Welcome to the future

This is not just another story about the latest and greatest pistol ammo—this one begins with a shootout on April 11, 1986 that changed the worlds of law enforcement and pistol combat. On that day in Miami, Florida, a walking dead man murdered two FBI agents after being shot with a 9mm Luger bullet before finally succumbing to his “non-survivable wound.” The incident prompted the FBI to abandon the 9mm cartridge.

A very long story shortened to one sentence, the FBI’s search for a suitable replacement for the 9mm Luger culminated in the introduction of the .40 S&W cartridge, subsequently adopted almost universally by LE agencies all over the U.S. and by many citizens who choose to carry a handgun for self-defense.

So why, after all that effort and the passage of three decades, is the FBI putting the 9mm back into agents’ holsters? Because advancements in bullet and cartridge technology have made the 9mm viable once again. Two striking advancements that you may not know of have fundamentally changed bullet and case performance, and together they are the first to move ammunition out of the 20th Century and into the 21st.

A +P Hole Saw?

L-Tech, an ammunition manufacturer and ballistic test facility in Eubank, KY, has been quietly providing its services to the U.S. military and to LE, as well as manufacturing Sig Sauer’s ammo products since 2013. After following FBI penetration test protocols, L-Tech has now released its unusual-looking, but high-performance, 9mm Full-Stop ammunition to the public.

Full-Stop is not simply an expanding bullet launched at +P velocity—it is an entirely new 9mm Luger cartridge created from mating a remarkable, two-piece case with a bullet that behaves pretty much like a flying hole saw or blades from a food blender. And here’s the kicker: the maker says the cartridge produces, with apparent disregard of physics, +P velocity without producing +P pressures.

Mostly Hollow

The Full-Stop 124-grain bullet doesn’t expand in the traditional sense of forming a “mushroom” pushed by a solid base. Instead, after about 1.5 inches of penetration into a soft target the Full-Stop bullet nose opens up into a three-bladed “propeller,” as the maker calls it, that chews its way through tissue at high velocity to create maximum trauma.

“The Full-Stop creates a wound channel about two and a half times that of a standard hollow point ‘mushrooming’ bullet,” said L-Tech president Larry Henderson.

The bullet has no core. It is instead a homogeneous copper alloy, like a premium lead-free expanding hunting bullet. Disassembly at the loading bench showed that half of the Full-Stop bullet’s length is essentially a hollow point, and its three expanding sections, which are joined at the apex, are clearly evident. A long ogive and small hollow point opening lend the bullet the appearance of a long, tapering nose. The bullet base has a typical slight bevel to facilitate seating.

Because much of the bullet is hollow and it is mid-weight for the caliber, without any (weighty) lead, it must be made longer to achieve 124 grains. Therefore, a good portion of it nestles into the case. An inertia bullet puller required no undue force to remove bullets, indicating a normal crimp, and subsequent examination of the bullet surface showed that factory crimping of the stainless-steel case does not unduly deform the copper bullet.

Wait—did I say, “Stainless steel?”

A Case for Stainless

The cartridge case is the new NAS3 (Nickel Alloy Steel) developed and marketed by Shell Shock Technologies (SST) in Westport, CT, made by mechanically bonding a nickel alloy case head to a stainless-steel cylinder. SST says its NAS3 case is superior to brass, as it is cheaper, stronger and lighter, and as it possesses a greater internal volume, as well as a beveled and enlarged flash hole. The case head can be color anodized for instant ID and you can pick up your fired cases with a magnet. The empty cases are available to handloaders and can be reloaded 40 or more times without trimming, though they require special proprietary dies from SST. Reloading using standard shell holders will weaken the NAS3 case body-to-head bond, possibly resulting in case separation upon firing or extraction. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RELOAD NAS3 CASES USING STANDARD DIES.

FBI Protocol

Full-Stop’s performance is almost identical to that of the FBI’s benchmark Speer 124-grain Gold Dot load. The FBI testing protocol is to shoot through real life barriers at real life distances that law enforcement may encounter, into ballistic gelatin. Bullets are then examined for penetration and expansion. Barriers include clothing, wood, dry wall and sheet steel (simulating a car door).

SAAMI standard maximum pressure for the 9mm Luger is 35,000 psi; for 9mm +P, it’s 38,500 psi, or a 10 percent increase over standard. A perusal of various factory load data shows that, with 124-grain bullets, the velocity for 9mm +P begins at about 1,200 feet per second. Full-Stop gel penetration after passing through some barriers exceeds that of the +P Speer ammo, and yet the L-Tech is not loaded to Speer’s +P pressures, according to company literature. Newton says that less pressure equates to less recoil and, at least theoretically, that implies a faster on-target double-tap. SST, incidentally, has tested its NAS3 cases beyond 65,000 psi, so the upper limits of safety regarding pressures rest with the handgun and not the cartridge case.

At the Bench

Dismantling a few cases for examination revealed bullets weighing about 124.5 grains, seated over a 4.8-grain charge of spherical powder that resembles W231 or Titegroup. The inertia bullet puller caused a slight but visible separation of the case body from the case head. Another note to handloaders: don’t reload NAS3 cases after pulling bullets, discard them.

Frankly, any ballistic testing I might have done to check L-Tech’s claims for Full-Stop’s bullet expansion and penetration would, at best, only be duplicating the FBI protocol testing, and there’s no sense in reinventing that wheel. However, we can objectively test for accuracy, velocity and functioning, and we can form a subjective opinion of recoil. So, let’s take a couple of 9s to the range and see what we get.

Range Test

Since the L-Tech is defensive ammo, it seemed appropriate to shoot it in both full-size and compact carry pistols, the former a Ruger American with a 4-inch barrel and the latter a 3.5-inch barreled S&W M&P Shield. Checking accuracy at handgun combat distance—21 feet—is being realistic, too.

In both handguns, L-tech’s ammo shot essentially to point-of-aim, a six o’clock hold on a black bullseye target, with 10-shot groups hovering just under two inches when utilizing a steadying forearms-on-the-shooting-bench hold. Groups from the Ruger were only an inch wide but tended to string vertically a bit. The S&W made a more amenable match with the ammo, generally grouping shots into a single ragged hole without a propensity for stringing. Most importantly, those long, tapered bullet noses fed reliably, and both guns functioned flawlessly with the L-Tech ammo—an absolute, no compromise “must” in a defensive handgun.

Velocities 10 feet from the muzzle of the Ruger averaged 1,090 feet per second with a low of 1059 feet per second and a high of 1,111 feet per second. As expected from a shorter barrel, velocities in the S&W dropped a bit: the slowest at 973 feet per second and the fastest at 1,031 feet per second, for an average of 1,010 feet per second. Subjectively, recoil seemed ordinary, and of course a bit sharp in the compact Shield with a shortened grip that I could only hold with two fingers.

Because the NAS3 cases weigh half as much as brass cases, a full high-capacity magazine also weighs less, on the belt and in the handgun. I didn’t detect any discernible difference in weight when gun handling, though it is obvious when you hold a few of the NAS3 cases in your hand. Roughly, empty brass 9mm cases weigh 60 grains and NAS3 cases, 30 grains. Multiply that by 15 rounds in a mag and we find one stuffed with the L-tech cartridge weighs 450 grains—about one ounce—less than a mag holding regular brass.

Back from the Grave

So, what’s the takeaway? For handloaders who shoot a lot of 9mm, the new case represents significant cost savings. Forty reloadings are anywhere from three to five times—or more—than what we’d get from brass, especially with maximum loads, and we can add to that a lower initial cost than new brass. The cost of the specialty dies ($100) is amortized over time and the number of reloadings.

For competitors and those of us who practice a lot, picking up cases with a long-handled magnet is a convenience, as is color coding our own cases. Achieving +P velocity without +P pressure means we get the highest performance without sending handguns into early retirement from the battering. And we lighten our range bags when ammo weighs less.

For serious defensive work, we’ve seen a lot of new self-defense pistol bullets hit the market in the past few years, a trend that continues as bullet technology advances. Technology, in fact, has brought the 9mm Luger back from law enforcement’s common grave that it shared with the .38 Special. “A couple of law enforcement agencies here in Kentucky have adopted Full-Stop as their duty ammo,” Henderson said.

Even the .380 ACP has improved beyond a better-than-a-sharp-stick choice. The Holy Grail, of course, is the immediate incapacitation of the One Shot Stop, but like the Arthurian Holy Grail, it is elusive and not attainable via technology alone. There is no substitute for proper bullet placement, and then the bullet has to perform optimally when it gets there. The first step is up to you; if you succeed, it appears L-Tech’s Full-Stop bullet will do the rest.

Art Merrill graduated from the FBI Firearms Instructor Development Course to teach U.S. Navy security force personnel pistol and shotgun combat tactics.

The Z-008 III of the Zbroyar company in Kiev, Ukraine, can best be described as a bolt-action rifle with AR-looks. We have seen that before. But the Z-008 is not just a fashionably dressed repeating rifle. The weapon has been specially designed in this configuration and is full of gadgets.

The Ukrainian firm Zbroyar (which translates as “weapon maker”) is a private company established in 2004. The company in Kiev focuses on guns for sports, hunting and military use. Production, assembly, finishing and surface treatment are largely done in-house, using modern CNC machines and with a quality comparable to or better than many Western European companies.

At present, Zbroyar produces three types of weapons: the Z-15 (based on the AR-15) in 5.56x45mm (.223) NATO or .300 Blackout caliber, the Z-10 (based on the AR-10) in 7.62x51mm (.308) NATO caliber and the Z-008 III. The Z-008 III is the subject of this article.

The Z-008 is not restricted to any specific caliber. The construction of the gun, with a separate barrel extension, makes it relatively easy to change the barrel (and therefore caliber), which makes it a good choice for long-range shooters.

Description

The Z-008 is a bolt-action rifle. The Roman numeral III stands for the third generation of the gun, as Zbroyar previously made several conventional Z-008 bolt-action rifles. The weapon is completely built in Kiev. Only the AR-stock and pistol grip are aftermarket parts, made by Magpul on the rifle pictured here. The magazine of the illustrated gun is also by Magpul, but of course there is a wide choice in this area.
The Z-008 is a fascinating combination of bolt-action rifle gun and AR. The weapon has the ergonomics of the latter, in terms of the position of the double-sided safety and single-sided magazine catches. The aluminum handguard with its mounting rails and the design of the construction with an upper and lower frame have also been copied from the AR. But since this is a bolt-action rifle, there is no gas block, cocking handle or forward bolt assist. The right side of the solid aluminum ‘upper’ has two elongated openings. The front one is the ejection opening (without a hinging lid), and the rear is for the bolt handle.

The height of the upper part of the receiver is almost the same as that of a semi-automatic rifle, which means it is almost seamlessly continuous with the handguard. To give the upper sufficient rigidity, the top part contains a steel cylinder, of which only the back is visible when the weapon is disassembled.

Unlike a semi-automatic, the Z-008 trigger mechanism is an integral part of the upper frame. The Z-008 comes standard with a single stage trigger mechanism designed at Zbroyar, but the construction is such that it can be exchanged for one of the main brands for an aftermarket trigger.

Extras

The Z-008 bolt has a narrowed bolt head with three locking lugs. The front of the bolt has the extractor, which has been mounted from the rear. It is a Zbroyar design, comparable to a Sako style extractor. The ejector is a spring-loaded plunger in the bolt head.

To maintain the best possible fit between the bolt and frame, Zbroyar added two extras. First, the body of the bolt has been extended to the rear, by means of a detachable end cap. A longer bolt automatically means less play. But as the bolt now travels further to the rear, the buffer and buffer spring had to be removed from the stock, which now has an empty tube with room for the rear part of the bolt. A second characteristic is a steel U-profile, put in the left lower side of the upper receiver. The axis of the bolt handle protrudes from the opposite side of the bolt. This notch runs in the U-profile and secures a tight guide. The U-profile bends upward at the point where the bolt handle is turned downward. This prevents wear to the aluminum upper and aids in primary extraction when the bolt is opened.

Operation

As far as operation is concerned, the Z-008 is simplicity itself. Insert the magazine, operate the bolt and the gun is ready to fire. The magazine housing is asymmetrical. The right wall is shorter than the left, making it easier to insert a magazine in a prone position. The magazine is a standard AR-10.

The firing pin is cocked when opening the bolt. A tooth on the bottom of the firing pin locks in the rear of the bolt body. If the bolt is completely closed, this tooth is released but is then caught by the trigger sear. This is similar to 99% of all other bolt-action rifles, comparable to the reliable operation of the mother of all modern bolt-action rifles, the K98. A small notch with a red ring protrudes from the right side of the upper receiver, giving visual and perceptible evidence that the bolt is cocked. The gun has an ambidextrous safety catch, but only the left side of the receiver is marked with “FIRE” and “SAFE.”

Disassembly

Like the AR, the upper and lower receiver are connected with two cross-pins. When the rear pin is pushed out to the right (it won’t fall out), the lower receiver pivots open. For normal maintenance, that is enough. A special pin now blocks the mechanism to ensure that the weapon cannot be fired.

With the stock out of the way, the bolt can simply be pulled out to the rear of the receiver. To dismantle the bolt, one must first remove the end cap, which is fastened with a bayonet catch. If the cap is turned clockwise, it can be pulled from the bolt body. Next, the firing pin case and firing pin can be pulled rearward out of the bolt. The bolt head is attached to the bolt with a solid crossbolt, in turn fixed by a pin. If this little pin is removed, the crossbolt can be taken out and the bolt head separated from the bolt. The front part of the bolt has a smaller diameter than the rear and the bolt head. It is fitted with a synthetic sleeve, which reduces friction when operating the bolt.

Shooting

We fired the Z-008 III, equipped with a Tier-One Spartan III silencer and a Kahles K 624i 6-24×56 scope, at a 100-meter range, with Lithuanian GGG Ammunition. That distance is almost an insult for the rifle, with a group of roughly half an inch. The bolt runs very smooth, cartridges fed without any problems, and the trigger is excellent. The European importer, the Dutch company PIROSPORT, also specializes in custom-made barrels. It prepared a first run in 6.5x47mm Lapua, but the Zbroyar ZB-008 III can be made in any caliber of the .308 (short action) family, like .243 Win., 6mm BR, 6.5 Creedmoor, .260 and the 7mm-08. The gun is being used as a military sniper rifle as well.

Occasionally, someone will post an old “machine guns for sale” advertisement from the 1960s on one of the popular Class III oriented internet boards, with the ads featuring unbelievably low prices compared to those encountered today. When a young enthusiast reads the ads, they often wish they could travel back in time.

Well, it’s hard to believe today, but during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s machine guns, although far less expensive, were not selling as quickly as they do currently. One reason for relatively slow machine gun sales in those days was that few knew the protocol of buying a machine gun or where to find one for sale. There was basically no single source of information on machine gun ownership. The subject of Class III firearms was largely ignored by the mainstream supermarket gun magazines. There were only a few dealers that dealt in Class III. For example, in 1965 there was a reported total of only three Class III dealers in the entire country. Probably the best known of the early dealers was the controversial Curtis Earl, through his catalogs and advertising. Mr. Earl predicted that machine guns would continually escalate in price. On the back of his catalogs was a bar graph titled Machine Guns Your Best Investment. The graph illustrated from 1965 to 1979 an increase of 2,080 percent in machine gun prices, with a yearly average increase of 149 percent.

One obstacle to the purchase of a machine gun was the $200 federal transfer tax. Few individuals had sufficient disposable income during the economic recessions of the 1970s and 1980s to pay $500 for an M16A1 rifle and an additional $200 for the transfer tax. Of course, there were many cheaper full-autos available; Sten submachine guns with new manufacture receiver tubes could be had for around $125 retail, and MAC-10s and Smith & Wesson Model 76 submachine guns were available for even less. However, the mindset of many at the time was “I’m not paying a $200 tax on a $125 Sten.” Although many, justifiably, complain about the astronomical machine gun prices today, the price is often what motivates the owner to part with a coveted machine gun. When their Colt M16A1 was worth $500 there was no viable reason to sell it. But today, with prices hovering in the range of a new automobile, many owners are motivated to sell. According to the Dollar Times, $500 in 1984 had the same buying power as $1,191.67 in 2017.

Although the internet is taken for granted today, in the old days most machine guns were found in the printed pages of the Shotgun News (now known as the Firearm News). There were three issues of SGN a month. Upon arriving in the mail, one usually would turn to the “machine guns for sale” section. When a suitable gun was found, the potential buyer had to CALL the person who placed the ad on a telephone to discuss the deal—email and texting did not yet exist. A plus side to this seemingly (to some) archaic method of communication was that there were far fewer scammers and there was more human contact. Fifty-fifty payment plans were common; 50 percent down started the paperwork, the remaining 50 percent was due when the transfer was approved. Prior to the internet, many in the U.S., including a few advanced firearm collectors, believed civilian possession of machine guns was illegal. Others thought that you had to be a Class III dealer. The Class III community was quite small, and many wanted to keep it that way.

Even before the exposure on the internet began to drive prices upward, machine guns very slowly increased in value. When an owner decided to sell his $125 Sten gun, he wanted to recoup the $200 transfer tax he paid. So, the $200 was often added to the selling price. Now the $125 Stens were selling for $325 plus a new $200 tax.

The May 19, 1986, Manufacturing Ban

On May 19, 1986, the future manufacture, conversion and registration of transferable machine guns was banned for private ownership. Many Class II manufacturers, knowing of the pending deadline in advance, worked overtime making and registering machine guns. Overnight, prices for a transferable machine gun doubled. Many predicted that the prices would continue to increase, but no one had any idea of just how high the prices would go.

Tube Guns, Rewelds, Dewats, Auto Sears, Sideplates and Conversions

Prior to the sharing of knowledge through Class III oriented publications and the internet, quite a few enthusiasts were unaware of the many different configurations of machine guns.

Tube Guns

During 1968, the importation (except for dealer sales samples) of intact machine guns into the U.S. was banned, thus ending the flow of many original guns. However, the importation of part kits, less receivers, continued. Prior to May 1986 a new receiver, or sideplate, could be manufactured and registered, then assembled with a parts kit into a working firearm.

The description of “tube gun” generally refers to a machine gun parts kit that has been assembled with a newly manufactured, non-original, receiver. Many who purchased MP40s, Stens and similar machine guns with a new-manufacture receiver often had no idea that the gun they bought was not an all-original example. All they knew was that they had bought a German MP40 or British Sten, for instance. While original MP40s and Stens have Curio and Relic status, tube guns do not.

Rewelds

The term “reweld” is often applied to a receiver that was cut (demilled) into pieces and welded back together, often using donor sections of another cut receiver. The word “reweld” is often used to describe the process, but is not technically accurate; the receiver was only welded once after it was cut into pieces. Like the “tube guns,” guns with cut and welded receivers have also been purchased by many unaware that their gun’s receiver is not original. Commonly encountered cut and welded back together receivers are those from U.S. M14 rifles. One way to determine if a machine gun has a welded receiver is to check the registration form. If the form lists any manufacturer, other than one of the original companies, there is a good chance it has a welded receiver. However, some clever individuals have named one of the original companies on the form to misrepresent a gun that is not original. A welded receiver can be usually be spotted by a close examination under bright light. Clues are discolored areas, pinholes, slightly misaligned surfaces and evidence of grinding of the welds.

Amnesty Guns

During 1968, there was a brief amnesty to register any unregistered machine guns in the possession of a citizen. Many of the guns that were registered back then included a number of small arms brought home in duffle bags from World War II and Korea and more modern weapons from the Vietnam Conflict, like AKs and M14 rifles, which often bring mid five-figure bids at auctions. Unfortunately, many individuals with unregistered machine guns in their possession didn’t take advantage of the amnesty program, simply because they didn’t know about it or didn’t trust the government.

Semi-Auto to Full-Auto Conversions

During the 1960–1980 era, there was little interest in modern military firearms, save for M1 Garands, which at times were difficult to find. Interest was sparked when semi-automatic clones of military weapons, like the AR-15, HK 94, UZI, FN FAL and others, began to appear on the market. The semi-automatic versions differed in a number of ways from their full-auto counterparts to render their conversion to select-fire more difficult. The interest in the semi-automatic look-alikes in many cases led to an interest in the full-auto guns.

Prior to 1986, many semi-automatic versions of military weapons were converted to select-fire by Class II manufacturers and by a few individuals.

A question often posted on the internet boards when someone is searching, for example, an UZI submachine gun, is “what Class II manufacturer converted semi-automatic UZIs to correct submachine gun specs?” Well, the answer is, virtually none of them, for several reasons. For one, unlike today, there were few, if any, original UZI parts available. Another reason was that the retail price of a converted UZI prior to 1986 was roughly $700. The host UZI semi-automatic carbine cost around $400, so to maximize profit a manufacturer would use as many original semi-auto parts as possible. For example, converting the semi-auto trigger housing and shortening the original 16-inch semi-auto barrel to 10.5 inches.

The first semi-automatic AK rifles offered in the U.S. were made by Maadi and imported from Egypt in 1982. The guns were quite expensive at $1,150 to $1,500, and sales were slow. At that same time, a Colt AR-15 retailed for $400. The Maadi AK rifles had a rather low-quality painted finish, especially for a rifle that cost over $1,000 1982 dollars. Another major factor that affected sales was a lack of 7.62x39mm ammunition in the U.S.

Due to the small number imported, the Egyptian AK rifles are now considered collector guns and have greatly increased in value. Among the most sought after Egyptian AK rifles are those used in the 1984 Movie Red Dawn, especially those few that were converted to select-fire.

During 1984–1985 semi-automatic AK rifles began to be imported from China. Priced at around $300, they were quite a bargain for an AK. The AK was the rifle of the “bad guys;” many collectors in the U.S. had never even seen one before, except on TV. The early AKs from China were the stamped receiver models with a blued finish. Many of those who purchased them were somewhat disappointed, not being used to a firearm made of stamped sheet metal. The sales of Chinese AKs imported were brisk, selling much better than their Egyptian counterparts, due in part to a much lower price and the Chinese 7.62x39mm ammunition that was imported at the same time. Much of the earlier Chinese ammunition was corrosive, despite the ads and colorful boxes stating otherwise. A few shooters who were not familiar with the effects of corrosive ammo learned the hard way. Transferable AK rifles that were converted to select-fire are not common, due to the fact that few were in the country before May 1986, when conversions were banned. A few AK sears were made and registered, but they were confiscated when the ATF discovered that a hole needed to be drilled in the receiver to install them. Sears that were already installed were grandfathered on a case to case basis.

Auto Sears and Conversion Parts

Auto sears, lightning links, M2 carbine parts and certain trigger groups assemblies became “machine guns” after a government regulatory move to make all the drop-in conversions illegal unless they were registered. The government’s plan backfired when, prior to the 1986 manufacturing ban, Class II manufacturers began registering all types of parts as machine guns.

It is somewhat surprising how AR-15 and HK auto sears have escalated in price. AR-15 auto sears were once advertised as low as $29. In 1980, SWD’s AR-15 Lighting Links were $10 to $15, of course using an unregistered auto sear or lightning link to convert a semi-automatic to full auto was and is a felony, unless the device was registered. This could be done prior to May 1986 by an individual on a Form 1 and with a $200 transfer tax. Again, few were willing to pay a $200 tax on a $20 part. A few forward-thinking Class II manufacturers did register quite a few of them on a Form 2. Today, the price of a registered auto sear rivals that of a transferable Colt M16A1. Many enthusiasts prefer a transferable sear, because they can be used in any number of applicable rifles.

Part Sets and Magazines

Most of the part sets (less receivers) used to manufacture “tube guns” in the 1970–1980 period were harvested from World War II surplus weapons, like the Stens and MP40s. Although common today, many magazines and part sets were rare. For example, prior to the 1990s, imports from communist countries were banned. This meant no AK parts, magazines or ammunition from East Germany, Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia or Russia. No CZ rifles or pistols from Czechoslovakia. Communist weapons that were in the U.S. were strictly high-end collector items. Other weapons like the UZIs, HK91s and MP5s were still in service with many countries. They were not to be sold for parts just yet.

Ammunition

Ammunition prices have fluctuated over the years, due in part to availability. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were large lots of World War II surplus available, 8mm Mauser could be had for just pennies per round.
Like Communist firearms and part sets, Com Bloc ammunition was once very rare in the U.S.—7.62x39mm, 5.45x39mm and 7.62x25mm ammunition was usually only found in the stashes of advanced ammo collectors. AK 7.62x39mm ammo was hard to find, while 5.45x39mm for the AK-74 was non-existent. Now quite common, during the 1990s the price of Chinese 7.62x39mm was as low as $94 for a case of 1,440 rounds. During 2000, large lots of inexpensive 5.45x39mm ammo were imported.

At one time, .223/5.56mm ammunition was uncommon and expensive, and .308/7.62 NATO was comparatively cheap. That has changed with 7.62mm NATO selling for 60-cents-plus per round and .223/5.56 becoming more common and less expensive than it was 20 years ago.

After the beginning of December 1944, the decision in favor of the Carl Walther model in 7.92×57 caliber as the future “People’s Rifle” was made.

In autumn 1944, the development of Volkssturm (People’s Army) weapons was in full swing. The company Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG from Austria featured among the companies involved. However, for the first two shooting competitions in October and November, Steyr did not manage to submit a rifle design of its own on time. After the beginning of December, the decision in favor of the Carl Walther model in 7.92×57 caliber as the future “People’s Rifle” was made. However, a final shooting competition for rifles chambered for the 7.92×33 “Kurzpatrone” (short cartridge), as used with the new assault rifle Sturmgewehr 44, was still pending. It finally took place from December 15 to 22 at the Kummersdorf experimental shooting range, and this time Steyr submitted a bolt-action rifle fitted with an MP44 stick magazine–albeit rather unsuccessfully. Rounds failed to fire, the bolt jammed and couldn’t be opened without tools, and the stock splintered after launching only four rifle grenades. Thus, Steyr seemed to be out of the race.

Nonetheless, the company had not been idle in the previous months. The simplified carbine in 7.92×57, which could not participate in the shooting competition, had in the meantime been fully developed. Under the auspices of the Gauleiter of Oberdonau (Upper Danube), August Eigruber, who was conveniently a member of the supervisory board of the Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG, the weapon went into series production as “Volkskarabiner 98” (People’s Carbine 98). In a letter from August Eigruber to Albert Speer dated January 25, 1945, he confirmed that the production was already running and that 4,400 carbines were completed. Production in February was expected to reach 15,000 pieces. With the technical delivery conditions from January 31, the Steyr weapon was officially named “Volksgewehr 5” (People’s Rifle 5). The first batch from Steyr-production was destined for Upper Silesia.

While these Steyr People’s Rifles with their typical marking “bnz 45” (maker’s code and date) and the fixed rear sight are relatively well known, there is also a rare variant in 7.92x33mm caliber (short car-tridge). At first glance, it is indistinguishable from the standard caliber rifles. But, on closer inspection, one recognizes the marking “7,9 kurz” (7.9 short) in a plane-milled spot on top of the barrel. The weapon is missing an internal magazine and only works as a single shot rifle. The conversion of the integrated maga-zine of the VG5 to accept the short cartridges and to ensure a trouble-free feed would have been far too costly for a last-ditch weapon.

Unfortunately, few real pieces are known and the surviving documents do not reveal anything about the production output of these short cartridge carbines.

Thanks to Dr. Geoffrey Sturgess, Switzerland.

Dan Shea got it wrong, Robert Bruce got it wrong, Chris Eger got it wrong, Ian Hogg got it wrong and so did Gary Paul Johnson, Jack Krcma, Dick Meadows, Keith Melton, John Minnery, T. C. Smith, Don Walsh and Yours Truly … until Jonathan Liu of the CIA’s office of Public Affairs kindly told me the truth about the mysterious CIA “Deer” Gun, as it has been known since 1962.

“This weapon is actually known as the CIA DEnied ARea Pistol, hence DEAR Pistol. It was designed for distribution to foreign fighters willing to operate behind enemy lines,” Mr. Lui informed me, sharing with me data from the Agency’s own files, including a CIA photograph of their original production DEAR Pistol.

And, it all began with the fabled OSS Liberator.

The World War II Liberator was a small, nifty, behind-the-scenes pistol. It wasn’t meant for the battlefield, though; it was meant for use as a sneaky behind-enemy-lines killer for an ally friendly OSS. About 20 years later and half-way around the world, its successor, the CIA’s Deer Gun, as it has been incorrectly known for over 55 years, hoped to continue that legacy, yet inadvertently created a puzzling reputation of its own.

The DEAR Pistol was conceived as an updated version of the Liberator pistol, a gun built by General Motor’s Guide Lamp Division. Developed for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Vietnam conflict, the DEAR Pistol was a very simple, single-shot 9mm pistol designed to sneakily bring better weapons to the U.S.’ South Vietnamese allies fighting against their invasive local Viet Cong and the invading North Vietnamese soldiers. It was designed to be purely one-on-one deadly.

“The idea was to supply this glorified zip gun to our friendlies who weren’t afraid to carry the war close and personal to our enemy,” the late U.S. Army Major Dick Meadows, a true Special Forces icon, explained. “They’d get close, take him down with the Deer Gun, then strip him of everything usable, including his AK47and spare ammo and any material useful for intel purposes.”

The weapon was planned between operational CIA officers and our military. Discussing the project with several gun designers in the late 1950s, the goal was for the gun to be a modern version of the FP-45 Liberator, which had been discharged (an on purpose pun) after WWII.

By 1962, covert operations were already underway in Southeast Asia. According to Major Meadows, “Deep down at Langley, someone must’ve recalled those long-lost Liberators and their previously discussed updated counterparts, the Deer Gun. It was time to get them operational.”

“For some insane reason, much WWII materiel was destroyed in 1946-47. Liberator pistols were torched, melted and crushed into postwar scrap. Very few survived, and there was no inventory when President Kennedy decided to support low-profile, low-intensity counter-guerrilla warfare in Vietnam,” he explained.

The CIA called on the Chief Engineer for American Machine & Foundry (AM & F) special Firearms division, the late Russell J. Moure, a very experienced ordnance veteran who was a principal developer of the mini-gun, who also worked with and for Firearms International and Interarms. The CIA told him to create an effective successor to the Liberator, as they had discussed several years earlier. When the CIA and Moure met in 1962, discussions centered on an idea to create a lighter, smaller, simpler and far cheaper Liberator-type pistol.

Major Meadows explained, “The CIA wanted a simplistic design that was operationally sound, as well as quick and economical to manufacture. The purpose was to supply the pistol to indigenous guerrillas and irregular forces behind enemy lines. Yes, it was also an assassination gun, and it was to be part of what became known as Operation Phoenix.”

The CIA chose AM & F because it was a company well known for recreational products and had only a small, very secretive ordnance section. As author Chris Eger wrote, “Allen Dulles’people wanted someone far off the firearms radar, such as AM & F.”

One of Moure’s engineering colleagues at AM & F, who asked that his name not be used here, added, “Russ (Moure) spent 10,000 words explaining to some CIA guys what was basically a crude, ugly, but damn decent $4.00 zip gun for our Third World allies to kill one of the bad guys each time, usually during a behind-the-lines recon op. Then, to take that guy’s weapon, probably an AK for his own use. … that was the CIA program for this weapon.”

The tiny 9mm pistol with a case aluminum receiver, a screw-out-to-load 2-inch barrel, was made largely of plastic, steel and aluminum parts and would cost the U.S. approximately $3.95 apiece. The DEAR Pistol was made to be small, efficient, cheap and untraceable.

So, how did this mysterious pistol get its name wrong? U.S. Army Sgt Gary Paul Johnston suggested “Deer Gun” was an Agency codename with a sardonic, big game hunting reference. Suppressor designer Don Walsh thought the Deer Gun was named after a WWII OSS operation in Burma, “The Deer Mission.” Turns out, they were wrong, as we have just learned.

The late Vaclav “Jack” Krcma, an ordnance expert, WWII combat vet, CIA contract agent, Interarms field icon and close friend of Moure, marveled at the design of the DEAR Pistol. He had seen some of Moure’s initial actual design work. Krcma stated it was the lightest and smallest 9mm issue pistol ever developed, as well as being “of splendid design and robust construction.”

I knew Jack well, and we discussed the pistol often. He, too, called it the Deer Gun. My guess is that the CIA, in its infinite judgment of mysterious ways and means, just let people refer to it as the Deer Gun … until now.

The CIA examined and tested the prototype. Satisfied with Moure’s design, they ordered 1,000 pistols, issuing AM & F a developmental contract for $300,000. This price was higher than the originally quoted price of under $4.00 per weapon; however, with all developmental special weapons, research, testing and prototype costs had to be recovered. As Jack Krcma noted with alacrity, “In our business, we all know how that works.”

The production DEAR Pistol is 4-1/8 inches high, 5 inches long and weighs 12 ounces. The body is one piece cast aluminum, with a blued steel barrel. The raised grip is cross hatched, and the three rounds that come with each gun are stored in that hollow area. There is no trigger guard, and the sight, as such, is a grooved notch on the receiver top.

To fire the DEAR Pistol, the barrel is unscrewed, a round is loaded, and the barrel is screwed back in. The cone-shaped cocking lever is pulled back, the pistol is then aimed and fired.

However, by 1964, it was clear that Southeast Asia was bound for a major war. With that level of war a set of guidelines and parameters was passed down from the Pentagon flag pole. Their rules of engagement made the DEAR Pistol a low priority.

Diminished significance or not, the first 1,000 pistols made it to active duty in sterile condition. These guns were completely sanitized, meaning there were no serial numbers, no ordnance proofs, no ID markings, no connection to the U.S government. They were packed individually into a plain white, sturdy Styrofoam box accompanied by three rounds of 9mm ammunition which were also sterile. According to author Chris Eger, “the head stamps on the cases of those rounds were marked not with a NATO symbol, but with ‘9mm 42’ to imply that they were possibly WWII vintage bullets of German, Italian or some other origin than American.”

The packaging also contained a four-color, cartoon-style, wordless instruction sheet that visually detailed how to operate the weapon and whom to shoot with it. The instructions depicted a generic guerrilla using a DEAR Pistol to shoot an enemy soldier bearing a Soviet armband, hammer and sickle included. Ironically, that armband is the only identification marking of any kind found on the weapon, its container or the instructions.

According to Krcma, of the weapons delivered to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), approximately 150 were sent for field testing in Southeast Asia. There are no official records available that any of the DEAR Pistols were used beyond controlled, non-combat testing. However, one U.S. military officer relayed a story to me in which he accompanied a patrol of both U.S. and Vietnamese Special Forces in 1963, during which two DEAR Pistols were carried for what he referred to as “active evaluation.”

“We had run a successful ambush and were returning for extraction with four prisoners, three of whom were wounded. The unwounded man noisily resisted restraint. Because the potential for hostile reaction to us being there was very real, our senior man decided to terminate the recalcitrant prisoner.”

“That’s when I saw the Deer Pistol ‘field-tested.’ One shot was fired from a range of two feet into the back of the base of the man’s head. He lurched forward and fell quite dead. We then effected our extraction with the other, very silent prisoners, all officers.”

Thus, by 1964, the DEAR Pistol was officially cleared for field issue. It was listed in the CIA’s special weapons inventory and carried stock number 1395-H00-9108. However, since its change in status, little information has been released about this limited issue weapon. Until now, the CIA has denied requests for materials regarding the DEAR Pistol. AM & F, totally out of the ordnance business for years, refused to provide me any information.

“Over the years, I had seen Deer Guns at one military museum, at a CIA facility and at a few ordnance research facilities,” Jack Krcma told me in 2005. “But, they must have grown legs and walked off, because they aren’t there anymore. Where did they go, and I wonder who has them now?”

There is at least one DEAR Pistol at the CIA Museum, and there is also one at the JFK Museum at Fort Bragg. That has been confirmed.

However, there are some other stories. A DEAR Pistol was reportedly confiscated in Mexico in 1970, before it could be used to assassinate a Cuban official. This account is totally unconfirmed. The Deer Gun was mentioned and accurately described in William Caunitz’s 1985 novel, One Police Plaza.

Of the original 1,000 weapons produced, maybe 10 to 20 remain in circulation, according to the well-known collector, Keith Melton. Eger wrote that one was legally sold at a recent auction for over $22,000. Another was sold legally by Rock Island Auction in 2011 for $25,875. Robert Bruce photographed another one for his 2003 SAR article titled “The CIA’s Deer Gun in Vietnam” (Vol. 6, No. 4). Three of his pictures are with this article, the first color photos and also the first with a person holding the DEAR Pistol.

He told me, “It belonged to a 1st Cav Special Ops vet who was on a recon mission in Vietnam and saw the weapon there. He said he ‘acquired’ it and was able to get it home.”

The remainder have apparently disappeared into collectors’ quiet and private inventories. The DEAR Pistol may not have been successful in combat, but its reputation continues to be successfully enigmatic to this day.

One of the great mistakes made by many shooters is to judge a firearm’s performance based upon the manufacturer’s claims, rather than by its operational results. In the world of precision shooting, accuracy isn’t a matter of belief; it’s a matter of evidence. While one’s shooting ability is important, equally important is the precision quality rifle or handgun one shoots, the ammunition one uses and how one maintains it all as a precision package.

The interoperability combination of gun, ammunition and maintenance is essential to reliably score precision hits. In short, you must always practice exactly like you intend to shoot when it counts most. Many shooters don’t realize there are some simple steps they can take with regard to gun bore and operating system cleaning, ammunition handling and gun storage that will significantly increase hit probability and tighten groups.

The growing variety of precision firearms, marketed as such, available on today’s market is overwhelming, especially to the eyes of new shooters. Attributes like a floating barrel, precision action, precision bore, precision adjustable stock, etc., are alluring. Manufacturers abound with claims of precision accuracy at extreme ranges. The word “precision” is one of the more overused labels and claims made by the gun and ammunition industry as a whole. But what is precision? What does it really mean when it comes to firearms and ammunition? Moreover, how do you maintain a precision firearm, or any other (not-so-precision) firearm for that matter, in a precision condition?

A precision firearm, by definition, is one that has been meticulously manufactured with “special attention to material and manufacturing detail;” nothing more, nothing less. It’s all about the quest for attaining maximum performance of any particular firearm. Many precision firearms are manufactured with, or “fitted” to, demanding tolerances in the gun manufacturer’s custom shop. Others are built one at a time as custom hand-fitted guns made for a specific purpose or operational role. Most all of these guns are similarly built using competition screws, springs and sights. Most have fully adjustable stocks or grips and, of course, Picatinny Rails abound. Often these guns are further “tricked out” with hand engraving that further drives up the cost without functionally adding anything except superficial beauty—but a gun doesn’t have to look “cool” to be a precision firearm.

It is important to note at this point that “precision” doesn’t mean “reliable.” Many assume that precision and reliability are the same thing; they are not. If anything, precision frequently drives down reliability in field conditions because of the close tolerances used in manufacturing. This may sound counterintuitive, but it is not. A certain amount of tolerance “slop” must be designed and manufactured into the weapon so it will not need to be maintained under hermetically clean conditions to be reliable. Precision guns are often “temperamental,” especially when exposed to environmental extremes. Feed malfunctions, stovepipes and the requirement for constant pampering are not uncommon.

Lessons

Lesson 1: Extremely tight precision tolerances often result in weapon operating system and feed and extraction malfunctions. The best way to determine whether or not the precision weapon you’re looking to buy is reliable is to read customer reviews. Customer reviews provide unfiltered “ground truth” where manufacturers’ claims, store clerks, good ol’ boys and gun writers’ evaluations usually don’t. Think about it … when was the last time you read a negative review in a gun magazine?

Another important point to remember is that in all cases no two identical firearms will perform identically using the same ammunition under the same operational conditions. How can that be you might ask? It’s again all about differences in part manufacturing and fitting tolerances, no matter how slight they might be. All manufacturers’ drawings provide an acceptable window of plus/minus tolerances for the machining and fitting of parts. It is literally impossible to create two identical firearms for that reason. You can make them close but not perfectly the same, and ammunition, round-to-round, shares the same issue. Therefore, when nearly identical guns are fired using nearly identical ammunition there are still differences that affect performance and accuracy.

Most firearms evaluated in gun magazine articles are done by a single shooter (the article’s author) using a single, sample weapon. The guy on the range next door might be shooting an identical gun and using the same ammunition and get very different positive or negative results. So you’ll want to make your firearm selection based on as many shooter reviews as you can read based on the same firearm. While these reviews are mostly subjective observations, they are pretty much ground truth as the average shooter reports his experience. From this dialog you’ll get an informal ground-truth feel for the firearm’s performance under a wide range of conditions, shooting a variety of ammunition.

Lesson 2: Equally important to precision shooting is the ammunition that is being fired. Using cheap ammunition in a precision firearm is self-defeating. Shooting regular, non-match grade ammunition in a precision firearm instead of match grade ammunition is akin to putting cheap gas in a racecar. Shooting non-match grade, cheap ammunition in a precision firearm won’t damage it, but why would anyone want to shoot junk in their precision firearm?

Ammunition selection is critical to accuracy especially at long ranges. Match ammunition is manufactured by lot and usually sold that way. Most match ammunition manufacturers, for example, weigh every bullet and segregate the bullets to be loaded into weight categories. They weigh and trim every cartridge case to length and shave the case neck for concentricity and thickness uniformity. When they assemble the rounds, powder is carefully measured for each cartridge load. When the bullet is installed into the cartridge, every round is measured for the bullet’s installed height and overall cartridge length. This attention to loading detail provides superb uniformity that translates to accuracy. Regular production ammunition has no such quality control, and that’s why it should not be used for precision shooting.

Lesson 3: Ammunition handling and storage are also important to accuracy. Generally speaking, precision ammunition doesn’t use as tight a cartridge neck crimp to hold the bullet as is used in regular production ammunition. A slight lessening of the cartridge neck crimp is an accuracy enhancer. Regular production ammunition is crimped hard so it will endure rough handling and the forces of auto-feed from a magazine or linked belt, but that hard neck crimp can result in accuracy fluctuations.

Protect match ammunition in a shell box designed for that purpose when you’re transporting it to and from the range. Store your match ammunition in a cool, low-humidity environment as you would a fine bottle of wine. Don’t shove it in your shooting bag and subsequently throw the bag in the bed of your truck to bounce around under the hot sun for days at a time. If your match ammunition shows any signs of corrosion, dirt contamination or damage of any kind, don’t use it in a precision firearm. Another taboo is applying lubricant or preservative coating of any kind on your ammunition. Lubricants will penetrate the primer pocket and absorb into the primer itself. This causes misfires. Lubricants on the cartridge case will attract dirt that will be carried into the magazine and chamber with every bolt stroke. Lubricants coating the cartridge case will burn and cause carbon build-up in the gun chamber leading to sludge and lending to feed and extraction malfunction. Keep your match ammunition clean and pristine.

Lesson 4: Before shooting, give both your firearm and the ammunition you intend to shoot several hours to equalize with the ambient temperature of the environment you will be shooting in. This is not to advocate that if it’s raining or snowing that you should expose your gun and ammunition to the elements. In fact, quite to the contrary, keep your gun and ammo as dry and protected as possible. What you can do, for example, is put your gun and ammunition in the trunk of your car or a weatherproof container for a few hours at ambient temperature prior to shooting. Temperature and humidity affect a multitude of variables ranging from barrel harmonics, to propellant combustion spontaneity, to bore fouling, to bullet ballistic performance–all are critical accuracy contributors.

Lesson 5: How you clean and subsequently foul your bore is fundamental to precision shooting. Remarkably, the precision shooting community has largely moved away from using traditional bore solvent and brushing the bore to loosen carbon and metal deposits. Today’s chemistry has provided us with some excellent solvents that are applied using wet patches, allowed to soak for 10-20 minutes; then a second solution is wet patched through the bore and allowed to interact with the first for another 5 to 10 minutes. These solutions not only loosen and dissolve carbon, they remove copper and lead. The bore is finally dry-patched until the patches are clean, and the bore is squeaky clean. If necessary, the entire process can be repeated.

The finish patch many precision shooters use is dampened in denatured alcohol for a final run through the bore. No lubricant is patched through the bore or sprayed into it. The bolt is closed, and the gun is stored with a dry bore. Some shooters will additionally cut a small stamp-size piece of painter’s adhesive tape (the blue colored stuff) and put it over the muzzle end of the barrel to keep dust and dirt from inadvertently fouling the bore. The gun is stored with the bolt closed, sealing the barrel’s breech end.

Lesson 6: Some shooters, especially police snipers, will make their first shot on a clean bore. They practice for this scenario and have reasonable confidence in their first shot, cold bore accuracy. However, most competition shooters will foul their bore before shooting a competition round. Fouling usually consists of 3 or 4 shots prior to shooting the competition string. The purpose of fouling is to add carbon and metallic material back into the bore’s lands and groves as well as heat the barrel slightly, thereby providing a more consistent friction coefficient for more predictable projectile ballistic performance. Those first 3 to 4 fouling rounds fired seem to adequately serve this purpose.

Lesson 7: Lubrication of the gun’s friction surfaces is very important. There are a number of lubricants available that have wild performance claims. However, there are a few that do actually make a difference and are formulated to permeate the granular structure of the metal and “plate” the friction surfaces, radically reducing, if not eliminating, wear. The key is to find one that doesn’t wash out, melt away or mutate into emulsified gunk when exposed to the wide range of shooting environments military, law enforcement, competition shooters and hunters regularly encounter.

Cleaning Solvent Attributes–What to Look For

• Chemically loosens and removes burnt powder, lead and copper fouling
• Contains no ammonia or other chemicals potentially damaging to weapon surfaces to include polymers, bluing, plating, etc.
• Non-corrosive to firearms parts, non-toxic to humans, environmentally safe
• Non-mutagenic
• Non-flammable, minimum flash point of 150°F
• Lubrication attributes:
• Reduces wear on all friction and pressure surfaces (moving metal parts)
• Prevents corrosion, rust and oxidation
• Resists water washout, adheres to metal surfaces keeping lubrication functional under all environmental conditions
• Insoluble in water, won’t collect and hold dirt
• Non-hazardous, non-toxic, environmentally safe

A limited number of manufacturers market quality cleaning and lubrication formulas in a package consisting of handy applicators that can be easily carried in a web gear pouch or cargo pocket. These, with the addition of a vinyl-coated rod with jag and patches or a snake and patches, will suffice for almost all field-cleaning requirements. In a shop cleaning environment, a vinyl-coated rod and jag should be used for bore cleaning. In all cases, always push or pull the patch through the bore from the breech end to the muzzle end (following the bullet path). Don’t brush the bore; use the jag and wet patch method previously described.

Remember to leave the solvent soak for a number of hours (time permitting). Then, wet patch the bore again and again (the patches will initially be copper green and black colored) until the patch comes clean. Now, dry patch the bore until clean. Follow up with a damp patch of denatured alcohol. Close the action (bolt) and put a stamp-size masking tape tab over the muzzle end to close the barrel. If you intend to store your weapon, or you’re operating in a high humidity environment, you may want to run a damp patch of a high-grade plating lubricant through the bore before sealing the bore.

The described cleaning process works great on all firearms so give it a try and be fastidious.

Vortex Spitfire AR prismatic scope bridges the gap between red dot sights and scopes. An unmagnified sight with an integral AR-height riser, it uses an etched reticle of two concentric circles around a 3MOA center dot. The centerline of Spitfire AR is 1.575 inches above the Picatinny rail surface. Windage and elevation turrets graduated in 0.5MOA clicks are capped, but a spare turret graduated with 5.56x45mm BDC out to 700 yards is included for uncapped use.

While the optic has a wide 23-degree angle of view, it’s generally used with both eyes open, making that feature less critical. Spitfire eye relief is 3.7 inches, with a generous eyebox, but not infinite as with red dots. What does it gain over the red dots that makes up for the loss of unlimited eye relief?

First and foremost, the black etched reticle makes it useful without batteries. The sight may be deployed without being turned on and can function in the coldest weather. With the etched reticle as the projection backing, Spitfire has 6-step daylight bright illumination in red or green. The color and the brightness are controlled with two buttons on the back of the integral riser mount. A quick press on both switches color, a long press shuts the illumination off. As a backup for the absent-minded, a 14-hour timer also turns off illumination on an inactive scope. Single AAA battery life is decent but not spectacular at about 250 hours (full power) or 3,000 on the dimmest setting. For long-term storage, lithium AAA batteries are recommended. At the brightest setting, Spitfire is useful for shooting aerial targets like clays. The concentric circles also work very well for leading aerial clays with straight stock shotguns like MKA1919 or Origin 12.

The view through this scope is brighter than on a typical red dot sights, as the front lens doesn’t have to be tinted. Also unlike red dot sights, the prismatic scope causes fewer problems with undercorrected astigmatism in the shooter’s eyes. I am not sure why that’s the case, but numerous people have noticed that unmagnified prismatic scopes don’t suffer from reticle distortion in very low light, when the pupil opens fully and begins to use the less corrected peripheral vision.

The reticle subtensions, 140MOA on the outer circle, correspond to twice the height of an adult male, so a typical foe would fit in that circle at 50 yards, or between the center dot and the top at 100. The inner circle is 44MOA. The center dot is 3MOA, but the absence of light bloom makes it feel smaller. With no vertical or horizontal reference, the reticle is definitely intended for short-range use but can be pressed into service for distance if necessary. Since the rifle front sight usually remains visible at the bottom of the optic, it serves as an expedient cant reference. In my experience, the reticle is detailed enough to facilitate 100-yard, off-hand head hits and 300-yard deliberate torso shots with 5.56mm carbines. The center dot gives a slightly more precise aiming point with the illumination off, but the light bloom is minimal even at full brightness. At distances below 75 yards, placing the highly visible inner ring around the torso of the foe is very quick and almost guarantees a hit. In theory, +/-60MOA of elevation adjustment enable hitting area targets out to 1200 yards with 5.56x45mm ball, but the center dot covers the width of a typical human at 400 yards.

While backup sights remain visible through the optic in the lower 1/3 of the image circle, the front sight will not be in focus. It can be used for rough emergency aiming, but not as true co-witnessing. However, the most robust construction of Spitfire makes it likely to outlast folding mechanical sights. When stowed, the glass is protected with flip-up caps. All connections are sealed with O-rings, and the optics are nitrogen-filled to prevent internal fogging. The single piece tube housing and riser remove yet another potential failure point.

My experience with Spitfire began with the older, turn-dial model. I still prefer the dial to buttons for gloved use, but plenty of competent people prefer buttons. The battery compartment is definitely easier to use on the new model. It has seen extensive use on a Tavor SAR carbine. It is ideal for pistol caliber carbines and other short-range long guns with straight stocks. At this time, I run Spitfire AR on a shotgun, a 22WMR carbine and a 5.56mm rifle. The usability and the moderate price make it practical for use as a standard, across-the-board sight for most short- to medium-range long guns with straight stocks.

Many casually dismiss shotguns as no longer viable; either being smoothbore relics associated with WWI trenches or police cruiser icons that have been surpassed by the plethora of “black” rifles now on the market. The shotgun’s utility should not be doubted or held in disdain once its role is understood and applied correctly.

Whatever the label, i.e., combat/tactical/self defense, shotguns can be had in various forms ranging from double barrel, pump action, semi-automatic and, for good measure, even lever action. The Suarez Stakeout takes this a step further. Suarez labels its Stakeout as a modern “battle axe” meant to be deployed at close range by users capable of wielding its power.

The Stakeout features a textured, bird’s head pistol grip and 14-inch barrel. Do not stop reading this article by assuming it involves an exotic NFA Class 3 weapon. The Suarez Stakeout is able to be purchased with basic paperwork associated with most any other over-the-counter firearm purchase. A review of the Gun Control Act of 1968 that defines what a short-barrel shotgun consists of is the key. A shotgun that is manufactured from the start with a pistol grip and maintains an overall length greater than 26 inches is considered a firearm and not an NFA-regulated short-barrel shotgun; even with the 14-inch barrel.

The inherent flexibility of a shotgun, especially the pump action, to digest a variety of cartridge types such as birdshot, slug, buckshot, non-lethal, low recoil, breaching, etc., is its greatest attribute. The Suarez Stakeout tested herein is based on the Remington 870 pump-action 12-gauge shotgun. For sure, the Stakeout exudes an all-business air.

Research into the Stakeout concept shows its inception being a similar pattern shotgun used by the US Marshal Witness Protection teams. Other anecdotes mention various law enforcement units specializing in stake-out surveillance turning to the close-range firepower potential of the compact shotgun. High-value prisoner transport teams have also made use of shotguns similar to the Stakeout’s design.

Suarez International has taken the basic Remington 870 pistol grip shotgun and turned it into a specialized close-quarter battle weapon. No one can be all knowing in every facet of a subject as broad as personal defense. One of the places I look to for keeping me informed and grounded is Suarez International (SI). SI contains different operating entities ranging from a training division, a tactical gear store, as well as custom firearm manufacturing. No matter the personal opinion of Suarez, one can be sure that any ideas presented by Gabe Suarez and then backed up with products are well thought out and proofed during numerous training cycles and personal application in the field under the most rigorous conditions. Suarez International is offering its own take on the pistol grip shotgun with its Stakeout model. Gabe has his own LE experience deploying a shotgun similar to the Stakeout. He has taken this experience and applied improvements to his company’s offering.

The SI Stakeout is customized with features such as a ported 14-inch barrel that is also polished; this allows for both recoil reduction and increased predictability of pattern. The Stakeout’s bolt and dual operating rods are tuned, polished and coated in Aqua Terra Plus Teflon Nickel finish. The trigger group is tuned for a crisp break with new springs added. The SI Stakeout’s receiver loading port and ejection ports are de-horned, opened and polished for better ergonomics. A steel extractor is installed for increased durability/reliability. A textured forend and bird’s head pistol grip is standard; with an optional textured Magpul forend and “Stakeout Strap” available as well. A Suarez extended safety is installed to improve manipulation. Heavy duty stainless magazine tube spring is installed along with a one-plus tube magazine extension. A green fiber optic front sight is installed. A grey rust-resistant finish is applied along with a magazine tube sling mount bracket to round off the Suarez custom touches.

We depend on subject matter experts for recommendations and guidance. This approach assists in getting us up to speed as quickly as possible when it comes to increasing skill sets. My testing of the SI Stakeout was based on Suarez’s well done videos and articles discussing best practices with the pistol grip shotgun. Why not take advantage of the initial developmental experimentation?

Firing from the hip is not the best way to deploy the Stakeout effectively. Bringing the SI Stakeout eye level, while keeping it out in front away from your face, produced the best on target results. Recoil was managed by maintaining forward pressure on the forend in conjunction with pulling rearward on the bird’s head pistol grip. Gabe describes it as trying to stretch the shotgun apart. Recoil with the 12-gauge Stakeout is stout, and anyone telling you any differently should be scrutinized. Proper technique is important as well as taking advantage of the growing amount of low recoil shotgun rounds becoming available. As Gabe puts in one of his excellent Blog posts, “… this (Stakeout) is not the weapon for the frail … it takes some physical power to wield this.”

The receiver of the Stakeout is made of steel with the bolt locking into a steel barrel extension. The extra weight from the steel receiver is appreciated versus competitors who use aluminum receivers. There is something re-assuring about the power of a shotgun for any close-range engagement, which is what most civilians and LE personnel face. In terms of personal defense, buckshot loads predominate. Yes, other loads exist, but frankly not relative to the role envisioned with the Stakeout. There are various types of buckshot, but we will confine our discussion to #00 buckshot generally loaded with 8-9 .33 caliber pellets weighing 54 grains each. (As a side note, many advocate the use of #7.5 or #8 birdshot in a shotgun for use in a home to limit any chance of over penetration. A column of birdshot at close range such as across a room is lethal due to not having time to disperse.)

The Suarez Stakeout was tested with Hornady American Gunner Reduced Recoil #00 and Federal Premium Low Recoil FliteControl #00 buckshot (9 #00 pellets). The Federal Premium buckshot load utilizes a special wad for tighter buckshot patterns—thus longer effective range. Based on prior experiences with numerous buckshot loads over the years, specialized buckshot loads, such as the Federal Premium FliteControl, are a primary choice. However, the role of the Stakeout as a close-range blunderbuss could justify the use of “normal” patterning buckshot represented by the Hornady American Gunner loads; just make sure to stick with reduced recoil loads. The newer buckshot loads with specialized wads could maintain too tight a pattern, limiting its greatest attribute of lead dispersion at distances most associated with practical Stakeout deployment. Users will have to determine what bests suits their needs.

Supplementing the buckshot for testing with the SI Stakeout is the innovative Winchester PDX 1 12ga loading combining a 1-ounce slug and three #00 pellets. The Winchester PDX 1 load harkens back to the “buck-n-ball” loads used by our forefathers against the British in the Revolutionary War and each other during the American Civil War. The Winchester PDX 1 12ga loads stretch preconceived 12ga lethality notions even further with their combination of slug and buckshot. Range testing of the Winchester PDX 1 raised eyebrows with its performance combining the best of both worlds for the combat shotgun—single projectile performance and 10-inch buckshot pattern spread out to 20 yards with one of the holes being made by the 1-ounce slug! If only one load is possible for use in a combat shotgun, the Winchester PDX 1 may very well be it.

The Stakeout is a close-range hammer and was treated as such for this review. The Stakeout was evaluated via drills involving moving between barricades; think emerging from a bedroom into a hallway. Another niche role the pistol grip shotgun found in the law enforcement arena is as CQB force multiplier, especially in/around vehicles. Echo Valley Training Center (EVTC) range cars were utilized simulating responding to bad breath distance ambush.

The Stakeout’s 5+1 capacity could be augmented by a Mesa Tactical four-shell carrier on the receiver. Frankly, the role for which the Stakeout is envisioned will not require more than this capacity. If a user requires more rounds, discrete carry in pockets is suggested.

Initial hesitancy/concern about recoil management was allayed thanks to proper firing technique as outlined by Suarez International and low recoil buckshot rounds. A rhythm was discovered to make the most of natural recoil impulse to rack the slide ejecting spent hull, load fresh shell and bring Stakeout back up to line of sight. Suarez has done numerous videos explaining, and better yet, showing what I am talking about.

This Suarez Stakeout’s simplicity/reliability and raw power exemplify why the 12-gauge pump action continues to attract users. If range is point blank, the near ¾-inch diameter bore is devastating. Buckshot natural dispersion as it travels downrange creates a firepower “cone.” A 6-inch diameter pattern at 10 yards translates into a one square foot area of terminal ballistic destruction. Eight or nine .33 caliber pellets smashing into a target is a fight stopper. The Suarez Stakeout is a specialized weapon created for close-range firepower superiority.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Suarez International www.suarezinternational.com
Echo Valley Training Center www.echovalleytraining.com
Federal Cartridge Company www.federalpremium.com
Hornady Mfg. www.hornady.com
Winchester Ammunition www.winchester.com

The American public devoured the stories like a starving man devours food. The Great Depression had devastated the American economy and most everybody was poor. Today’s “poor” sport inexpensive, government-subsidized cell phones. The poor of that day did not eat. Out of conditions of unimaginable despair and deprivation ordinary Americans thirsted for release. They found it in moving pictures and larger-than-life tales of the motorized gangster.

Prohibition birthed a massive trade in illegal alcohol, and the resulting organized crime changed the American landscape. Illegal drinking establishments called “Speakeasies” sprang up all across the country, while the trade in bootlegged booze to keep them in operation skirted law enforcement and netted millions. Along the way, the archetype of the renegade outlaw created some of our nation’s most notorious criminals.

John Dillinger was the apex predator. Sporting movie star good looks and enough narcissism to keep him seeking the spotlight despite the suffocating net of law enforcement, Dillinger courted fame as he amassed ill-gotten wealth. The American public couldn’t get enough.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were variations on a theme. These two misguided miscreants also cruised the countryside leaving a trail of robberies, murder and mayhem in their wake. Bonnie and Clyde, however, offered some-thing Dillinger could not. The story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow included a component of illicit sex. In the puritanical years of the 1930s, this was reliable newsreel gold.

Sordid Details

Bonnie Parker was married when the famous duo began its two-year crime spree, just not to Clyde. Bonnie had married at 15, only to have her ne’er-do-well husband, Roy Thornton, end up in jail. Bonnie was still wearing his wedding ring on the day she died in a hail of law enforcement gunfire. By all accounts, Bonnie initially just went along for the ride.

Clyde Barrow, by contrast, was a classically hardened criminal. Barrow was really a product of the Texas prison system. Raised in abject poverty, it was a great improvement when his dirt-poor farmer father could finally afford a tent in which to house his family. Before that time they lived sheltered underneath the family wagon.

Barrow was first arrested at 17 for stealing a rental car and then a turkey. In fairly short order he subsequently cracked safes, robbed stores and stole yet more cars. While in prison, Barrow committed his first murder when he used a lead pipe to crush the skull of a man who had sexually assaulted him. Such sordid experiences warped the young man irrevocably.

Clyde convinced a fellow inmate to remove two of his toes with an axe so as to avoid the hard labor in the prison fields. This ad hoc surgery left him with a limp that would follow him for the rest of his days. Unbeknownst to him, his mother had already successfully secured his release effective six days after this self-inflicted injury.

Most of the public’s perception of Bonnie and Clyde stemmed from images found on an undeveloped roll of film abandoned by the couple after a narrow escape from law enforcement. These pictures were subsequently developed and showed a playful couple clowning around with the lethal tools of their nefarious trade. These widely distributed images subsequently became iconic. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty meticulously replicated their tone during the 1967 biopic about the couple titled, appropriately enough, Bonnie and Clyde. One fundamental component of these pictures was a certain unique gangster shotgun.

Raw Material—The Remington Model 11

John Moses Browning originally began work on what would ultimately become the Remington Model 11 shotgun in 1898. The design first drew breath as the Browning Auto-5, the world’s first successful autoloading shotgun. Of all his many-splendored firearms designs, Browning was said to have been most enamored with this one.

Sporting a long recoil action, wherein the barrel and bolt recoiled as a single unit before ejecting a spent shell and feeding a live round, the Auto-5 was originally intended to be a Winchester product. Winchester failed to meet Browning’s contractual demands, so he took the design to Remington. The untimely death of the Remington CEO in mid-negotiation drove Browning to take his shotgun to Fabrique Nationale in Belgium. Original Belgian-made Browning shotguns still command a premium.

Remington eventually did secure the rights to produce the gun, and they rolled out of the Remington factory from 1906 until 1947. The primary difference between the Remington and FN versions was the lack of a manual magazine cutoff. Remington sold thousands of the guns to the military as well. While most of these weapons were used for guard duty and antiaircraft training, a few were indeed used in combat during the Second World War. Remington produced the Model 11 in 12-, 16- and 20-gauge.

The Whippit Treatment

All of the Model 11 shotguns captured from the Barrow gang had been shortened to make them more readily concealable. The long recoil action was not dependent upon gas pressure for operation, so it was one of the relatively few autoloading designs to offer reliable operation independent of barrel length. Bonnie purportedly sewed Clyde a special set of trousers with a breakaway pocket along the right leg. Clyde could run the barrel of his whippet into the pocket and then present it quickly from under cover when desired. The term “Whippit” dates back to the American West and references a short shotgun that may be whipped out from underneath a long coat.

The Browning design actually incorporates two recoil systems. The primary system manages the recoil of the gun and resides within the forearm. Various combinations of interchangeable bushings best optimize the gun for various loads. The second mechanism telescopes into the stock and serves to return the bolt into battery after the primary system has cycled the barrel. It is the geometry of this second system that governs how short the buttstock may be pruned.

Creating a Monster

Particularly if your proclivities run to machineguns or weapons with a known criminal provenance, rarefied American gun collecting is not for the poorly funded or faint of heart. The nickel-plated Colt .38 revolver that was taped to Bonnie’s thigh when she died at the hands of law enforcement went for $99,000 at auction in 2014. However, if you just want to approximate that era without getting too nuts about it the outlay need not be substantial.

The Auto-5 was produced for 98 years, and the overall number of these guns in circulation is in the millions. While pristine Belgian-made examples cost a holy fortune, a domestically produced Remington beater is dirt-cheap. In the case of the gun used in this article, it began as an unwanted and unloved entry on Gunbroker.

Bonnie’s personal gun was a 20-gauge, but original 20-gauge Model 11s are unusual and consequently expensive. I settled for a 16. Somebody somewhere once put the gun away wet and it rusted as a result. In an effort to resurrect the high-mileage sporting piece it was subsequently reblued, ruining any collector’s value it might have had. As a result, I landed the gun for a cool $230 shipped to my C&R FFL.

Clyde didn’t use sophisticated machine shop tools and I wanted the authentic experience on this piece, so I cut the barrel down to 18 inches and a little change using a cutoff wheel on my table saw. I taped an old towel across the tool bed to keep from scratching the barrel. Cut it a time or two near the muzzle to get comfortable with the process before making the final chop. So long as the barrel remains longer than 18 inches and the overall length exceeds 26 inches you do not incur any federal registration requirements.

With the barrel pruned, I then dressed the cut end a bit with my Dremel tool. A little attention from my drill press and a hand tap installed a new bead front sight. Some red Threadlocker will keep this appendage in place forever. I used a grinding stone on the Dremel to dress the threaded base of the front sight from the inside of the bore.

Chopping the stock is even easier. Remove the stock and mark off the location of the near end of the recoil spring assembly. Back up just a smidgeon from there and prune the stock on the table saw. I fabricated a new buttplate from workshop scraps, affixed it with wood screws, sanded everything smooth and touched up the ugly spots with dark wood stain.

The end result is a decent facsimile of Bonnie Parker’s Whippit that set me back $230 and a couple of hours in the workshop. The gun looks cool and functions fine. It is not a chore to keep your rounds on a man-sized target out to fifteen meters or so, even firing from the hip. The autoloading nature of the design ensured that the gun offered prodigious close-range firepower.

Practical Tactical

On April 1, 1934, a pair of motorcycle cops of the Texas Highway Patrol stopped to investigate a car stopped on the side of rural Route 114 outside Grapevine, Texas. Assuming the car might belong to a motorist in need of assistance, these two lawmen approached the vehicle without suspicion. A brace of outlaws suddenly leapt from the car and caught the two officers in a hail of gunfire.

Grievously injured, both men fell to the ground. A slight young lady subsequently emerged from the car with a cut down shotgun and shot each of them at close range, killing them both instantly. While the legends surrounding Bonnie and Clyde have been bedecked with a bit of Robin Hood fluff, they were, like all of their gangster ilk, really reprobate cold-blooded killers.

Bonnie and Clyde died in a law enforcement ambush less than two months later along a rural road in Bienville Parish in Louisiana. Barrow was found to have suffered 17 entrance wounds. Parker had 26. Among the dozen or so guns discovered in the vehicle, Bonnie’s signature 20-gauge Whippit shotgun was found on the floorboard next to her lifeless body. Such a gory end befitted two of the worst of the Depression-era American outlaws.

In the 1990s, the arms collector’s world was excited by the discovery of a Luger self-loading rifle with a toggle-lock, developed shortly before World War I. Here is something more unique: a prototype Borchardt toggle-lock rifle from that same period.

For most of their lives, weapon designers Hugo Borchardt (1844–1924) and George Luger (1849–1923) were fierce competitors. It is, of course, well known that both were involved in the early stages of development of a self-loading pistol, with Luger modifying Borchardt’s original design into the famed Parabellum pistol. It is far less well known that both Luger and Borchardt occupied themselves with the design of a semi-automatic rifle shortly before the outbreak of World War I.

Until the 1990s, there were mostly rumors and scraps of information, but then there was a spectacular find: a semi-automatic Luger rifle with a toggle-lock, serial number 4, in the German military caliber 7.92×57. The weapon reportedly emerged in Britain in the amnesty of 1988 and finally ended in the collection of arms dealer Samuel Cummings. For a long time, it was debated whether this was an original gun or a very clever forgery, but eventually the weapon turned out to be genuine and a number of associated patents were found.

Lawsuit

The veil was lifted further when a part of Georg Luger’s estate was bought by a European collector. Among the personal papers were documents concerning a lawsuit in 1920 between Luger and his former employer, Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM). Luger could never quite get along with the general manager of DWM, Paul von Gontard. Disagreements eventually ran so high that Luger was fired. That, in itself, did not bother him. He objected, however, to the fact that DWM claimed the rights to the semi-automatic rifle he had developed.

One of the documents that Georg Luger presented to the court was a letter from the Prussian War Department in Berlin to DWM, dated March 2, 1914, in which the ministry expressed its interest in further tests with the Luger rifle. The same letter gave a less favorable opinion on another gun offered by DWM for trials: a Borchardt semi-automatic rifle.

Deficiencies

The Prussian authorities considered the 4.8-kilogram Borchardt rifle too heavy and difficult to disassemble. In addition, it was found to have several mechanical defects. The weapon had a toggle-lock combined with a fixed barrel. The result was that the breechblock would already begin its rearward movement when the bullet was still in the barrel, so that part of the cartridge case had to withstand the full gas pressure. The toggle joint that slammed to the rear was considered potentially dangerous to the shooter, especially when kneeling or in the prone position (which, by the way, was equally true for Luger’s gun).

The toggle-lock of the Borchardt rifle operated under the pressure of a heavy coil spring, which was located longitudinally behind the magazine. The force of the spring was transferred to the toggle-lock through a chain, as shown in Borchardt’s German patent 241,941 and U.S. patent 1,160,831. The Prussian War Ministry did not like this construction. Installation and removal of the chain was too complicated for the ordinary soldier, and the links collected dirt and dust. Finally, the self-loading mechanism did not work with blank cartridges.

Where, Oh Where?

The letter from the War Ministry provides indisputable evidence that the Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken had offered both a Borchardt and a Luger self-loading rifle to the Prussian authorities for trials, prior to World War I. The Luger gun had already surfaced. But where was the Borchardt rifle? Quests for this unique piece at first only yielded a series of patents, issued from May 1908 onward:

DRP 213,012 from May 17, 1908;
DRP 241,941 from March 1, 1911;
DRP 262,217 from February 11, 1912;
DRP 262,217 from April 17, 1912;
DRP 279,184 from February 22, 1914.

The rifle is best illustrated in German patent 241,941, and in U.S. Patent 1,160,831 for which the application was filed on February 2, 1914. Both are reproduced here, showing small differences in the artwork.

However, all this did not answer the most important questions: Had the Borchardt self-loading rifle survived? And, if so, where? As can be seen from the pictures, we can answer that question: A prototype does exist, and it is in the collection of the Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Description

The weapon in the museum is similar in almost all respects to the drawings of the German and U.S. patents. The gun is unnumbered, in the white (like many prototypes) and has no visible markings. It lacks both Borchardt’s name and the DWM logo, and it has no proof marks. Apart from some minor damage, the metal is in good condition, but the stock has suffered considerably. As can be seen in the pictures, the wood is full of dents and scratches. The only missing part is the leaf spring that secures the barrel band.

At first sight, the Borchardt rifle looks like the front of a Gewehr 98 has been combined with the rear of a Garand, with the toggle of the Parabellum pistol. The Borchardt rifle has a detachable magazine with a five-round capacity for the German standard 7.9×57 military cartridge. The magazine catch at the front of the magazine housing is U-shaped with two arms on either side of the magazine. The magazine is held in place by two studs on these arms, which fall in the small rectangular openings at the sides of the magazine. Pressing the catch to the rear forces the studs outwards and releases the magazine.

Knee Joint

The most spectacular part of the Borchardt rifle is, of course, the beautifully made toggle-lock, which resembles that of a Parabellum pistol on steroids. It must have been a difficult job to figure out the kinetics. The breechblock must move to the rear sufficiently, to be able to pick up and chamber a full-size 7.9×57 round, which means the toggle joint must open accordingly. The layout of the lock remained unchanged: first the breech block with a combined loaded chamber indicator and extractor in the top, and then the two joints of the toggle.

In order to prevent the breechblock from rebounding due to the blow against the back of the barrel, the left side of the receiver has a spring-loaded metal plate which falls into a recess in the left cocking knob. The left side of the receiver also has a sliding safety catch and a sear bar just like the Parabellum pistol.

So, you may ask, why are there no pictures of the internals of the gun? Well, there simply was no time to take them. The Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps has a collection of about 60,000 firearms, which might well make it the largest museum collection in the world. When our small group was at the museum, we had just a few days. So, there was a choice: go into a few dozen guns in depth or photograph as many as possible. We chose the latter. So even if it’s a glimpse, it’s a glimpse of one of the rarest guns in the world: the Borchardt semi-automatic rifle.