Innehållsförteckning för November/December 2023 #69 från Recoil

The National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum is located on North Hutchinson Island in Fort Pierce, Florida, and is the only museum dedicated solely to preserving the history of the U.S. Navy SEALs and their predecessors. It resides on the site of the original training grounds of the Naval Combat Demolition Units (NCDU) and Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT), also known as the “Frogmen.” In early 1943, the Navy established the U.S. Naval Amphibious Training Base (USNATB) in Fort Pierce, Florida. The training was conducted on the operation of landing craft and the demolition of underwater obstacles. U.S. Navy Seabees manufactured steel and concrete copies of enemy obstacles, which trainees promptly blew up. By the war’s end, some 140,000 trainees passed through, with approximately 3,500 trained in UDT operations. In 1946, like…

In November of 2022, we debuted CANCON — perhaps the premier open-to-the-public range day in the country. In April of 2023, we brought the event to Arizona. As you read this, we’re preparing for our return to Richmond Hill, Georgia. So, we decided to take this edition of Buildsheet to showcase some of the vendors from our Arizona show and focus on a full-time-suppressed rifle setup. It should be noted that not all the companies featured on this rifle were at CANCON. But they did provide the bones for this build, along with some unique showings that produced a lightweight, well-balanced, smooth-shooting carbine. The receivers are a SilencerCo SCO-15 set, which feature an ambidextrous bolt release lever, as well as some subtle styling cuts. The handguard is an Aero Precision…

We might as well get this out of the way. The original Strasser RS14 straight pull is our favorite hunting rifle due to its versatility, accuracy, and overall build quality. But it’s not without drawbacks, notably its cost and lack of aftermarket support. The tiny Austrian company has attempted to address these shortcomings by taking technology embodied in their flagship rifle and blending it with the most popular bolt gun in production, the Remington 700. To our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has managed to achieve this, and when we first heard of it, we were concerned that the end result might turn out to be like Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled together out of scraps and showing obvious seams where the two Austrian and American icons were smashed…

Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq fell 20 years ago, and over the years, many secrets of his reign were uncovered. But we still don’t really know much about the small arms industry of Saddam’s era. Engineers and managers of Iraq’s military factories vanished without a trace, and there was never much official information available. In a previous article, the Tabuk AK was covered, the main service rifle of the Iraqi military. But there was another, arguably more famous rifle in Saddam’s Iraq. Everyone who remembers the 2003 invasion likely can recall pictures of U.S. servicemen with gold-plated AKs — definitely a great trophy. Exactly the same rifles were gifted to Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and to this day, those golden weapons reside in the Abdeen Palace Museum in Cairo. Another…

For decades, if you were an AR shooter who wanted to run a rimfire version of your rifle for training, you had multiple options, ranging from drop-in bolt conversions to dedicated rifles or upper receivers made for .22LR. AK-47 shooters, on the other hand, were left by the side of the road with cheap versions of their prized Kalashnikovs that were barely a step above airsoft with their polymer or pot metal receivers. This may have been because, traditionally, AKs were half the price or less than an AR. The same was true for centerfire ammo. This dynamic completely shifted over the past 10 years, and the reverse is now mostly true for a quality AK variant. Yet, building a trainer for a sub $300 rifle in the past seemed…

Mil-spec is a term that’s often used by marketing copy writers to imply extreme toughness, but those who served in the military understand there’s another side to that term. While it’s true that Mil-spec products are thoroughly tested and held to precise standards, they’re also built to meet (not necessarily exceed) those standards while staying under a tightly controlled budget. More importantly, Mil-spec equipment is made to be used and maintained within a military supply chain. For civilian owners who don’t have access to specially trained service techs and warehouses full of spare parts, that can pose a significant challenge. WHAT’S AN LMTV? The Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) is a series of U.S. Military vehicles loosely based on the 12M18 military truck originally built by Steyr-Daimler-Puch in Austria…

The AR-15 platform is renowned for its modularity and ease of assembly — if you have a modicum of mechanical aptitude, you can select your desired components and build a custom rifle in your garage, tailored to your exact needs. It’s the open-source semi-automatic rifle. But bolt-action rifles? It’s a little harder than that. Founded three decades ago, Aero Precision has leveraged its manufacturing capabilities to build a strong reputation for offering everything you need to build your own AR-15. In recent years, they’ve been working on broadening their product portfolio. In addition to suppressors, they also set their sights on precision bolt-action guns. Their vision is to make building custom bolt guns a more economical and straightforward process. There’s no equivalent of Colt’s TDP for an industry-standard bolt-action platform,…

Repeatedly in the press, we see “it’s the guns, it’s the guns, it’s the guns” as the explanation for homicide in the United States, but this rhetoric only serves to obscure the actual homicide problem. I don’t believe Black Americans are more inherently violent than any other group of Americans, but I do believe the country at large, particularly its white liberal faction, needs to come to grips with what’s going on in the Black community before anything can be fixed. As we go through this deep dive, we’ll discover the mathematical key to solving the murder problem in the United States lies not in gun control, nor even in socio-economics, but rather in repairing the family unit across all demographics. We’re going to begin with mathematics, and attempt to…

This summer, Netflix debuted Extraction 2, the sequel to their blockbuster action film Extraction from 2020. It features mega-star and Greek god Chris Hemsworth as Tyler Rake, an Australian special forces operator turned gun-for-hire. The film picks up exactly where the first one left off, with Rake barely surviving a ferocious gunfight in the final act. After recovering from his injuries, Rake accepts a redemptive mission to rescue the family of a brutal Georgian mobster. Rake’s teammates are a sibling duo, Nik and Yaz Khan, played by the stunning Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani and charismatic French-Tunisian actor Adam Bessa. The villain is Zurab Radiani, portrayed by Georgian actor Tornike Gogrichiani. Extraction 2 is a particularly notable movie for the time we live in. It’s a pure, adrenaline-filled, exhilarating action film…

We never had much interest in the scout rifle concept, stemming as it did from Jeff Cooper’s Reagan-era, bush war LARPing fantasies and his disdain for the AR-15. It’s a testament to the conservative nature of the gun world that once a concept recruits a hard core of evangelists, nothing can cause them to stray, no matter what new innovations might come along. Following Cooper’s death in 2006, the formula for a scout rifle was more or less cast in bronze, despite his own history of considering new ideas on their merits. At this point, it’s probably a good idea to review just what the scout rifle idea was supposed to embody. Cooper envisioned a rugged all-rounder, fit to roam the mountains of the American West, or the plains of…

01 SUPERESSE STRAPS EDC PUNCTURE MARKER MSRP: $39 URL: superessestraps.com When your daily carry firearm and knife aren’t permissible in certain circumstances, it’s time to turn to improvised weapons. It’s important that the tool be both effective and low-profile so as to not attract unwanted attention. That’s why the EDC Puncture Marker is a clever option. It looks, feels, and weighs just like your average Sharpie — but it stabs like an icepick. That’s because the ink tip has been replaced with a sharpened rod made out of fiberglass. It can punch holes through hard-to-open boxes or violent criminals. The 0.47-inch-long tip comes in black (shown), blue, green, and red, as well as in a 0.25-inch-long black tip, which better matches a standard Sharpie ink tip. Plus, it comes with…

Many times, we make long and difficult choices about a particular knife for EDC. Usually, a specific type of blade is chosen, and the decision comes down to which manufacturer to buy from, or to add serrations or not, etc. Yet, if an EDC blade is to be considered for self-defense, should not the user consider selecting a training blade to match it? Trainers should reflect the knife being used as closely as possible, and the training methodology should also be incorporated. That last part may be a bit difficult if you just signed up for a course, as you may not know what the instructor requires until the last minute. Many simple trainers made of rubber, wood, or aluminum can be had for reasonable prices, but these usually don’t…

This wasn’t the murder I was expecting. With sunset past and dusk falling on the South Texas mesquite, this day’s hunt for whitetail deer was ending. The too-young bucks hanging around the feeder startled and scattered. I got into my glass just in time to see it wasn’t a big buck pushing them off. It was pigs. Two of them, and good-sized boars at that. Both of them ran right to the feeder, but just seconds later one of them jerked away and ran off, the other right on his heels. And I could’ve sworn that pig had a bird in his mouth. As twilight faded to night, I got out of the blind with my flashlight and walked the 200 yards to the feeder. Sure enough, there was a…

The very first booth we laid eyes on at SHOT Show 2023 was Foxtrot Mike. They had a rifle we found so outrageous as to be compelling: the Mike-102. It has a mix of features of both the AR and AK, but not in the ways you’d think. Folding stock but still direct impingement. 5.56mm but eats from AK mags. It also shared features with many “advanced” carbines, like a swappable, forward charging handle and some ambidextrous controls. DESIGN Because the stock both folds and can fire when folded, one would expect an operating system similar to an AR-180, but here the design more resembles the original shorty, no stock AR, the Olympic Arms OA-93. The standard AR bolt carrier group is truncated, and instead of a buffer and long…