of RECOIL in the past, but this piece isn’t about a particular integral gun; we’re going to talk integrals in general. THE MANUFACTURER’S VIEW As far as integrals, experts in the silencer community are somewhat split. Evan Green of Griffin Armament told us: “Integrals have long caught the attention of boys young and old alike. The large, long, suppressors purposely built into the host firearm, beckon images of the French resistance in World War II. Appearance is 99 percent of reality, right? Wrong. Bigger isn’t always better. The…

Knives have been around for thousands of years. So, the casual collector might think everything that can be improved on this ancient tool has already been done. But they clearly don’t know the designers we’re featuring here. These genius knife-makers have been more instrumental in advancing edged tools than the rest of the industry combined. Of course, we can’t possibly fit all of the living legends who’ve pushed the bladed envelope because there’s only so much room in these pages. Sadly, we can only highlight six of them here. (Apologies to Pardue, Reeve, Terzuola, Walker, and the other pioneers still grinding!) Due to their inventiveness, creativity, and sheer popularity, some of these greats can command thousands of dollars for just one of their custom knives. Others are so in demand…

At the 2019 NRA Annual Meeting (NRAAM) in Indianapolis, we presented awards for the best or most interesting new products we saw at the show. Since all of these products are brand-new, these awards shouldn’t be construed as endorsements — though as we get some time with them in the future that may well change. We decided upon four awards: Best of Show, Best Firearm, Best Accessory, and Honorable Mention. Like all of our awards, these were alcohol-based. Imagine that! LEO Armory came through for us again and provided our trophies — custom laser-engraved pint glasses. But what good is a pint glass if you don’t have anything to put in it? We made a trek to a local Indianapolis brewery, Big Lug, for the liquid fillers. Best of Show…

The monster that became the so-called “Islamic State” came to an end in an obscure Syrian town that might be lucky to show up on a printed map of the region. Baghuz is one of the southernmost towns in Deir ez-Zor province, mere kilometers from the Iraqi border. It’s across the Euphrates River from Abu-Kamal, an Assad Regime-controlled town that formed an anvil the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) smashed against the last bastion of ISIS in Syria, supported by the Inherent Resolve coalition forces. This mixed force of young Kurds and Arabs, Muslims, and Christians paid a deadly toll for their victory in Northeastern Syria. Few could probably have foreseen this battle in 2014 when Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi took to the minbar of the al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, proclaiming the…

In early February of 2018, the headquarters of U.S.-backed Syrian Defense Forces — and their embedded U.S. advisors — came under heavy attack by a force of the Syrian Regime. U.S. forces successfully repelled the attack using a full suite of air support assets, including Apache helicopters, drones, AC-130 gunships, and F-22 jets. Initial reports after the battle indicated that among the dead were 100 Russians. In the following weeks, a variety of news sources from both the U.S. and Russia would double that number, citing nearly 200 dead Russian fighters — all of whom were believed to be working for a Russian private military company known as PMC Wagner. While Moscow never officially endorsed this version of the narrative, the Wagner brand has been popping up more and more…

Everyone had high hopes when Remington/Bushmaster announced the Adaptive Combat Rifle. It was a carbine that was the embodiment of everything the consumer should’ve wanted, according to current thinking — and yet somehow, it was met with a collective yawn by the vast majority of the American gun-buying public. Those few adventurous souls willing to be early adopters will probably never do that again, as the upper echelons of Freedom Group management did the same thing to firearms development as Nickelback did to music. We can only speculate as to why, but perhaps “Not Invented Here” syndrome might have had something to do with it, as the gun was originally designed by Magpul. In a marketplace currently saturated with $400 AR-15s, the ACR has a hard row to hoe, and…

It’s interesting to observe what garners attention within firearms development … and what doesn’t. Flashback to 1957 — the design of the rifle hadn’t changed much for a century. Certainly, technology has advanced, with the percussion ignition-rifled musket leading to self-contained cartridge-fed repeating actions and ultimately semi-automatic battle rifles. But the rifle throughout all of the evolution was still recognizable as a rifle: wood and steel. There were many key developments in World War II; the advent of stamped sheetmetal receivers and the intermediate cartridge were two of the biggest. Those evolutionary steps were the desperate products of two authoritarian regimes across the pond attempting to out-produce one another, with easily mass-produced weapons not just in flesh in blood. But Americans still had a semi-automatic battle rifle, a wood and…

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is arguably most famous — even infamous to some — for being home to the U.S. Military Corrections Complex, but that’s really just one small facet of this army installation, dating back to 1827. In fact, the prison, consisting of the United States Disciplinary Barracks — the Department of Defense’s only maximum security prison — actually only dates back to 1874. By that time, Fort Leavenworth had already become an important part of America’s move westward. Today, the fort is the oldest active U.S. Army post west of Washington, D.C., and it’s also the oldest permanent settlement in Kansas. It was the home to the United States’ original so-called “Buffalo Soldiers,” the segregated African-American 10th Cavalry Regiment, which saw combat in the Indian Wars and later in…

Grandpa owned a Leupold, and so did dad. Leupold has been around for decades, but they stepped up their game big-time last year with the Mark 5HD line. The Mark 5HDs made the company relevant to the demands of precision and long-range shooting by embracing features discerning shooters have come to expect. The first releases in the Mark 5HD line included 3.6-18x and a 5-25x variable magnification optics. With precision shooters always wanting more magnification, the 5-25x was a shoo-in, but the addition of the new 7-35x gives shooters what they really want in a precision rifle scope. The Leupold Mark 5HD 7-35x covers the middle ground in a field of dual-purpose, high-quality scopes. It’s not the best at every single thing, but it’s excellent at multiple things. THE RUNDOWN…

EDITOR’S NOTE: The CMR30 is available to civilians, and for good reason. We all know that’s technology that all red-blooded Americans should always be able to get their hands on. F@ck sporting purposes. Even if Heckler & Koch didn’t hate you and think you suck, owning an actual MP7 might prove to be more burdensome than you’d expect. 4.6x30mm ammunition is awfully hard to find on a local gun shop shelf, while it’s slim pickings online as well. And what about 5.7x28mm? Frankly, one of our kidneys would immediately get nervous at the thought of an MP7 chambered in 5.7x28mm. Oh sure, there are other 5.7 weapons out there to be had — you can get your Stargate on with an FN PS90, travel back in time and try to…

This is an argument that has been in the gun community nowhere near as long as .45ACP versus 9mm or AR versus AK, but it’s been just as passionate. Plastic against wood? Nay nay, short-barreled rifles versus bullpups. Even among our editorial staff there’s no consensus. So in this piece, we’ll be pitting the SBR-always advocate, Dave Merrill, against the bullpups-aren’t-bullsh*t advocate, Candice Horner. Put into simple terms, a bullpup is a rifle that places the main working action (and thus, the magazine) well behind the trigger. While ludicrous upon first blush, there are absolutely some advantages to bullpup rifles. And there are also some unforeseen and unintended consequences. Today, we’ll break it down so you can make a decision for yourself. DAVE’S TAKE: SBR PRO, BULLPUP NO No matter…

It’s hard to find a person with a neutral opinion of Erik Prince. To some, he’s the epitome of the hard-charging capitalist, finding solutions to problems where big government failed miserably. To others, he’s a war profiteer, single-handedly responsible for the deaths of 17 civilians in Nisour Square in Iraq, and whose company was supposedly banned from doing business in that country because of it. It wasn’t, but hey, why let facts get in the way of the narrative? Somewhere between the characters of Hank Rearden and Mephistopheles lies the real Erik Prince, and in order to divine which end of that spectrum someone falls, it’s usually a good idea to observe what they do, rather than rely on what they say. We first encountered Prince at SHOT Show in…

There’s an old joke that states, “If you spot troops, but you cannot identify them, fire a round in their general direction. If you receive massive volumes of machinegun fire in return, they’re German. If there’s a pause for a few minutes and you’re pummeled into the next world with artillery and air support, they’re American. If you receive high volumes of incredibly accurate rifle fire in return, they’re British.” That high volume of incredibly accurate British rifle fire originally came from the Enfield. The first bolt-action Enfields came into service in the later 1800s and saw their first action in British colonial wars. After a difficult series of conflicts with the Boers in South Africa, the Enfield was almost replaced through no fault of its own, as sources looked…