The Gun thread

Nice Gun, only niggles I have with it is the extra weight and handguard attachment "Removal/replacement or service of the gas block assembly or the handguard must be performed by the Ruger factory".

Not a fan of the 416, I don't see the gains over G36. It is heavier, pricier and apparently less reliable. Why have a gas regulator at all? Is slightly less recoil with a suppressor and the ability to turn the gas system off really crucial? Lastly I wonder if legacy features like forward assist (extra training, weight and complexity for the ability to make a jam worse?) and DI optimized bolt carrier (putting the op-rod impact point as far off center as possible) is the best option.
 
Yeah, the "no unauthorized removal of the gas block" part is annoying - but then, Ruger has a lifetime no-questions warranty and removing the gas block is armorer service anyway, not field repair, even on a DI AR. The weight is inconsequential to me; I was going to put a slightly different Troy rail system on my next build anyway and the gas system doesn't add anything appreciable to that. The handguard can be removed without factory intervention, by the way. It's just held on by roll pins.

As for why to have a gas regulator - automatic gas regulation systems on rifles have pretty much never worked. They let too much or too little gas into the system and cause problems at inopportune times. Manual gas regulators allow the user to compensate for weak ammo, 'hot' ammo, varying environments and varying weapon conditions. On the AR, the gas tube that runs off the barrel tap back to the receiver can clog up with carbon to the point where while it is still letting gas through, it isn't enough to properly cycle the weapon. On the FAL, if you suddenly aren't getting enough gas, you can quickly adjust the regulator to allow more gas into the piston system which would allow you to continue. In addition, such regulators can be self-cleaning to a degree which you simply can't do with that long thin gas tube.

Forward assist is something that became very important with the post WW2 intermediate and bottleneck cartridges. It seems that sometimes a forward tap is needed to seat the first round of a mag in the chamber (for various reasons, including improper bolt release, riding the bolt closed, carbon fouling or other crud in the chamber, and in the case of the AR, running a 'dry' bolt that either had not had appropriate amounts of lubricant applied to it or had had it boiled off by hot gases). If you could get the first round to chamber, usually the ejection of the first casing would remove any impediments there might be and the rest of the magazine would run fine. AKs, of course, have a handle affixed to the bolt and therefore always have the ability to do forward assist. The early ARs didn't and even when they didn't jam up due to the design (and the insipid ammo manufacturing stupid), they could have environmental problems where a perfectly good round would not *quite* chamber in a perfectly good gun - and due to how the charging handle is designed, there was no way to 'help' the bolt go forward that last little bit into lockup.

The Israelis thought enough of the forward assist concept after their experiences in the 1948 war (and subsequent conflicts) that after the first few FAL prototypes came over from Belgium in the 50s, they demanded and got a forward assist function added to their FALs (which mine still has - it's part of the charging handle). Even until the end of licensed production in Israel in the 90s, they had the forward assist as has every rifle they've adopted since then - including the all new Tavor. I will cheerfully listen to anything the Israelis have to say about increasing the reliability of a rifle, considering how many opportunities they've had to test things out 'for real'.

Oddly enough, the Portuguese seem to have been paying attention to the Israeli experience and when they decided to buy the lighter and more compact AR-10 instead of the FAL or M-14 in 1960, they too demanded and got a forward assist fitted (again as part of the charging handle); something that reportedly came in extremely handy in their fights in Angola and Mozambique.
 
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:dunno: Troops and competitors here have commented (both on forums and to myself and others in person) that with some circumstances, it is possible to manually cycle through an entire magazine under adverse conditions and still not get the weapon to go into battery. One tap on the forward assist, though, and the rifle is back up. Personally, I can't see a reason to not have one, even if it isn't needed most of the time.

In any case, I am seriously thinking about getting into three-gun matches next year, and I needed a reliable and accurate weapon to fill the 'automatic rifle' slot that wasn't as near as large/heavy as my FAL. My previous experiences with ARs have been good overall, but I still had problems trusting the DI guns and not without reason. This SR556 came up and was a great deal at a great price and was one of the piston AR types that I'd been looking at.
 
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What shotgun and pistol will you use?

3 gun really looks like a great sport. Tactical and Heavy-metal optics division seem great, open division is not my thing.

I'd use one of my Springfield XD45s for the pistol and the Saiga 12 for the shotgun. The former's a popular choice, the latter is an increasingly popular choice because of the big drum and stick mags made for it.
 
...The Israelis thought enough of the forward assist concept after their experiences in the 1948 war (and subsequent conflicts) that after the first few FAL prototypes came over from Belgium in the 50s, they demanded and got a forward assist function added to their FALs (which mine still has - it's part of the charging handle). Even until the end of licensed production in Israel in the 90s, they had the forward assist as has every rifle they've adopted since then - including the all new Tavor. I will cheerfully listen to anything the Israelis have to say about increasing the reliability of a rifle, considering how many opportunities they've had to test things out 'for real'...

Does the Tavor really have a forward assist, can't find anything to support that claim?
 
Does the Tavor really have a forward assist, can't find anything to support that claim?

The civilianized version shown at the SHOT show this year apparently doesn't, but the IWI military version is supposed to. The civvie version is built on a totally different receiver, though, thanks to our idiots at the BATFE. Same reason US-market FALs are actually *less* safe than the military ones - the BATFE banned the safety sear because it could have maybe been used to convert the weapon (along with a crapload of other parts and machining) into a machine gun. So instead we have a slightly but significantly less safe weapon. Thanks, BATFE! Idiots.

It is not at all uncommon for US market weapons to be missing one or more functions (not related to automatic fire) versus those available elsewhere.
 
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The armorer's manual of the military version makes not mention of a FA function either.

:dunno: There were IDF guys saying that it had one. Come to think of it, it might be the full sized Tavor that has it, or that they were talking about. The Israelis initially were going to adopt that one and instead went with a combination of the M4 and the Micro-Tavor - which is really an SMG. That could explain it, one wouldn't expect an SMG to have a forward assist. Our SMG'd versions of the AR-15 didn't/don't have a forward assist either.

DOE4.jpg

This is a Department Of Energy SMG made by Colt - it was built specifically to be issued to nuclear power plant security forces. The forward assist was deleted from this version, but appears on the M4, M16A1-4, Colt Commando/XM177/CAR-15, etc., etc.
 
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That looks cute.

Yeah, but it didn't work out very well. The idea was that the special 9mm rounds wouldn't penetrate the core shielding if they were compelled to use it as a backstop, but it turned out to have several problems, not least of which was a rather high cyclic rate, big muzzle climb problems and a few others I can't recall. They served for a few years, then some were given to the DEA. They were replaced by H&K MP5s supplemented by Bushmaster-made M16A2 clones, with a few minor changes.

However, they're still popular among some people.
 
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Yeah, but it didn't work out very well. The idea was that the special 9mm rounds wouldn't penetrate the core shielding if they were compelled to use it as a backstop, but it turned out to have several problems, not least of which was a rather high cyclic rate, big muzzle climb problems and a few others I can't recall. They served for a few years, then some were given to the DEA. They were replaced by H&K MP5s supplemented by Bushmaster-made M16A2 clones, with a few minor changes.

However, they're still popular among some people.

But why on earth didn't they just choice the MP5 or some other proven 9 mm SMG to start with?
 
But why on earth didn't they just choice the MP5 or some other proven 9 mm SMG to start with?

Probably cost.

Actually, not really. It may have looked cheaper on paper (I doubt it) but there's some issues with Colt having far too much influence with the government. This isn't really the place for it, but the bottom line is that Colt has historically had quite a lot of Senators and Representatives in their pockets for a long time - which has resulted in our government and others getting stuck with Colt-produced weapons platforms that weren't actually ideal, best performing, or even really suitable for the job. Further, Colt's managed to get many of the competitions to 'replace' their products killed off or suspended, though it looks like the latest one may not go their way.

You should also have heard the screaming from Colt when someone in the government noticed that Colt didn't actually own the design of the M16 (Armalite did) and that Colt was probably overcharging for their product due to their supposed (by them) monopoly. When they put it out for bid, Colt was taken completely by surprise. Not surprisingly, Colt wasn't the top finisher in the M16 re-let contract competition; their offerings turned out to be higher cost and lower quality than almost all the competition. FN (yes, the FN who made the FAL, P90, High Power, etc) makes the M16 for the US now, in a US plant. FN also supplies more than a few of the non-Colt AR-15 makers with the parts they use to make their AR-15 type rifles, such as upper and lower receivers, barrels, etc.

Colt responded by immediately patenting a bunch of things about the M4 so that contract couldn't be taken away from them. Colt basically hasn't made anything truly new in about 20 years. Funny thing is, them patenting the M4 and people finding ways around it has actually opened up the government contracting patterns, and moreover it's making covering for Colt politically expensive. Today, Knights Armament, Bushmaster, and many others are getting contracts for AR-15 pattern weapons that in the past Colt would have gotten by default. The only thing Colt still has a lock on is the general issue M4 weapons system for the military; most other departments who have a need will buy from someone else.

More than a little of the "Not Invented Here" problem involved, too. And in later years, when there wasn't domestic competition (after Armalite was out of the picture, TRW had given up, Ruger hadn't been able to sell the AC556, etc.), not all of the foreign makers had plants in the US that could make the weapons they offered - something that most corrected a long time ago.
 
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Why would I need a Flash Enhancer?
There are times when you want to pretend you are Rambo and shoot a gun that is twice as loud with twice the flash of everyone else.
:rofl:
 
The Gun thread

Yes, apparently someone has just invented rice (the equivalent of a fart pipe) for guns.
 
I don't really know how I got to this, but I think it had something to do with that hilarious video of the guys shooting the elephant gun and falling down.

Anyway, .950 caliber? Dayum.

 
^ For context, there were tanks going into WW2 with cannons smaller than that. I'd like to see what the gun does to various fruits and stones.
 
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