The day was hot, Africa hot. The CIA asset sweated like a harlot in church as he took in the motley crowd at the outdoor café through his Oakleys. Luanda, Angola, was the largest Portuguese-speaking city in the world and a surprisingly expensive place to live. Regardless, this part of Baixa de Luanda remained a rathole. When one hunted rats, one frequented ratholes.

The rat this day was an al-Shabaab bomb maker named Abdirahim Amiri. Amiri was a psychopath’s psychopath. He once traded his favorite daughter to a transient Laotian arms merchant for a Czechoslovakian rocket launcher and a flagon of Cockspur rum. That very same psychopath now took a seat two tables over alongside a pair of unsavory mal-contents.

The asset’s garish shorts and Mr. Bubble® t-shirt would not hide a proper pocket pistol, so he looked harmless. “Reuters” was splashed across the front of his ball cap. You can find anything on eBay.

His camera case was about the size of a large lunchbox. He had stenciled “Press Corps—Camera” across the side in case anybody cared. The asset excused himself and retreated to the restroom.

Once alone, he popped open the case. The gun resembled a compact M4 Carbine split into two halves. With practiced hands the asset snapped the barrel assembly in place and then quietly chambered a round. He turned his ball cap around backwards and pushed back into the sunlight.

Their eyes met in an instant, and Amiri had his pistol out and clear. The asset thumbed his selector, centered his sights by rote and squeezed the trigger twice, sending the psychopath off to meet his 70 dark-eyed virgins. A pair of perfectly placed double taps queued up his two companions right in line behind him. That’s when the screaming started. There was always screaming.

The asset used the resulting chaos to melt into the crowd. Half an hour later, he was sipping an ice cold Coke in an air-conditioned hotel room being debriefed by a pair of flabby guys in suits. The excitement passed, the ringing in his ears abated, and his pulse returned to the low 60s. It was a weird way to make a living, but somebody had to do it.

Origins

The concept of takedown guns dates back more than a century. John Moses Browning, the most gifted gun designer in human history, contrived his Model 1897 shotgun to break down readily into two pieces. This feature allowed the gun to be more easily shipped, stored or hidden.

The barrel assembly on the 1897 mates to the receiver via a set of fine interrupted threads. To take the gun down you slide out a retractable peg at the front of the magazine tube, give it a partial turn and pull the tube forward and clear of the receiver. This frees up the barrel to twist and slide free.

The Japanese Airborne

Though they were used only infrequently during World War II, the Japanese maintained a robust airborne capability. As a result the Japanese military fielded several fascinating takedown guns. The TERA Type 2 was a break-apart version of their bolt-action Arisaka Type 99 infantry rifle. The gun was held together via an interrupted thread and wedge system.

The Japanese Type 99 machine gun was a magazine-fed support weapon not conceptually dissimilar to the British Bren gun. Though a nightmare to mass produce and a boat anchor to hump, this gun soldiered on reliably until the very end of the War in the Pacific. The Japanese also produced a take-down version of this weapon for airborne use, albeit in very small quantities.

The Arisaka Type 99 Paratrooper machine gun features a removable finned barrel held in place via a calibrated wedge. The buttstock is retained by a pin affixed to the end of a short length of steel chain. The steel pistol grip folds forward to encompass the trigger guard. When fully broken down, the Paratrooper Type 99 collapses into a remarkably small package.

Armalite Survival

In 1956 Gene Stoner and the design team that ultimately produced the AR-15 were occupying themselves trying to conjure a new survival weapon for USAF aircrews. The result was the AR-5, a bolt-action takedown rifle chambered for the .22 Hornet cartridge. The AR-5 was a solid design, but the Air Force already had M4 and M6 survival weapons in inventory, so the new gun sort of fizzled. However, many of the AR-5’s radical attributes found their way into the AR-7, a .22LR autoloading design intended for the civilian market.

The AR-7 fed from a detachable box magazine and came apart via a large screw that fed through the wrist of the stock. Loosening a threaded collar removed the barrel, and the whole shebang stored inside the bulbous butt-stock. The gun would even float. The Israelis used a slightly modified version of the AR-7 operationally as an aircrew survival weapon in the 1980s. Sean Connery’s James Bond used one to shoot down a helicopter in “From Russia with Love.”

These days Henry offers the same AR-7 design as the U.S. Survival rifle. Modern mass production techniques and Information Age materials science keep the gun inexpensive. Henry makes it cool. I once tied a cord to mine and left it floating overnight in a lake. It sank eventually but took hours to do so.

Modern Offerings

KelTec makes weirdly awesome guns. Their SUB2000™ pistol-caliber folding rifle is a radical bullpup design that pivots just ahead of the trigger guard. Tugging the trigger guard downward releases the gun to fold. A spring-loaded catch secures the gun in its folded state. Deployment takes less time to perform than to describe.
The SUB2000 has plenty of rail space for accessories, and the muzzle is threaded for a suppressor if desired. The gun can be configured for either GLOCK, SIG SAUER, Beretta, CZ, Canik or Smith & Wesson magazines, so you can maintain magazine compatibility with your standard handgun. The trigger pull is a bit on the heavy side at 9.5 pounds, but the SUB2000 is indeed exceptionally clever.

Tactical Solutions makes their X-RING VR™ precision .22 rifle in a takedown version that splits easily into two pieces. The barrel is retained via an interrupted thread and secures to the bottom of the buttstock when collapsed for storage or transport. The gun holds its zero and shoots like an extension of your own anatomy.

Cry Havoc Tactical

Cry Havoc Tactical produces a Quick Release Barrel setup that allows you to transform any M4-based weapon into a covert takedown spy gun. A proprietary collar on the upper receiver mates with a similar component on the barrel extension and secures via a pair of throw levers. The USAF recently bought more than 2,000 of these weapons for use in every combat aircraft in the inventory. When mounted atop a standard M4 lower, the resulting gun is actually small enough to fit into a fighter plane’s ejection seat.

Takedown guns represent the pinnacle of the gun designer’s art. Capable, rugged, radical and neat, these novel tools seem right at home tucked behind the seat in James Bond’s Aston Martin. There are also quite a few options available for us normal folk as well.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

armalite.com

henryusa.com

keltecweapons.com

tacticalsol.com

cryhavoctac.com

Ergonomics is the science of interfacing man-made objects with the human animal. This pursuit shapes the way we drive our cars, run machines on a production floor, sit at a desk, open a Coke can and fly the space shuttle. Where, in previous generations, such stuff was pretty much random, nowadays ergonomics is big business.

There’s a lot riding on how well we can run our weapons. Whether you are a young stud in uniform kicking down doors, a cop investigating a disturbance in a spooky building or just an otherwise unremarkable armed American trying to determine why the dog won’t shut up at 3 o’clock in the morning, optimizing the interface between gun and flesh can indeed be a combat multiplier. We find the current state of the art in the WASP and Venom ergonomic foregrips from Function By Design (FXD). 

Origin Story

It’s tough to say exactly who first dreamt up the concept of putting a vertical foregrip on a firearm. [EDITOR’S NOTE: I had a Farquar-Hill rifle sn 33 of 100, made in 1908, semiauto, that had a wooden verticle foregrip that had numerous screwholes to change foregrip locations, so 1908 is a good starting point.] However, it is a simple thing to identify who brought the concept into the mainstream. That would be General John Taliaferro Thompson.

General Thompson’s eponymous submachine gun was born from the ashes of the First War to End All Wars. Young men of most of the world’s nationalities were bleeding out on forsaken battlefields across France and Belgium. The military leadership of the day tried to fight tomorrow’s war with yesterday’s tactics, and the result was carnage most unprecedented. Facing the prospect of losing an entire generation, visionaries like John Thompson strived to contrive tools that could get the Tommies and Doughboys up and out of their trenches so they could end the War.

That first Thompson gun was titled the “Annihilator,” and prototypes were ready for shipment to Europe 2 days after the Armistice. When General Thompson was unable to secure any large-scale sales to post-War military or law enforcement organizations, he released his invention to the public. During the Great Depression these remarkable guns were available openly, but they remained too expensive for normal folk to afford. However, the serious criminals of the day either bought their own with ill-gotten gains or just stole what they wanted. The phenomenon of the motorized bandit burned the iconic image of the Tommy Gun into the American psyche.

The classic Thompson icon includes a 50-round drum magazine, a Cutts compensator and a vertical foregrip. The gun itself is a fairly wretched piece of kit with its center of gravity too far back and its line of recoil significantly above the buttstock. It was state-of-the-art for its day, but the design was soon eclipsed by more streamlined stuff. However, the weapon’s mass and the relatively modest power of the pistol cartridge it fired made the weapon eminently controllable. With a little trigger time a determined operator could unleash a great deal of chaos with a Thompson.

General Thompson died before he could see his invention really find its legs. Despite the fact that the Thompson was lyrically outdated at the onset of WWII, it was all we had handy. As a result, American industry churned out some 1.5 million copies before the end of the War. However, we did simplify things a bit.

The later M1 and M1A1 Tommies dispensed with the complicated Blish lock and Cutts compensator while moving the charging handle to the right side from the top. They also incorporated a simplified horizontal foregrip rather than the previous swept-back sort. These changes made the complicated Thompson slightly less so and sped up production. I’ve run both side-by-side, and I personally find the previous gun to be more effective and controllable. However, that’s as much a function of its slightly reduced rate of fire as anything else. 

Cold War

Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov rocked the world with his marvelous farm tractor of an assault rifle. The first versions had a stamped steel receiver but were deemed inadequately rugged. That determination led to the definitively forged steel AK-47. In the 1950s the Soviets perfected that original stamped receiver, and the AKM was born. 

More than 100 million Kalashnikov rifles saw service in hundreds of guises. Stocks, both folding and rigid, along with sundry barrel lengths and furniture designs defined most of them. Along the way, the Romanians developed a fairly crude vertical foregrip for their own particular versions of Comrade Kalashnikov’s chopper. There are variations to accommodate both fixed stocks and underfolders. Back when I wore the uniform, I logged a fair amount of time behind AK rifles and personally sought out those with the vertical foregrips. 

SOPMOD

September 1989 saw the advent of the Special Operations Special Technology (SOST) Modular Close Combat Carbine Project. This mouthful of milspeak was administered by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division and ultimately birthed the first SOPMOD kit. SOPMOD stands for Special Operations Peculiar Modifications. That original Block 1 kit included enough cool-guy gear to support four carbines.

The beating heart of the SOPMOD kit was the Knight’s Armament Rail Interface System. For the first time in military history we now had the accessories we needed to optimize our weapons for particular missions. One of the simplest yet most effective additions to the M4 was the basic clamp-on broomstick foregrip.

Physiology

Set the magazine down for a second and head over to the gun box. Snatch up a random smoke pole and assess how it really feels to you. If you happened to heft a Garand, M1 Carbine or lever-action Winchester, then you’ll be pushing your wrist just past a position of comfort to accommodate that long walnut forearm. If the gun you grabbed is a SOPMOD-equipped M4 or a Romanian AK, then that perpendicular orientation is just a wee bit far in the other direction. It turns out that what is just about perfect is General Thompson’s century-old trench broom. 

Tactics evolve with experience, and we run our guns nowadays in ways that would have been unimaginable back when I first donned the uniform. A lot of really smart people have spent a great deal of time pondering the subject, and entire schools now orbit around the rarefied art of gunfighting. Now that we run our weapons with our support hands outstretched for optimal control, the good folks at Force By Design have conjured the ideal foregrip.

FXD

The company name Force By Design (FXD) is a clever mathematical allusion. In the WASP and the Venom we find mankind’s best effort at transforming a black rifle into an extension of your anatomy. These high-tech appendages come in two broad flavors.

Both the WASP and the Venom are sharply swept and formed from some kind of indestructible polymer material. They both clamp painlessly onto any standard Picatinny rail using nothing more advanced than a standard screwdriver. They both also include little thumb wings on both sides upon which you may rest your weary thumbs. They are generously grooved to improve your purchase when sweaty or rushed.

The Venom is a wee bit shorter than the WASP and not quite so customizable. Where the thumb shelves are rigidly molded in place on the Venom, on the WASP you can loosen an Allen screw and adjust the angle and placement to suit. The WASP also includes an adjustable trigger on the front to optimize finger placement as well as a compartment to accommodate a pressure pad for a light or laser. Both grips are designed and produced in the USA, and 10% of the profits go to support injured veterans.

Legal Matters

In a veritable ocean of silly gun regulations, arguably the most asinine to me has always been the government’s take on foregrips. As I understand it, you can mount up an angled foregrip on a handgun and keep Uncle Sam as both a pal and soulmate. However, make that grip the 90-degree perpendicular sort, and you are a felon worthy of a decade in prison. 

The entire issue turns on the definition of a handgun. According to federal law, a handgun is a firearm with a short-angled grip designed to be fired with one hand. Considering the only time I would actually fire a handgun one-handed would be if my other hand was blown off, that seems a bit anachronistic. However, the good folks at ATF are tasked with interpreting and enforcing this tripe, and frankly they do a bang-up job considering the bucket of snakes with which the U.S. Congress has gifted them. 

The ATF adjudicates these issues on a case-by-case basis in the form of position letters in response to a citizen’s specific queries. It is well known that these letters only apply to those who requested them, but they do give insights into the .gov mindset. One particular letter dated November 20, 2013, specifically states that the sort of foregrip that would magically transform a conventional handgun into an NFA-regulated “Any Other Weapon” would be the sort that is oriented 90-degrees off of the gun’s bore. Logically, therefore, the WASP and Venom should be good to go across the board on any platform. 

How Do They Run? 

The addition of the WASP or Venom allows you to retain positive control of your weapon with your weak hand alone. Should you need to index to a sidearm or less-than-lethal tool, then the FXD device helps you keep your primary weapon handy and accessible without undue fatigue. As a result, I found that it was indeed an easy enough chore to keep my weapons pointed where I wanted them with my weak hand. The incorporation of a pressure switch on the WASP is just gravy. 

The hard angles of the thing can dig a bit if you run the weapon with your thumb wrapped around the grip. However, the thumb rests are where your thumb should live anyway, so that’s not an issue. I tried these two grips on a ludicrously large number of rifles and pistols and found them to run exactly as advertised. Orienting the support hand a bit below the bore axis took a little getting used to for me; but that learning curve remains quite pleasantly shallow. 

Denouement 

A determined warrior can be formidable wielding a $75 Hi-Point pistol or even a decent rock; but for those of us who take our tactical tools seriously, the details of ergonomics and function are the places where dreams either flourish or perish. In the WASP and Venom by Force By Design we get a glimpse of the future of tactical weapons. For more information, see forcexdesign.com. 

Awesome is a mightily overused descriptor these days. The dictionary definition is “extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension or fear.” The archetypal use in a phrase, once again per the dictionary, is, “The awesome power of the atomic bomb.”

As with such similar terms as cool, woke, radical, and text, context is everything, and modern cultural influences contort the meaning to fit the times. Such societal pressures tend to infuse otherwise pedestrian terms with an unfortunate abstruseness. In the case of firearms, however, one gun above all others cuts through the linguist’s otherwise impenetrable fog. The Barrett M82A1 Light Fifty excises all the ambiguity out of the term awesome.

True Tactical Vision 

Ronnie Barrett contrived the original M82 Light Fifty back in the 1980s. I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Barrett, but that guy is a visionary. To translate the abstract idea of a man-portable, semiautomatic precision rifle that fires John Moses Browning’s behemoth .50 BMG (12.7x99mm) cartridge into something that can be safely and comfortably fired off the shoulder is a remarkable mechanical achievement. That he did so in such an elegant fashion is all the more impressive. 

The Barrett M82 (barrett.net) is in essence a scaled-up version of the Browning-inspired Auto-5 long recoil shotgun. John Browning designed every major rifle-caliber automatic weapon used by American forces during World War II. With credentials like that, his opinions matter. The great man held 128 gun-related patents when finally he keeled over of heart failure while sitting in his son Val’s office in the FN plant in Liege, Belgium, at age 71 in 1926. Of all his remarkable gun designs, Browning himself claimed the Auto-5 was the one of which he was most proud. 

The Barrett M82 is a recoil-operated, semiautomatic, magazine-fed precision rifle. The gun is designed to accept an optical sight and feeds from a 10-round detachable box magazine. The elegant method by which Ronnie Barrett tamed the massive .50BMG cartridge warrants specific exploration. 

At the moment of firing, the bolt and barrel assembly are locked together but remain free to move. The heavy barrel is generously fluted along its length but remains quite massive. 

The barrel/bolt assembly then recoils deeply into the heavy pressed steel receiver against spring pressure. These two components then mechanically separate, and a dedicated return spring system returns the barrel to its neutral position. This action extracts the empty cartridge so it can be ejected out of the enormous right-sided ejection port. 

Once ejection is complete, the bolt returns into battery via spring pressure, stripping another round out of the magazine in the process. The AR-15-style fire control system is then free to fire follow-up shots. While there is a great deal of violence pent up within this process, the nature of the design keeps the gun quite accurate even at long ranges. 

Art Imitates Life 

In 1987, Paul Verhoeven directed a dystopian sci-fi epic written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner titled “RoboCop.” Set in Detroit, Michigan, in the near future “RoboCop” depicted a dark and broken world characterized by rampaging crime and the corrupt uber-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) . In this world, law enforcement and public safety were contracted out to OCP with minimal government oversight. The resulting tale explored themes like unfettered capitalism, corporate greed, the power of an unchecked media and the corrupt nature of man. 

All good movies hinge upon their villains, and Clarence Boddicker in “RoboCop” is one of the best. Played to perfection by the character actor Kurtwood Smith, Boddicker is a soulless nihilist who lives only for chaos. The weapon Boddicker and his mob of malevolent malcontents wields is referred to as the “Cobra Assault Cannon.” 

The Cobra Assault Cannon is at its heart an early Barrett M82 .50-caliber anti-materiel rifle adorned with a little fiberglass window dressing and an oversized optic. The imaginary Hollywood high explosive rounds these things throw are adequate to destroy an automobile or an armored stop-motion, death-dealing police robot. In the final climactic scene, Peter Weller’s RoboCop character uses one of the guns to take out a formidable ED-209 armored security drone. 

The gun nerd truly committed to his craft will note that the rifle experiences a stovepipe jam that leaves a crimped .50-caliber blank hanging half out of the ejection port. The fact that I noticed that lends insight into why I have so few normal friends. Now hold that thought. 

Trigger Time on the Cobra Assault Cannon 

In 1987, I was a freshly minted paratrooper headed back to college after a fun-filled summer at Fort Benning. I answered an ad in the school paper to audition for a movie being made on my picturesque Southern university campus. The film was an entirely forgettable bit of socially engineered pablum called “Heart of Dixie.” 

The movie was hardly Oscar material, but it was my first taste of Hollywood glitz. Ally Sheedy, Phoebe Cates, Treat Williams, Kurtwood Smith and Virginia Madsen starred, and the production occupied both the community and the campus for weeks. I thought it all more fun than a barrel of monkeys. 

I actually got a fairly decent part in the movie. I had and have no marketable acting skills and will never be mistaken for handsome. However, my head was shaved so that was adequate to earn me the lead role as a National Guardsman who beats up the movie’s central character played by Allie Sheedy. However, that’s a tale for another day. 

The spot did allow me to chill out with Kurtwood Smith for a bit. For those who are still reading, Smith was the guy who played the villain Clarence Boddicker in “RoboCop.” Kurtwood was a friendly enough gent, and I am a gun nerd. I therefore inevitably inquired regarding the weapons he used in “RoboCop.” Smith said that the Cobra Assault Cannons were just insanely heavy, and that it was really tough to manhandle the massive guns on screen and still look cool doing it. I always wondered what he was talking about until I handled one of my own. 

Taking the Plunge

I will admit to having been hopelessly enamored with the Barrett M82 ever since I saw “RoboCop” in the theater back in 1987. I studied gun magazine articles about the rifle and caught it in another movie or three, but there the dream languished for some three decades. I then saved my pennies basically forever, did a serious GunBroker.com recon and landed a spanking new OD Barrett M82A1 for my own. Here are my impressions.

The gun ships in a superb rolling hard plastic gun case. The case itself is truly epic. Though I didn’t actually try it, you could almost cram a corpse into this thing. 

To fit inside this ample box the barrel assembly and optic must be removed. Fitting the barrel assembly takes mere moments without tools. However, remounting the optic necessitates that the gun be re-zeroed. 

That’s kind of a pain. Were I hunting terrorists covertly in the Hindu Kush, having to re-mount my optic every time I retrieved my rifle would be a serious impediment. Fortunately for me, the closest I will ever get to the Hindu Kush is the History Channel.

Once you get the gun assembled, you come to appreciate the elegance of the design. The receiver is thick stamped steel, so the cheek weld is hot in the summer and cold in the winter. However, I am apparently one of maybe three male human beings in the known universe who can operate a sewing machine, so I whipped up an improvised cloth cheek cover. There’s nothing to it.

The folding steel bipod is reminiscent of that of the M60 machine gun and is both rugged and functional. The legs adjust independently for command height and are free to cant, but the unit does not pivot on the receiver. There is a screw-adjustable monopod located on the heel of the stock. I find that I can make very precise adjustments to the lay of the rifle using this device so long as the gun is arranged on a firm surface. 

There is a removable folding carrying handle that affixes to the Picatinny rail up top that is quite useful given the gun’s prodigious mass and bulk. The gun comes with folding iron sights, but you have to remove the optic to access the rear bit. The entire rifle breaks down without tools via handy lock pins. 

The M82A1 uses a standard M4 pistol grip, so the rifle interfaces nicely with the human form. The left-sided rotating safety is in the same spot as that of an M4 and operates intuitively. The magazine is just stupid huge and must be rocked in and out in the manner of a Kalashnikov. Like the AK, the magazine release is a thumb lever located behind the magazine along the midline. 

The charging handle reciprocates with the bolt and is accessible on the right. The bolt throw is measured in kilometers, so you’ll want to be purposeful about charging the thing. It is important that you release the bolt at its rearmost position and let it slam forward vigorously of its own accord driven by the recoil spring. Riding the bolt at all can result in its not settling completely into battery. 

The gun is available with either 20- or 29-inch barrels with a 1:15 rate of twist. With the barrel removed, the gun becomes relatively portable. A buddy who served as a member of a sniper team with a Ranger Battalion deployed downrange in Afghanistan told me that when they deployed with their Barretts operationally, they typically broke them down into two separate loads to better distribute the weight and bulk.

The harmonica-style muzzle brake looks cool and works well. Generous angled vents direct the chaos backwards to counteract the prodigious recoil of the massive round. The down side, however, is that if you stand to the side of the gun as it is being fired (like to take pictures for a gun magazine article), the overpressure will make your eyes feel like they are going to explode. Ask me how I know this.

Trigger Time

So what’s it really like to light one of these massive hand-sized rounds off mere inches from your soft pink anatomy? The visceral effect is about like swallowing a live hand grenade. Dirt, leaves and debris are launched vigorously into the air and subsequently worm into your eyes, ears and clothing. Phlegmatically speaking, however, the recoil really isn’t too bad. I would liken it to that of a 20-gauge shotgun.

The recoil impulse is more of a shove than a jolt thanks to all the reciprocating mass and Ronnie Barrett’s incontrovertible mechanical genius. I could be ready to launch a follow-up shot as soon as the dust settled in front of the big rifle. With proper ear protection and an ample supply of ammunition I could run this gun for a long afternoon without feeling overly violated.

At close ranges the M82A1 seems like some thing that would be called a Cobra Assault Cannon. The gun feels like it would shoot through pretty much anything short of a bank vault door or Mount Rushmore. Reaching out a bit was an illuminating experience. 

.50BMG ammo is expensive no matter where you get it. I bought some bargain basement blaster rounds made from harvested GI components for about $3 a piece and then proceeded to frustrate myself at 100m. I was punching those massive half-inch holes into groups perhaps 4 inches across now convinced that I had purchased an unimaginably expensive paperweight. Then I splurged for some of the “good stuff.”

Hornady .50BMG Match rounds push 750-grain A-MAX bullets to some 2,800 feet per second at the muzzle (hornady.com). To put that in perspective, that’s like firing about a dozen 62-grain 5.56mm rounds through a standard military M4 carbine simultaneously. These Hornady A-MAX rounds are also breathtakingly accurate. They’re expensive, but they would consistently print cloverleaves at a football field so long as I did my part.

Reaching out a ways, the Barrett M82A1 did not disappoint; I pretty much suck at long-range shooting. Subguns and assault rifles are more my bag. However, with a proficient coach I was consistently connecting with a 12-inch plate at 700m. My experienced coach, a SWAT sniper, dropped behind the gun and kept the plates ringing out to a kilometer. Even that far out these heavy precision bullets still carry enough energy to kill most anything on the planet. If you find yourself in the Cretaceous period among 30,000-pound predators like the T-Rex, this is the gun you’d grab.

Ruminations

I bought this rifle with its superlative Leupold scope really not thinking I would shoot it much. Given its prodigious mass and inimitable power, I assumed the thrill would pass and I would index to some other shiny trinket. However, as I take inventory of my ammo I have likely run 200 rounds or more through this beast in the first couple years I have owned it. Decent ammo does indeed cost a cast-iron fortune, but it is amazingly satisfying to command this much power under control.

There still yet remains a place for the cheap bulk ammo made in somebody’s basement out of pulled components. This stuff really doesn’t shoot terribly straight compared to the top-flight fodder from Hornady. However, if you want to impress your daughter’s new boyfriend in a seriously lasting way, just drag out the Barrett and let the kid run half a dozen rounds through it. He’ll ask to keep the big empties for souvenirs. He will also rightfully fear any guy bad enough to own such a beast. A little healthy fear in your typical teenage boy is almost always a good thing. 

SPECIFICATIONS

• CALIBER: 12.7x99mm/.50BMG
• OVERALL LENGTH: 57in
• BARREL LENGTH: 29in
• WEIGHT: 31lb
• ACTION: Recoil-operated rotating bolt
• FEED: 10-round detachable box magazine

Just what exactly separates mankind from the apes? Geneticists tell us there isn’t much more than a couple percentage points’ difference in DNA between your typical human politician and a chimpanzee. Admittedly, that’s perhaps not the best example of the human archetype. However, aside from a relative dearth of body hair and an insensate attachment to vacuous daytime television, Homo sapiens’ primary functional difference from our simian brethren is our remarkable proclivity for contriving tools.

Before we have to field reams of irate missives from angry monkey apologists, I acknowledge that apes can and do indeed use tools. However, there is a broad gulf between running a stick into an anthill to fetch insects for one’s dinner and designing the latest iPhone. This deep into the Information Age, mankind’s capacity to engineer contraptions with which he might manipulate his environment truly defies categorization. Additionally, it strikes me that “angry monkey apologists” would be a great name for either an intramural football team or a rock band.

Gerber Cred

Amidst a limitless sea of cool, man-portable hardware, Gerber’s lineup reigns supreme for its functionality, portability and field-proven ruggedness. Back when I was an Army Aviator, a Gerber Multi-Plier was my constant companion. The pliers deployed with a flick of the wrist in the manner of a Fallschirmjäger gravity knife. 

That marvelous thing and I travelled the world together, removing inspection covers on Army helicopters, building survival shelters, cleaning underneath my fingernails, squeezing things and reverently opening care packages from home. Alas, as near as I might ascertain, I snagged my beloved Multi-Plier on some brush and unwittingly donated that magnificent tool to the vast Alaskan wilderness someplace. That extraordinary Multi-Plier will forever occupy a warm spot in my heart. May it rest in peace.

No kidding, the totality of cool Gerber tools is legitimately overwhelming. Amongst sundry knives, scissors, skinners, wrenches, files, pliers, tomahawks, glass breakers and seatbelt cutters, the Short Stack is optimized to support Gene Stoner’s classic black rifle. Offering phenomenal capabilities in a package small enough to hide inside a Magpul MOE or MIAD pistol grip, the Short Stack will help keep your favorite modern sporting rifle shooting straight and running reliably without a significant weight or space penalty. You can tuck a snippet of cleaning rag into the grip with the tool to keep it from rattling. The number of features the good folks at the Gerber skunk works crammed into this thing is frankly surreal (gerbergear.com). 

Multifunction Madness 

The Short Stack AR tool comes with a comic-book-style instruction sheet that demonstrates all its sundry features. As a card-carrying American male, it pains me to admit this, but you might want to take a glance at the instructions before you just dive in. I wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to open the thing up unassisted, and I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering. (EDITOR’S NOTE: All male readers need to commend Dr. Dabbs on his public candor in admitting the masculine shortcoming of not reading directions. He should have started with “Hi, I’m Will, and … I’m a guy …” and Will, we do have female readers, so you’ve kind of let that cat out of the bag now.) 

Once you get the technique down there is literally nothing to it, however. The three major components are cut from blackened 410 stainless steel and held in place with those preternaturally strong rare earth magnets. A little rubber doodad holds a pair of tool bits. The whole shebang just drips with pure, unfiltered awesome. 

In addition to the expected Gerber level of quality throughout, the Short Stack has the function of each aspect of the tool helpfully printed on the outside. Some of these features you will use more than others, but it is just super cool to have such versatility in such a compact portable package. The Gerber Short Stack is proudly made in the USA and is supported by a superb limited lifetime warranty.

Mechanical Details

The Short Stack is purpose-designed to support the AR-15 family of weapons. Some of its features might obliquely translate to your AK or GLOCK, but it is Gene Stoner’s Space Age wonder that most benefits from the device. From the size of the wrenches to the peculiar mechanical esoterica, the Short Stack makes maintaining your black rifle easier, cleaner, faster and safer.

There is a handy front sight adjustment tool. Back in my day, we had to undertake this chore with the point of a bullet. Considering we didn’t typically have scads of live rounds just sitting around in a training environment this made front sight adjustments a chore of the highest order. With the Short Stack just push down and twist to zero your front sight for elevation.

The direct gas impingement system of the AR-15 is a mature, reliable and accurate mechanism. However, it is also undeniably filthy. Run a couple hundred rounds through your home defense AR, and its entrails start to look like the bottom of your barbecue grill. The Short Stack includes purpose-designed tools to help you efficiently de-gunk your black gun. 

A firing pin cleaning tool is designed such that you can run the firing pin into a three-lobed slot and use it to help access those hard-to-reach places where carbon fouling tends to hide. The bolt carrier scraper fits perfectly down the front of the bolt carrier and helps you remove carbon buildup deep in its recesses. A sharp-edged scraper helps you get rid of that pesky stuff that clings so tenaciously to the tail of the bolt itself as well. 

There is a slot that will accept a cleaning cable pull-through so you can keep your bore squeaky clean. One threaded component of the rig will accept a standard GI chamber or bore brush and provide the leverage you need to do some proper scrubbing. The rare earth magnets that hold everything together do double duty as a small parts holder. I look back without fondness to the several times I have been in the midst of some mechanical travail with some deadlined weapon and mislaid that one tiny little widget I needed to get it back up and running. These magnetized bits help keep little pins and springs from wandering. 

Down here in the Deep South, it can be considered child abuse if you let your high school graduate leave the house for college without having built at least one AR rifle together. The Short Stack includes a buffer tube lock nut wrench that lets you snug the castle nut down or slip it off without lugging an institutional toolbox to the range. There is also a ¾-inch wrench designed to help manipulate standard black rifle flash suppressors. Hook two of the three components together to enhance leverage and subsequent mechanical advantage for those particularly beefy tasks. 

I have seen some factory flash suppressors that took a heavy automotive wrench and an ample breaker bar to get loose. The Short Stack likely won’t help you much there. However, sound suppressors are expensive, and that onerous $200 transfer tax is hardly front pocket change. It therefore behooves us to use one can across as many platforms as possible. With the Short Stack, removing flash suppressors to thread on a can may be undertaken comfortably at the bench.

A 7mm wrench stabilizes the nut on a standard M-LOK fastener. An interchangeable driver accepts the hex bit needed to manage the other end of the M-LOK bolt. With the Short Stack tucked into your Magpul pistol grip, you can swap out forearm accessories on the go.

There is a 4mm wrench as well as a small Phillips screwdriver included among the interchangeable bits; ½-inch and 3/8-inch wrenches round out the mechanical ensemble. Other unlisted applications are limited solely by your imagination.

Practicalities

Back when I wore the uniform, we spent untold hours scrubbing away at our old M16A1 rifles until they met the armorer’s exacting standards of cleanliness. That sadist wasn’t satisfied until we had those weapons cleaner than when they first left the factory. Even back then we improvised tools to help us with this onerous chore.

Somebody would typically bring a can or two of brake cleaner until one young stud got squirted in the eye with it and had to go to the hospital. We could manage automatic grenade launchers and multimillion dollar helicopters, but we apparently lacked the dexterity and maturity to wield a spray can. The guy’s eye was red and angry for a while, but it turned out fine.

My favorite tool back in the day was improvised out of a piece of coat hanger wire. I banged the end into a little steel fan and gave the wire a jaunty bend to craft a monkey-made version of what Gerber did so much better. My homebuilt scraper helped dig carbon out of the nose of the bolt carrier but still missed quite a bit. By contrast, the Gerber Short Stack is perfectly dimensioned for this purpose.

Practical Tactical

These days I don’t have some perennially agitated arms room custodian running white cloth through the entrails of my weapons to ensure that they are flawlessly maintained. As a result, many of the guns in my collection that don’t sit next to the door for the inevitable day the zombies come are not kept as tidy as perhaps should be the case. To put the Short Stack through a proper test I picked something truly gross and nasty, stripped it down to pins and springs and proceeded to channel my inner Basic trainee.

Suffice to say I would love to have had one of these little jewels back in the day. The Short Stack helps get into those hard-to reach places where the First Sergeant always knew to look for that last scrap of carbon that would sentence you to another hour of scrubbing through your already fairly clean weapon. While cleaning weapons is still messy, tedious, and gross, the Short Stack does indeed make it markedly less thus.

Ruminations

Operate within the limitations of the device. The Short Stack is not the optimal tool to try to torque off that flash suppressor that someone at the SIG SAUER factory installed with a hydraulic press. However, once the muzzle device is ever so slightly dislodged, the Short Stack will keep things plenty tight for any imaginable tactical scenario.

The beauty of Gerber’s multifunction tools is that they let you do more with less. The sheer volume of full-sized conventional tools that would be required to do what this tiny little device can manage would be adequate to fill a proper tacklebox. By dropping the Short Stack into your pocket, tactical vest or pistol grip, however, you can do most of the stuff you need to do to keep your service rifle running smoothly and well without adding undue strain to that grueling 15-mile ruck march. If your day job does not involve humping the Hindu Kush, the Short Stack minimizes mechanical frustrations during a pleasant Saturday afternoon at the range.

Rugged, inspired and brilliantly executed, the Gerber Short Stack is the Swiss Army Knife of gun maintenance tools. Small enough to tuck into some of the most unremarkable places yet sufficiently capable to warrant inclusion in the most discriminating loadout or range bag, the Short Stack is a lot of tool for the money. It also keeps us reliably ahead of the monkeys. 

There is an inevitable appeal to things crafted lovingly by hand. Whether it is a kindergarten Play-Doh creation we build for our moms that might resemble a leprous hippo or the priceless daisy chain gifted from a doe-eyed six-year-old daughter, the fact that somebody made something by hand is invariably moving. Stuff made on an assembly line might be cheaper, but even this deep into the Information Age there yet remains a place for Old World craftsmanship.

Origin Story

I have the gun nerd gene. Though geneticists have yet to identify the specific locus on the human genome, it is clearly a most powerful bit of DNA. My very earliest recollections were of creeping about my sundry play areas imaginarily shooting stuff with improvised firearms. You just can’t fight nature.

I bought my first two transferable machine guns on my 21st birthday (I’m old. They weren’t expensive back then). I also did my time in uniform playing with guns for real. After two more careers and a couple hundred gun articles, I finally took the plunge.

More than a dozen years ago I started a small business with a few like-minded gun buddies. They owned an extensive tool and die prototyping shop with all the bells and whistles. I had experience navigating government bureaucracy and could capitalize our initial efforts using writing proceeds. The end result was Advanced Tactical Ordnance, LLC (ATO) (ato-us.com). 

Our logo is the cross between the Alpha and the Omega. Our common faith, friendship and brotherhood served as a foundation for the business. We started out making sound suppressors and cleared just enough money to keep the business afloat. After many years of toil, we have become fairly adroit at handcrafting precision rifles. It is indescribably satisfying to take a big inert chunk of steel and transform it into something that will produce truly world-class accuracy. 

The shop that produces these rifles is a multigenerational family business. These guys literally grew up in this building. This state-of-the-art manufacturing facility is hidden away in a quiet piece of rural Mississippi. Nobody finds this place unless they are looking for it. 

This amply equipped prototyping shop is surrounded by the homes of those who labor within. Little kids scamper around the place after school. The guys running these machines are the children and grandchildren of the folks who started the business but have passed on.

One of my partners built his first ammunition reloading machine from scratch at age 12. His dad who started the shop decades ago invented the self-cleaning oven. Massive CNC mills, CNC lathes and EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) wire machines turn raw steel into objects d’art. A press the size of a semi-truck sits on one end of the building for those times when they need to make stuff that’s truly huge. They can and do make most anything here. However, long-range rifles are their true artistic medium. 

Blurring the Lines

You can walk out of most any box store with a mass-produced, bolt-action rifle that will reliably put venison on the table. Such a gun is inexpensive and will consistently shoot minute-of-whitetail at 200 yards in the hands of an experienced operator. That reliable assembly line rifle will be both cheap and effective. It will also look, feel and act just like any one of a zillion others just like it. By contrast, our guns are as much an experience as a firearm.

We build these rifles one at a time to the owner’s individual specifications. You pick the caliber, chassis, barrel, trigger, optic, muzzle device and personality. You even pick the serial number; we recently custom-built a sports “741776.” That’s obviously Uncle Sam’s birthday. Like most backwoods redneck gun guys, we take our patriotism fairly seriously.

At the end of the process, the shooter has a rifle that is a reflection of his particular skills, temperament and personality. If you want a bolt-action rifle that will group inside a jelly jar lid at 100m then go to your favorite Walmart and pick one that looks shiny. If you want to make a first-shot kill on a tangerine at 700m (true story), then come talk to us.

Raw Material

A proper precision rifle orbits around its receiver, and we build those from scratch. Each receiver starts life as a 5.3-pound cylinder of 17-4 PH stainless steel. This 17-4 stainless is a martensitic precipitation hardening stainless steel that contains around 15% chromium, 4% nickel and 4% copper. This same stuff would be right at home in a nuclear power plant or aboard the International Space Station. It also makes a great starting point for a simply superb precision rifle.

Not unlike a piece of artist’s marble, the trick is to meticulously remove everything that isn’t a superlative rifle receiver. Each receiver requires about 10 hours of machine time. The end result is as perfect as mankind can make it. Everything is true, square and smooth in every possible way.

We cut our recoil lugs out of the same stainless stock using an EDM wire machine. We then polish them to perfection with a precision grinder. This is what interfaces the receiver to the chassis, and it has got to be just right.

EDMs

In my opinion, EDMs are the coolest machines in the joint. I just enjoy watching them work. An English Physicist named Joseph Priestly discovered the concept in 1770. A pair of Russian scientists made the process practical in 1943 as an economical means of cutting ultra-hard tungsten during the War. A fine piece of brass wire is electrified as it passes through a dielectric fluid and cuts electrically conductive materials like butter. This tiny gauge wire is precisely manipulated by a computer-controlled mechanism to coax complex shapes out of steel stock.

Our receivers begin life as digital models carefully crafted in SOLIDWORKS, the shop CAD suite. Tweaking the design in its digital form is a technical skill that can be taught in a classroom. Translating that design into steel, however, takes passion, dedication and practice—lots and lots of practice. 

We get our heavy barrel blanks from several sources. The blanks come bored and rifled in either a bull or tapered contour. Different calibers obviously require different blanks. Barrels such as .234 Ackley, 6mm Creedmoor, 6.5 Creedmoor, .308 and .300 Winchester Magnum all begin life as long heavy steel rods.

These blanks become barrels after they are precisely chucked into a massive CNC lathe and have their chambers cut. The chamber is obviously where all the magic starts. Each step in the process requires the utmost patience and precision. This particular build used a Shilen 4-groove Ratchet barrel. The angry end is threaded to accept a muzzle brake or sound suppressor.

We cut our own scope mounts out of 4140 pre-hardened steel also using the EDM wire machines. The details of the mounts are scope-dependent and part of the custom building process. We cut the blanks ourselves, mill out the slots and then finish them in Cerakote to match the rest of the gun.

The Right Chassis

An integral part of the process involves determining the type of stock that will best complement a particular rifle, something that optimally suits the personality of the owner and the intended application. Providing sniper overwatch for your SWAT team requires a certain type of hardware. Nailing a record bull elk from an adjacent hilltop demands something different. 

XLR Industries (xlrindustires.com) builds professional grade chassis, rails, buttstocks and scope rings. We opted for the superlative XLR ENVY chassis to transport this custom rifle build. The ENVY is the product of years of cooperation with some of the finest trigger pullers in the world. The buttstock folds to the left for easy portage or stowage. 

There is an Arca-Swiss-style dovetail mount to interface the chassis with a camera tripod. A 5.5-inch Picatinny rail is located on the bottom of the M-LOK-compatible handguard for accessories or a bipod. The various mechanical attributes of the stock adjust to fit your particular anatomy as well as might your favorite pair of high-mileage pajamas. There is also a handy built-in spirit level just below the tang to keep everything true.

The ENVY chassis is cut from a solid block of 6061 T6 aluminum and features a multipoint, radial cut inlet that maintains the receiver in a stress-free state for optimal stability and accuracy. The integral detachable magazine system accommodates AICS-style five- or ten-round magazines. The magwell is tapered for rapid magazine changes. The angled, serrated face serves as a barricade stop. The XLR ENVY naturally accepts your receiver without any extraneous gunsmithing, and there are five QD sling sockets.

You Gotta See It to Hit It

The Sightmark Pinnacle riflescope (sightmark.com) offers flawless glass and professional features at a reasonable price. A scope of this sort is part precision instrument and comparable part rugged tool. That’s a tall order for an engineer. The Pinnacle is designed to tolerate hard use in the field under brutal recoil while still delivering surgical-grade precision consistently and reliably. The Pinnacle delivers on all counts.

The Sightmark Pinnacle 5-30x50TMD is designed for F-class competition and law enforcement applications out to 1,000 yards and beyond. This first-focal plane optic includes zero-stop elevation dials that allow you to easily set a stopping point at the chosen sight-in distance. The 34mm tube maximizes the internal adjustment range and offers improved rigidity compared to smaller scopes.

The Pinnacle’s premium glass sports superb clarity from edge to edge. The TMD-HW reticle is easy to master. This reticle is designed for quick range estimation and on-the-fly holdovers for bullet drop, crosswinds and moving targets. 

The first-focal plane design means that the reticle moves across the scope’s full magnification spectrum. This allows range finding and holdovers to remain consistent without a lot of cumbersome math. The Sightmark Pinnacle 5-30x50TMD is the finest scope for the money I have yet encountered.

Crowning the Creation

The scary end demands something special. We build our own muzzle brakes that substantially decrease the rifle’s recoil impulse. They are effective, rugged and cool.

However, if you want to do it up right you need a sound suppressor. We custom build our sound suppressors to complement particular rifles. Our heavy welded stainless steel baffles employ turbine stators to disrupt and slow the efflux gases from your rifle’s muzzle. 

A sound suppressor on a high-velocity rifle will effectively mitigate muzzle blast while also improving the gun’s barrel harmonics and general comportment. It also substantially ameliorates recoil and masks muzzle flash. While the sonic crack from a supersonic bullet is beyond our control, our high-efficiency cans gobble up the gun’s racket. Should you wish to handload subsonic rounds and work up the scope dope to support them, the gun loses a lot of range but does become movie quiet.

The trigger module is another critical piece of the equation. Triggers have personalities. There are some you just naturally like and others not so much. Some are gritty and abrasive. Others are silky smooth and fun. Matching the right trigger to your new custom rifle is part of the art. Lots of folks make them, and we have used them all. The rifle we built for this project sports a Timney Featherweight Deluxe trigger.

Lastly, pick a color. Most anything is on the table, so you can have your rifle in whatever hue suits. Each gun is a unique package that reflects the skill of those who crafted it as well as the comportment of its owner. For this build we opted to leave the piece a natural stainless.

The Standard is Perfection

Of course our holes touch at 100m. That’s kind of the point to a custom precision rifle of this sort. The shooter has to do his part, but the rifle is capable. Once we’ve printed a few close-range cloverleaves we can reach out a bit.

The application and particulars will drive the performance. Hunting guns might throw heavy game-dropping bullets accurately out to modest ranges. Tactical law enforcement rifles will demand uncompromising precision at 100m while still retaining breathtaking performance at many times that. Long-range target guns will reliably kill a piece of fruit out to a kilometer or more.

Each rifle is unique. Each creation has its own ambience. The end result is a gun that reflects a shooter’s personality. Anybody with a clean record and a driver’s license can pick up a box store hunting rifle and use it to drop a whitetail at a football field. However, if the mission is to punch tangent holes at 100m, humanely drop an elk or moose a terrain feature away or pulverize a watermelon that’s been talking bad about your momma from another grid square, then you need a rifle hand-built by artists. I’ve watched these men handcraft custom smoke poles for a long time, and I am continuously amazed.

Some artists use marble. Others wield oils. These guys conjure art from big blocks of steel. The end result will never hang in the Louvre, but it remains art nonetheless. 

Meat on the Table 
I’m just a gun nerd who likes to type—the word monkey. Dale and my other two partners, Brian and Durward, actually do the gun building. Dale is the guy who built the reloader when he was 12.
It’s one thing to build a rifle and then use it to ventilate paper targets or ring steel. That’s fun, and we all enjoy it. However, the real acid test for a custom rifle is a serious hunt in the field. Dale custom-built himself one of these rifles in .300 Win Mag for an elk hunt in New Mexico. 
He built the gun from scratch as described in this article and zeroed it out behind the shop. His first bull elk was bugling broadside at 465 yards and maybe 200 feet below him across a wide snow-covered valley. Dale snugged up behind his self-made gun and dropped the old gentleman with a single shot to the heart. The big bull fell backwards without taking a step.
Later on, a hunting buddy wounded another bull and couldn’t get back on the animal for a follow-up shot. The injured elk charged across a river and up a distant hillside, rapidly increasing the range. Dale dropped into the prone behind his rifle and got comfortable. The guide called out distance using a laser rangefinder and spotting scope.
The bull elk paused at 860 yards to take a breather. Dale laid his crosshairs on the animal’s shoulder and dialed in his scope. He knew every inch of this custom rifle, because he had built it himself. He gently squeezed the trigger and sent one. Almost a full second’s time of flight later, the big injured bull fell dead where he stood.
Two big elk. Two handloaded 210-grain Berger bullets. Two perfect shots. One at 465 and the other at 860. Neither animal took another step. That’s what happens when you take an exceptional marksman and build him an exceptional rifle—ballistic synergy and plenty of meat.
Feeding the Beast
This particular creation is chambered for 6mm Creedmoor (CM). The 6CM is itself essentially a 6.5CM case necked down to accept a .243-inch bullet. Hornady developed the 6.5CM in 2007 using the .307 Winchester as a foundation. The .307 Winchester is a fairly oddball beast developed in 1982 to feed lever-action rifles with tubular magazines. The .307 Winchester is therefore typically loaded with round-nosed bullets. Only one production rifle was ever developed to fire it.
The upgraded 6CM delivers outstanding long-range performance along with modest recoil. Both the 6CM and 6.5CM occupy roughly the same space as a .308 Winchester, so they will run in a standard short-action Remington chassis. They are also amenable to a properly configured semiautomatic AR-10.
Hornady (hornady.com) is a plank holder in modern ballistics, and they were an early adopter of the radical 6CM round. Their Heat Shield bullet tip resists the effects of aerodynamic heating. Hornady’s unparalleled experience in the field of precision bullet design and manufacture offers monotonously consistent performance. Whether the mission is hunting, tactical precision for LE or military applications or shooting fruit at a kilometer or more, Hornady makes the ammo you need to get the job done. 

DETAILS OF THE HUNT

• Place: Tierra Amarilla, NM 
• Altitude: 7,529ft
• Temperature: 25° F
• Wind: Light and variable
• Gun: ATO-built .300 Win Mag with Hogue stock and detachable box magazine
• Optics: Vortex Viper HS
• Bullet: Hand-loaded Hornady Match brass, Federal Premium .215 primer, 72.0gr IMR 7828, 210gr Berger Match VLD Hunting

What could you do with your own personal trained snake? You’d be the coolest boy in second grade, and you could sit anywhere you wanted at any public gathering. You might never get married, but the fun you could have scaring people would almost, though not quite, make up for it. You could also open up some of the most remarkable exploration opportunities. 

Fiber-optic endoscopes are in common use in a variety of commercial applications. Automotive mechanics use them to keep an eye on the inner workings of your car’s engine. Plumbers employ them to investigate pesky clogs in hard-to-reach spaces. ENT doctors use them to explore your sinus cavities, while colorectal surgeons utilize the same technology to investigate cavities of a somewhat less sociable sort. Now thanks to the EndoSnake 3.9mm fiber-optic borescope (endosnake.com), normal folks like us can also harness this technology for gun maintenance as well as general curiosity satisfaction. 

The scopes used by your automobile mechanic can cost as much as a decent black rifle. The device the GI doc shoves up your behind will set you back as much as my car. I drive a crummy car, but they are still expensive. No kidding, I priced them online. Even used, which is itself an unsettling thought, a decent colonoscope costs thousands of dollars. Then there is the EndoSnake.

Your Own Trained Snake

The good folks who produce the EndoSnake worked hard to craft a device small enough to navigate the .22-caliber bore of an AR-15 rifle. The 3.9mm EndoSnake includes its own LED illumination source and links up with your smartphone, tablet or computer. Six separate LED lights keep things bright even in the darkest places, and the EndoSnake is IP67 waterproof.

This thing is also tough. I live in the Deep South. The last time I ran over a water moccasin in my truck I bought myself some ice cream to celebrate. In the EndoSnake promotional video they show someone running over an EndoSnake with a truck with no ill effects. Treat the EndoSnake with even the most cursory respect, and it should outlive you.

720p resolution renders a nice digital picture, and you can capture both still images and video via the free Mo-View app. There is a great warranty, and the EndoSnake is available in 3-, 6- and 15-foot versions. The 3-foot EndoSnake costs $49.99. For the price of a meal out at McDonald’s with the kids you can keep track of bore erosion, ensure that your rifle is indeed Basic Training clean and secure a cockroach-eye view of most anything in your home.

How Does It Work?

The science behind fiber-optic technology is indeed fascinating. Back in 1852, a British scientist named John Tyndall observed the effect water had on light rays. Anyone who has ever gone bowfishing is intimately familiar with this concept. When hunting fish with a bow and arrow you do not loose the arrow where you see the fish. You fire where you learn that the fish actually is based upon the refraction of its image. This same principle governs every telescopic weapon sight on the planet.

Reflection is the tendency of certain surfaces to bounce light back toward its source. Refraction is the property of certain materials to bend light in predictable ways. Each transparent material has a unique angle beyond which light will reflect rather than refract. For water this critical angle is just over 48 degrees. Flint glass is about 38 degrees. The diamond that graces my beautiful wife’s finger is 23 degrees. 

This property made for a nifty parlor trick among really smart people back in the late 1800s. Around the advent of the 20th century, physicians began using bent glass rods to illuminate hard-to-reach body cavities. In the 1950s scientists determined a way to use flexible fibers to transmit images yet more efficiently. In each application the light rays just glance from side to side as they transit the glass tube, following the geometry of the device as they go. 

By the 1970s advances in optical quality and glass production allowed very thin fibers of remarkably pure glass to be produced inexpensively. The purity of the glass drives the attenuation or loss of signal quality per unit distance. The holy melding of fiber optics and laser technology birthed the telecommunication revolution. Every time you make a long-distance phone call or use the internet you are enjoying the fruits of this tech. 

One of the obvious questions that arises when you study this stuff is how do they get glass to bend so much? As we all know, glass is fairly brittle stuff. When the AT&T installer was running the fiber-optic cable to my home for my spanking new high-speed internet service, I asked him that very question. Here’s what he told me.

Imagine a rod of glass the size of a broomstick. If you lock one end of the rod in a vice and exert a force on the other end the rod will bend a bit and then shatter. The amount of deflection you can coax out of the rod is a function of its diameter. The smaller the diameter, the greater the deflection. 

Now shrink that rod down until the diameter is just stupid tiny, less than a human hair, and its capacity for deflection becomes simply breathtaking. You can still crimp it back on itself and break the filament, but at those small diameters you can store it in rolls or use it to build inexpensive fiber-optic scopes. These scopes use clusters of tiny filaments rather than larger diameter tubes to maximize their flexibility.

How Does It Run?

If you can manage a smartphone without consulting a third grader you can master this device. The EndoSnake comes with fittings for USB, Micro USB and Android ports. There aren’t really any instructions, but the paperwork that comes with the device directs you to their “How-To” videos online. Like most Information Age tech, you ultimately master the device simply by fiddling with it.

Plug the EndoSnake in, and it powers itself up automatically. There is but a single manual control, and that is an intensity rheostat for the LED illuminators. Add on an inexpensive Wi-Fi module available on EndoSnake’s website and you can use the EndoSnake wirelessly some distance from your device.

The app lets you take video or shoot still images from the EndoSnake feed. The device captures audio as well, though the soundtrack of me exploring the entrails of an AR-15 would hardly be Oscar material. The practical applications are limited solely by your imagination.

What Will It Do?

The EndoSnake does a simply spanking job of exploring and documenting the state of your weapon’s bore. Mine is 3 feet long, but most of my gun barrels are substantially shorter than 36 inches. If you needed to perform gun maintenance in an adjacent room, the longer EndoSnakes are obviously available.

I used my EndoSnake to see lots of gun stuff I had never seen before. Ever wonder whether or not you got every smidgeon of crud out from underneath the hammer in your AR? Do you have a sneaky suspicion that the greasy guy at the gun show who claims that the bore on the gun he wants to sell you is pristine might be fudging a bit? The EndoSnake will answer those questions and much, much more. At a mere 3.9mm across, the EndoSnake will get into some of the tightest spaces.

I employed my EndoSnake to take a peek behind my rear molars, explore my tonsillar beds and verify that I do lamentably have hairy ears. That stuff is tough to see otherwise. Nobody is flexible enough to visualize their own ears.

The EndoSnake works in open spaces as well. I crept up behind my wife while she was reading and used my EndoSnake to peek over her shoulder surreptitiously. It turns out women don’t much care for that. 

Use your imagination without being creepy, and the Endoscope can be a source of both education and amusement. I discovered all sorts of interesting things. Even clean weapons are really dirty down deep. I am endlessly thankful the NCOs who used to clear my weapons back into the arms room when I wore the uniform did not themselves have one of these remarkable devices. Were that the case I’d still be sitting on some bench someplace with a bottle of Break Free® scrubbing those rifles. And I got out of the Army in 1997.

The sheer volume of lint that accumulates within the entrails of your typical pocket gun is absolutely astounding. I found this unsettling. Considering I’m expecting that thing to operate flawlessly should I ever need to fish it out in a crisis I had let its interior state go well off the rails. Just wiping down the outside is utterly insufficient. The EndoSnake did guilt me into doing a better job of maintaining my carry guns. 

Limitations 

There aren’t very many. The lighted end of the EndoSnake gets fairly hot. That’s a handy way of reminding yourself not to get too carried away trying to peek into obscure physiological orifices. Your weapons obviously won’t care. 

The resolution of the device is not quite HD movie quality, but it is way more than adequate. There wasn’t any hard-to-reach curiosity in which I was interested that I could not satisfy with the EndoSnake. For the money it makes a splendid toy with a lot of real-world practicality. 

Final Thoughts 

I’ve dropped $50 on lots simpler things than this. The EndoSnake is great fun and opens up some fascinating new worlds all at an unnaturally reasonable price. This thing is built like a dump truck and folds up into the neatest compact carrying case. Even if you don’t use it all the time it will drop into a crevice of your gun box and be available the next time you need it. 

I found the Wi-Fi box to be a handy addition simply for its convenience. Using this nifty trinket, I could maneuver the EndoSnake some distance from my laptop or phone and still keep up with progress on the screen. The rechargeable battery in the box lasts a long time. 

I thought I was cool back in the ‘80s when I bought a little J-shaped plastic rod at a gun show that allowed me to shine a light down the bore of my gun. Now with the EndoSnake I can peek into literally every little crevice and corner and record the proceedings while I’m at it. I used the EndoSnake to kill a delightful evening around the house peering inside such stuff as my computer printer, a pencil sharpener and the microwave. The practical benefits of finding stuff I dropped behind the deep freeze or on the cluttered floor of the gun room will be made more clearly manifest in the weeks and months to come. 

Effective, capable, rugged, reliable and inexpensive, the EndoSnake is the cool new gun widget you didn’t know you needed. At a mere 50 bucks, the EndoSnake also makes a great birthday gift or stocking stuffer for your favorite gun buddy as well. While you can’t take it for a walk, teach it neat tricks, snuggle up with it on a cold winter’s night or use it to frighten people for your own amusement, the EndoSnake nonetheless has its own salient attributes. This remarkable device is markedly cooler than any trained snake. 

There are certain mechanical contrivances that have fundamentally shaped the human experience. Born in 1836, an English businessman and plumber named Thomas Crapper ultimately held nine patents, three of which governed the function of the ubiquitous water closet. He developed the U-bend trap used in every flush toilet on the planet today. Crapper also supplied the sanitary fixtures for King Edward VIII’s abode at Sandringham House in Norfolk, becoming, in essence, the man responsible for managing the royal poop. In 1910, the guy whose name inspired countless sophomoric epithets died, appropriately enough, of colon cancer. 

In 1899, Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor who held degrees in mathematics, science and electronics, patented the humble paperclip. The sheer volume of printed treatises kept orderly by this pedestrian device boggles the mind. Kleenex tissue was sold originally in 1924 as a cold cream remover and disposable handkerchief. In 1973, John Mitchell and Martin Cooper demonstrated the world’s first cell phone, a massive device weighing some 4.4 pounds. 

Each of these inventions changed the way people interacted with their world. If we were to apply these same discriminating criteria to the genre of firearms there are several that might make the cut. Comrade Kalashnikov’s mechanical monster certainly shaped the planet’s geopolitical landscape. John Moses Browning’s timeless 1911 made an undeniable splash as well. On this side of the pond, however, it is the AR-15 that really dominates that conversation today. 

Origin Story 

The tale of the most radically advanced firearm of the modern era begins, appropriately enough, at the end of World War II. The American Infantry company of late WWII sported no less than six different firearms and three different cartridges issued in five different configurations. Faced with this undeniable logistical nightmare, military planners set out to contrive a single firearm to replace the rifle, carbine, submachine gun and squad automatic weapon. Just as a camel is a horse designed by a committee, the end result didn’t really leave anyone fully satisfied. 

The resulting M14 was and is a remarkably effective weapon in its own right. Elegant, reliable and beautiful in a martial sort of way, this holy amalgam of Parkerized steel and deep-stained American walnut sets my heart aflutter even today. However, anyone who has ever executed a 15-mile forced march or tried to clear a cluttered building appreciates that a weapon that is 44 inches long and weighs 9.2 pounds empty gets burdensome fast. Now hold that thought. 

Ultimately destined to address this sticky conundrum, in 1954 George Sullivan formed a tiny little company called ArmaLite in a leased machine shop on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, California. ArmaLite was never intended to mass produce firearms. Sullivan envisioned his little subsidiary of the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation as a mechanical think tank of sorts. Their first creation was the AR-1 Parasniper, a novel weapon that used a foam-filled polymer stock and a composite aluminum barrel with a steel liner. AR stands for ArmaLite Rifle, a designation that has endured to the present day. 

While testing some of his creations at a local range, George Sullivan bumped into a young Marine recently back from the South Pacific named Gene Stoner. Impressed by the young man’s mechanical acumen, Sullivan hired him on the spot as ArmaLite’s chief design engineer. By 1956 ArmaLite sported a grand total of nine employees, but they had big ideas. 

World War II saw an explosion in the fields of engineering and materials science. Aviation, in particular, pushed the use of lightweight alloys and radical polymers to produce flying machines that delivered countless tons of destruction on enemy cities and kiss the edge of space. Stoner and Sullivan planned to take these radical aerospace materials and use them to build new and unconventional small arms. 

The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection 

ArmaLite, like most ably-helmed startups, focused initially on low-hanging fruit. Their AR-5 fired the .22 Hornet cartridge and was eventually adopted by the U.S. Air Force as the MA-1 Survival Rifle. The subsequent AR-7 was chambered for .22LR and marketed for civilian shooters. 

The AR-7 sported a radical takedown design wherein the barrel, receiver and magazines could be stored within the gun’s polymer stock. The rifle would even float. The Israelis used a few operationally as aircrew survival weapons, and James Bond brought down a SPECTRE helicopter wielding an AR-7 in “From Russia with Love.” Henry Repeating Arms offers this basic gun as the U.S. Survival Rifle today. 

The AR-10: ArmaLite’s First Battle Rifle 

In 1955 and 1956, ArmaLite focused on the AR-10. The 7.62x51mm AR-10 was their first effort at designing a serious combat implement. Powered by a novel, lightweight, direct gas impingement operating system, the AR-10 called into question most everything about conventional gun design. 

Two hand-built versions tepidly entered the competition that ultimately led to the aforementioned M14, but an unfortunate catastrophic barrel failure during testing left the AR-10 on the sidelines. In 1957, however, ArmaLite sold a 5-year production license for the AR-10 to the Dutch firm Artillerie-Inrichtingen (AI). 

AI AR-10 rifles can be fractionated into three discrete models. The “Sudanese” version stems from a lot of 2,500 copies sold to the government of, you guessed it, Sudan. The “Transitional” versions incorporated lessons learned in combat operations with the Sudanese variants. The “Portuguese” sort was the definitive Dutch variant used in combat by Portuguese Special Forces, particularly in their variegated operations in Africa. 

This Portuguese AR-10 took on many of the attributes we see in our ubiquitous black rifles today. The charging handle was a trigger-like appendage located within the gun’s iconic carrying handle, but the pistol grip, bolt release, magazine catch and safety/selector were all in their familiar spots. When combined with advanced polymer furniture and lightweight aluminum receivers, the AR-10 raised the bar for human engineering in small arms. 

Scaling Everything Down 

By the late 1950s, revenue from the full-figured AR-10 was disappointing, so ArmaLite engineers Gene Stoner, Bob Fremont and Jim Sullivan focused their efforts on a smaller caliber version of the basic AR-10 action intended to compete for the USAF’s new rifle contract. Chambered for Stoner’s radical 5.56x45mm high-velocity cartridge, the resulting AR-15 took the company and the gun down an exciting new path. That path, however, was not without its potholes. 

In 1958, ArmaLite submitted 10 AR-15s along with 100 25-round box magazines to the U.S. Army for testing. These early rifles retained the trigger-style charging handle of the Portuguese AR-10 along with the larger gun’s basic morphology. The AR-15 performed well in testing, but General Maxwell Taylor, of WWII Airborne fame, ultimately vetoed the AR-15 in favor of the larger, heavier M14. 

By 1959, ArmaLite was losing money, and the basic business model was being called into question. In frustration ArmaLite sold the rights to both the AR-10 and AR-15 to Colt, a company with much more extensive production facilities and institutional gun manufacturing experience. Now divested of these two designs, the ArmaLite crew launched in an entirely different direction. This endeavor ultimately produced the AR-18 and AR-180 family of rifles. This basic action went on to drive such stalwarts as the Steyr AUG, the HK416, the British SA80 and the Israeli Tavor combat rifles, but that is a tale for another time. 

The Colt Dynasty 

Colt took the basic AR-15 design and streamlined everything for mass production. Colt relocated the charging handle to the rear of the receiver and rebranded the rifle as the Colt ArmaLite AR-15 Model 01. After a marketing tour of Southeast Asia, Colt sold its first military versions of the rifle to Malaysia in September 1959. 

In the summer of 1960 Air Force General Curtis LeMay ordered 8,500 of the lithe little guns after enjoying an informal demonstration of the rifle on a friend’s farm. Internecine conflicts between the services and individual officers drove the purchase of the radical new weapon in fits and starts, but 10 of the rifles eventually made it to Vietnam in 1961 for limited use by Special Forces personnel. 

SF operators were thrilled with the lightweight weapon’s fast handling and the devastating downrange effects of the gun’s high-velocity, small-caliber rounds. These early rifles sported barrels with a 1-in-14 twist. Subsequent tubes pushed that rate to 1-in-12 starting in 1964. 

In 1963, the AR-15 morphed into the “Rifle, Caliber 5.56mm, M16,” and the Army went all in on the revolutionary little weapon. This rifle featured black polymer triangular handguards, an open three-pronged flash suppressor and no forward assist. After some well-documented function problems that stemmed from poor maintenance and the precipitous adoption of ball powder not originally intended for use with the weapon, the M16A1, the ultimate evolution of the Vietnam-era M16, developed into a mature and reliable combat implement. 

There Is Ever Room for Improvement 

The M16A1 saw service with U.S. and Allied troops around the globe, eventually cementing its reputation for reliability and effectiveness despite its rocky start in Southeast Asia. However, by 1983 it was time for an upgrade. Championed by the U.S. Marine Corps, the improved M16A2 was the ultimate result. 

The M16A2 was about a pound heavier than the previous M16A1 and sported a buttstock some 5/8-inch longer. The barrel had a heavier profile from the front sight base forward but retained the slimmer geometry on the near end so as to accept existing M203 grenade launchers. The bottom slots were eliminated from the birdcage flash suppressor so as to minimize dust signature when firing in dirty spaces. The pistol grip got a new texturing scheme and an additional finger rest. 

The two most radical changes from the M16A1 platform were in the sights and fire controls. The previous round front sight was replaced with a new version sporting a square cross section. The improved rear sight was also now easily adjustable for both elevation and windage without tools. 

The fire controls on the new A2 swapped out the full-auto function for a controversial three-round burst feature. The burst limiter on the M16A2 does not automatically reset. This means that if you squeeze off a two-round burst, the next trigger squeeze will only fire a single round, allowing the limiter to reset for a subsequent three rounds. While this was intended to reduce the profligate expenditure of ammunition, today’s grunts are simply trained to use their weapons predominantly in semiauto mode. 

An M16 for the Information Age 

In 1984, Colt began work on a new shorter version of the M16 rifle. The Vietnam-era XM177E2/CAR-15 submachine gun was used as a starting point. By melding the collapsible stock and stubby round handguards of the XM177E2 with the upper receiver and improved sights of the M16A2, Colt produced a carbine version of the M16 that struck a nice balance between portability and power. The new rifle’s 14.5-inch barrel offered decent velocities and terminal performance, particularly with the M855 62-grain loads then being adopted by the military. The new weapon was christened the M4 and first saw service with U.S. troops in Kosovo in 1999. 

Now some two decades later, the M4 is the standard combat rifle across all the American armed services. The M4 includes the three-round burst limiter of the M16A2, while the M4A1 features safe, semi and full-auto settings along with a slightly heavier barrel. The addition of railed forearms and flattop upper receivers has made the M4 the most customizable firearm on the planet. 

The Kleenex of Guns 

It is beyond the scope of this article to outline all the labyrinthine directions the AR-15 rifle has followed in the modern era. The Marines’ M27 is an HK version powered by the short-stroke gas piston system pioneered in the AR-180. Nowadays, AR rifles span the spectrum from Lilliputian handgun versions with stubby 7.5-inch tubes all the way up to big bore sniper rigs powerful enough to take elk and moose at long ranges. 

Today’s AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America. Most all gun nerds own one. Many of us own several. The advents of the Pistol Stabilizing Brace and subsequent favorable rulings by the ATF have opened up exciting new applications for Gene Stoner’s time-tested action. 

The key to the AR-15’s popularity is its unrivalled modularity. By pushing out a pair of pins, the upper and lower receivers are easily separated allowing a single serialized lower to be used across a variety of platforms. Think of the AR-15 like Garanimals for gun guys. 

Despite several expensive efforts, Uncle Sam has been unable to find another combat rifle that is a substantive improvement over the current M4. Estimates regarding the number of AR-variant guns in American civilian hands runs into the tens of millions. Given that these receivers can now be inexpensively, easily and legally finished out at home, the exact number is simply imponderable. Legislative schemes to confiscate, restrict or further regulate the ownership of these ubiquitous guns are nothing more than pipe dreams. 

Born in a tiny rented machine shop in Hollywood and fielded by militaries around the globe, the AR-15 rifle and its descendants changed the way military and law enforcement personnel did their jobs. In the hands of civilian shooters, the AR-15 has driven countless competitions, whiled away innumerable hours of recreation on the range and saved more than a few lives in real-world defensive applications. Sleek, inexpensive, capable and cool, today’s AR-15 is an integral part of modern Americana. 

Gucci is the second most-profitable fashion brand on the planet behind Nike. In 2020 they did $17.6 billion in business. Based in Florence Italy, Gucci’s extensive product line includes handbags, ready-to-wear (whatever that actually is), footwear, accessories, makeup, fragrances, and home décor.

Wikipedia informs me that the Gucci company was birthed in 1921 to Guccio Gucci. It subsequently came of age under the able direction of his son Aldo. In 1985 there was a high-profile familial conflagration involving greed, adultery, a hired assassin, murder, and chaos aplenty. There was a recent movie on that sordid subject that starred Jared Leto, Adam Driver, Salma Hayek, Al Pacino, and Lady Gaga. I haven’t seen it.

In the 1990’s Gucci’s look was described as “Porno Chic.” In the 2010’s their theme was freshly decried “Geek Chic.” As of 2019 Gucci employed some 17,157 employees and operated 487 retail stores. I freely admit that I just don’t get it.

Clothes for me are tools. They are what keep me from getting cold in the winter and sunburned in the summer. I live in the Deep South. If decorum allowed, much of the year I’d just rock a loincloth. Were I home alone, I might even forego that.

I have my reasons. I was apparently the only colorblind aviator in the U.S. Army. Military service is the ideal refuge for those of us who struggle to match our clothes. There’s not a great deal of decision making when it comes to the details of one’s daily clothing selection in the Big Green Machine. That and matching clothes is nothing more than a diabolical plot perpetrated by the females of our species for the sole purpose of humiliating guys. Those stupid matching rules aren’t written down anyplace. I’m not convinced they really exist.

Truth be told I’m just a philistine. I look down my long Roman nose at the fashionistas of the world smugly convinced that what I do has some universal merit, while what they do is nothing more than vapid drivel. I do appreciate, however, that they might not see the innate artistic value in such stuff as muzzle velocities and ballistic coefficients. Alas, that’s clearly their loss.

There is, believe it or not, a point to all of this. I do actually appreciate a good accessory ensemble designed to be worn upon your person. It is simply that my synergistic melding of accessories has some practical real-world utility. My covert tactical battle rig keeps me safe when I’m out where the wild things roam.

Tactical Philosophy

The need is indeed timeless. Ever since man started fabricating tools, he has crafted weapons to help protect himself and his loved ones from the predations of wild beasts and his fellow man. On the night Christ was betrayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Apostle Peter cut a man’s ear off with his sword. As an unapologetic evangelical myself I also find it encouraging that one of Jesus’ posse was actually packing heat.

The details are as variegated as anything in the expansive Gucci catalog. Caliber selection alone for concealed carry applications could occupy half of the superlative periodical you are currently clutching. Options concerning bullet selection, magazine capacity, ergonomics, barrel length, optics, and carry gear are the places where dreams thrive or die.

In the world of everyday carry, you have to pick a genre. Compact rimfire pistols will hide in the front pocket of your jeans but don’t provide a great deal of horsepower. A deftly wielded magnum wheelgun is adequate to give a grizzly bear pause, yet is a bit onerous to conceal comfortably underneath shorts and a t-shirt. The solution we’ll explore today strikes a certain elegant balance. When taken in total, alongside a superlative belt, carry rig, optic, knife, and light, this is the fashion ensemble that could conceivably save your life.

The Company

Shadow Systems lives in the sweet spot. You can find inexpensive imported striker-fired plastic pistols that pack a lot of bullets, are monotonously reliable, and remain shockingly affordable. These are the Chevrolet Sparks of the gun world. Like the Chevy Spark, these tactical handguns are mass produced with economy in mind. Their feature set covers the high points, but they’re crafted to be cheap.

On the top end are ballistic objets d’art that cost about what a nice used car might. Typically, some rarefied variation on John Browning’s 1911 theme, their hand-fitted entrails and exotic materials reliably command a premium. Shadow Systems pistols offer the cool stuff that defines a high-end handgun of distinction all at a working man’s price.

Trevor Roe is the dynamo behind Shadow Systems. Trevor was rated a Master Class shooter in the USPCA at age 15. After graduating from West Point and then the Fort Benning Finishing School for Boys, he did two combat tours in the sandbox as an infantry officer. For more than four years now he’s helmed Shadow Systems.

Shadow Systems employs about 100 folks at their state-of-the-art plant in Plano, Texas. Everybody from the engineers to the line workers to the admins enjoy shooting as a common genetic theme. They craft their guns to be utterly functional in any-and-all circumstances. The fact that the guns look awesome, as well, is simply value-added sweetness.

Practicality is their mantra and reliability their holy writ. Trevor told me that a four-pound bang beats a three-pound light primer strike every single time. Materials science is literally the state of the art. Tolerances are tight, where they can be, without adversely affecting that all-important reliability.

Slides, frames, barrels, triggers, and guts are all produced in-house at their facility in Plano. That way Trevor’s mob can keep their fingers on every tiny bit of production. People could die if they screw this up, and the Shadow Systems folks appreciate that.

Spiral fluted match barrels are rifled one-in-ten. They’ll safely eat cast lead bullets all day long. Slides are 17-4 stainless, while flat-faced triggers are aluminum. They break beautifully between 4 and 4.5 pounds.

You can’t eat at the cool kids’ table at the local range unless you have something sparkly perched atop your favorite defensive hogleg these days. Unlike lesser guns that require expensive adaptors, Shadow Systems pistols incorporate a patented, universal mounting system that accepts Holosun, Trijicon, Swampfox, SIG, Vortex, TruGlo, Leupold, and Shield electronic optics without an adaptor plate. Screws of three different lengths, as well as a series of polymer buffers, make for a perfect fit with each of these sights. All the requisite hardware is included with the gun.

The Pistol

The Shadow Systems XR920 Elite is what they call a crossover. Melding the maneuverable attributes of a compact top half with a full-figured frame creates a gun that is quick to present and easy to carry while also offering a full 17-round magazine capacity. As the fastest magazine change is the one you never have to make, the XR920 Elite lets you forego a spare magazine, if your constitution allows, while still offering enough onboard firepower to get you out of any reasonable spot of chaos.

Most everybody offers interchangeable backstraps these days. The Shadow Systems versions actually adjust the point of aim. Low, neutral, and high grip inserts let you customize the fit of the gun in your hand to suit your preference.

The frame should hang in a museum. The stippling feels, looks, and works great. There are cool bilateral parking pads for your trigger finger for use when you’re not actively slinging lead. A little shelf underneath the slide stop ensures that it doesn’t get activated unintentionally. It is in these little things that Shadow Systems weapons set themselves apart from lesser guns.

The Optic

The Ameriglo Haven is a full-sized pistol sight that offers a nice, wide field of view for rapid target acquisition. An aircraft-grade aluminum housing is proof against protracted rough handling. The sight mounts using the Trijicon RMR footprint, which the Shadow Systems XR920 Elite accepts seamlessly.

The CR2032 battery loads from the side, so you need not dismount the sight for battery swaps. Eleven different brightness settings match any ambient conditions, and the sight’s proprietary Carry-Loc lock-in mode precludes unintentional button presses. The sight sleeps when it sits still and fires up of its own accord when molested. Change the battery on every other birthday and you’re good.

The Ameriglo Haven also comes with a top-flight set of elevated iron sights. Mount these puppies up and the sights co-witness perfectly with the red dot. Zeroing the optic is as simple as adjusting the dot to coincide with the iron sights. You could theoretically swap the sights with a non-marring punch, a hammer, a pair of hemostats, and some time. However, an inexpensive sight pusher from Amazon and a cheap Glock front sight tool make things so much easier.

Cool Guy Stuff

The most underappreciated part of the concealed carry equation is a good stiff belt. My high-mileage favorite comes from Blue Alpha Gear. I’ve worn this thing every day underneath my scrubs for nearly a decade. The belt is made in the USA and is stiff enough to support your rig without being bulky or heavy. The aluminum Cobra quick-release buckle has never let me down. I found it on Amazon.

I got the holster recommendation from Trevor at Shadow Systems. He’s a professional gunman, and he swears by the Comp-Tac MTAC. The MTAC is an inside-the-waistband concealment holster that is a hybrid combination of Kydex and two-layer, top grain leather cowhide. Ride height and cant are easily adjusted with a Phillips screwdriver. The MTAC also offers interchangeable bodies so the one foundation can be used for multiple guns.

I opted for the full-size G17 version. While the stubby XR920 Elite doesn’t reach all the way to the end, this gives me the option of packing a full-sized gun, should the spirit lead. The flexible leather tends to conform to your body habitus over time for a seamless comfortable carry experience.

I did have to trim a bit of the Kydex back using a cutoff wheel on my Dremel tool to accommodate the red dot. This is a five-minute chore and could theoretically be undertaken with hand tools, as well. There is ample space along the spine of the holster to allow clearance for the elevated iron sights.

About a third of the time it is dark. Scavengers thrive in darkness. My favorite carry light is the rechargeable Streamlight Wedge.

The Wedge is 5.5 inches long and weighs a paltry 3.3 ounces. Its lithium-ion battery charges via a standard USB-C cable. Baseline output is 300 lumens, and a full charge will keep it burning for three hours. Roll the thumb switch to THRO mode (Temporary Heightened Regulated Output), and it offers a full 1000 lumens. THRO mode should be limited to about half a minute at a time, as the light gets hot when run wide open.

The Wedge enjoys a comfortable, flat-sided design that is ideal for pocket carry. Finger grooves keep things controlled, and the Wedge is IPX7 waterproof to one meter. The polycarbonate lens is crafted for hard use.

For those free states that allow such stuff, you just cannot beat a proper automatic knife. My personal favorite is the Kershaw Launch 2. I use mine to cut bandages and such at work at times when I only have one hand free to manage a blade. The Launch 2 is slim and eminently packable. The CPM 154 powdered metallurgy blade keeps its edge and has proven both tough and effective for at least five years, thus far. The anodized aluminum handle is tougher than I am and inimitably comfortable.

Just to channel my inner James Bond I ordered my XR920 Elite with an extended threaded barrel to accept my SilencerCo Omega 36 modular sound suppressor. This high-tech can splits in the middle for either maximum suppression or maximum stealth. The smaller version is noisier but more easily packable. Fully tricked out, even an uncool guy like me can start to feel like a suave undercover MI6 operative.

Trigger Time

I packed this rig comfortably underneath my surgical scrubs at work with no one being the wiser. The bulky full-figured grip does print more than a smaller sort, but 17+1 is a reassuring bit of math should life go truly sideways. The Comp-Tac MTAC and Blue Alpha Gear belt do a splendid job of distributing the weight throughout a long day at the clinic.

The XR920 Elite really is as good as it gets on the range. The stubby top half clears leather quickly, while optimized everything keeps the gun running fast and shooting straight. Stoke that rascal with some high-tech defensive ammo, and you are ready for just about anything this mean old world has to throw at you.

A little carefully chosen gear can make all the difference in navigating life’s manifest challenges. The XR920 Elite is a ton of fun for recreational shooting and dead nuts reliable in the real world. The Streamlight Wedge and Kershaw Launch 2 are the tools you need handy all the time. The SilencerCo Omega 36 is one of the most versatile sound suppressors on the market. Pulling together such a rarefied ensemble is simply great fun. Maybe I’m starting to get just a little bit of that Gucci fashion magic myself.

PERFORMANCE

Shadow Systems XR920 Elite

*Group size is the best four of five rounds measured center to center and fired from a rest at twelve12 meters. Velocity is the average of three shots measured by a Caldwell Ballistic Chronograph 10 feet from the muzzle.

The SCCY Firearms DVG-1 takes SCCY pistols to a place they have never been before. Featuring a proven rugged polymer frame, state-of-the-art manufacturing, cutting-edge materials science, groundbreaking design and a name that has become synonymous with both reliability and value, the DVG-1 incorporates all that is righteous and wholesome about the storied CPX line of pistols into something even better. Now, the new DVG-1 adds an Information Age striker-fired trigger to the mix as well.

Like any deep cover revolver, the previous CPX pistol used a long, heavy double action trigger as its primary safety mechanism. This system worked well, but it was designed for down-in-the-dirt combat, not target shooting on the range. Whenever I exercised my CPX I would generally get a couple dozen rounds through it and be ready to take a break. The new DVG-1, however, has a markedly more refined comportment. How SCCY got to this point is indeed a fascinating tale.

Ballistic Ethos

Most gun companies offer a wide variety of handguns in a wide variety of calibers. Some even offer .22 Rimfire up to .500 S&W Magnum with everything in between. They say variety is the spice of life, and most manufacturers of firearms remain quite spicy. There is, however, a gleaming exception.

SCCY makes one single chassis very, very well. In 1998 Joe Roebuck, the human nuclear reactor behind SCCY Firearms, saw a need for a reasonably-priced, top-quality defensive handgun. The marketplace was littered with rarefied iron that might cost a working man a week’s pay. On the other end of the spectrum were pot metal death traps that would render only marginal service as paperweights. What American shooters needed was a quality defensive pistol that was dead nuts reliable but would still leave enough left over at the end of the month for diapers and baby formula.

Joe and Company succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. When I toured the SCCY plant several years ago they were the fifth largest producer of handguns in America—and they only made that one gun. In 2016, in the midst of the Trump-induced handgun slump, they still sold 160,000 firearms.

The original 9mm CPX could be had either with or without a manual safety in at least ten different colors. The subsequent CPX-3 and -4 were the same guns chambered in .380 ACP. All four models come with two 10-round magazines and interchangeable floorplates, both flat and extended.

Joe Roebuck might have trust issues. People’s lives ride on the reliability of these guns and the SCCY crew takes what they do very seriously. In the case of these handguns, every single component is made in-house, including the magazines. SCCY cuts and rifles their own barrels, mills their own slides and fire controls and presses out their own magazine bodies. That way Joe’s mob retains complete control of every aspect of the manufacturing process.

The heart of SCCY is actually the tool room. SCCY makes the tools that make their parts. Joe’s people keep their fingers on every single piece of this pistol. If something goes wrong, they don’t have to go looking around for someone else to blame. It is simply that nothing ever seems to go wrong.  

DVG-1 Origins

To understand the mindset behind this new gun we need to roll the way-back meter some 3,000 years to a verdant part of Israel called the Valley of Elah. The Army of Israel under King Saul was encamped on one side of the valley. The hosts of the Philistines occupied the opposite ridge. There resided in between the very real prospect of an epic bloodbath.

While both armies were formidable, the Philistines possessed a secret weapon. Towering above their armored warriors stood a legitimate giant. According to some period texts the giant Goliath stood nine feet, nine inches tall. In the context of the day he was considered invincible.

For obvious reasons, the Philistines felt it might be a good idea to decide the outcome of the conflict via single combat. They suggested that the Israelites should field a champion to engage the brute Goliath mano-a-mano, winner take all. To this end, they occupied themselves shouting epithets and curses at both the Israelites and their ethereal, invisible God.

No one among the armies of Israel felt up to the challenge save a ruddy teenager named David. Thin, young and rangy, David was a shepherd by trade and knew self-reliance. When first David volunteered to fight Goliath, King Saul was amused. Saul offered the child his heavy armor, but David demurred. He was a woodsman and would face the giant with nothing but his shepherd’s sling.

David retired to a small creek and selected five smooth stones of appropriate caliber. When eventually he faced the giant, his first shot sunk deep into the leviathan’s forehead, dropping him where he stood. David then retrieved Goliath’s heavy sword and relieved the fallen giant of his head. The fact that David took five stones into the fight does not imply a lack of faith. We find in 2 Samuel 21 that Goliath actually had four brothers.

The epic battle between David and Goliath has been immortalized as one of the greatest examples of martial prowess in military history. The details are chronicled in both the Old Testament scriptures and the Quran. When Joe Roebuck was looking for a novel name for his new, inexpensive striker-fired defensive gun, he chose DVG-1. DVG stands for David Versus Goliath.

Details

The beating heart of the DVG-1 is the tested, proven and patented Roebuck Quad-Lock System. This operating system guarantees reliable function with a variety of ammo types under any and all reasonable conditions. The basic recoil-operated action is adapted from the apparently perfect design John Moses Browning and Dieudonné Saive built into that first Browning Hi-Power pistol.

The polymer grip module is impervious to sweat and corrosion and features finger grooves that interface perfectly with the human form. The magazine release and slide stop are both located in the expected spots on the left side of the gun. The slide has aggressive gripping grooves, both front and rear.

The striker-fired trigger has a flat face for enhanced leverage. This makes the 5.5-pound pull weight seem all the more comfortable. The initial take-up is quite smooth and the reset is delightfully short. At first the break was a bit gritty. However, I cleared the gun three times, verified that there was no ammo within fifty feet of where I sat, pulled up Netflix and pointed my DVG-1 in a safe direction. About one hundred trigger manipulations later, it had smoothed out quite nicely. While the trigger’s personality was initially a wee bit crunchier than that of a comparable Glock or HK VP9, the gun costs literally half as much. Play with it once over a movie and the DVG-1 trigger will love you for it.

Sights are steel and indestructible. For an extra C-note you can get the gun equipped with a splendid Crimson Trace™ CTS-1500 Red Dot sight. The whole pistol breaks down with either a case rim or a healthy fingernail. You’ll legitimately not find better value anywhere.

Trigger Time

The DVG-1 feels oddly different from other, more expensive guns. For starters, it’s nice and short. The frame is just long enough to fit the human hand without protruding unduly. The finger rest magazine floorplate accommodates my fifth finger beautifully. The gun comes with two 10-round magazines and interchangeable floorplates, both flat and extended.

The 3.1-inch barrel is perfect for easy concealment and near-range engagements. If you want to ring steel a kilometer distant you need a different tool. If you want an utterly reliable defensive gun that packs eleven rounds onboard while remaining sufficiently small as to hide in a proper pocket, this is your iron.

As the point of this exercise is to prove that a guy on a budget can remain just as prickly as his wealthy counterpart, I landed a no-frills polymer IWB (Inside the Waistband) holster off of Amazon for $20. The holster hood is too high to accommodate the red dot sight, but that is an easy enough fix. I marked out the material that needed to be removed with a Sharpie and then carefully cut it out with a fiber-reinforced cutoff wheel on my Dremel tool. I then touched up the area with a sanding drum. The end result works perfectly and looks factory.

The DVG-1 is one of the easiest serious guns in the world to pack. Little .25 ACP mouse pistols might be easier to hide, but this thing offers proper 9mm pain on tap. Stoke it with some serious social bullets and the DVG-1 should be able to address any reasonable threats, along with most of the unreasonable sorts as well.

Like most all striker-fired guns, there are no external manual safeties on the DVG-1. Keep your finger clear of the trigger until you are ready to shoot and you will be fine. The DVG-1 carries and presents like a gun costing hundreds more.

The DVG-1 trigger is a delightful improvement over the long double action sort. The predictable take-up and benign break actually conspire to offer some exceptional accuracy. The DVG-1 was naturally reliable with everything we fed it, from lightweight 65-grain polymer Inceptor® rounds all the way up to heavy 147-grain ball.

This is a tiny gun firing a serious round, so it has some recoil. However, the broad back end of the frame distributes the chaos nicely. Magazines fall away freely when the catch is stroked. I found that I could actually make fast combat reloads with this compact gun as well, something that is fairly rare in the world of true deep carry defensive pistols. Unlike most pocket guns designed for deep concealment, shooting the DVG-1 is actually fun.

If I took my time, I could keep my rounds inside of a juice can lid at twelve meters. Moving with a purpose, I could still keep everything inside a standard silhouette out to twenty or so. If that kind of performance won’t solve your problems, you need some different problems.

Denouement

The SCCY DVG-1 is the little gun with a big heart. Joe Roebuck and his crew set out to do this one thing very well and they have pulled it off with the DVG-1. This well-executed deep carry pistol will do everything the Big Guys’ guns will at literally half the price.

You may have more money than you could ever spend. You might bind your cash up in bricks and use it to form a stable for your modest herd of albino unicorns. For the rest of us, however, money is something that reflects toil, sacrifice and pain. I want mine to go as far as possible. In the DVG-1 from SCCY you get reliability you can bet your life on, along with truly exceptional value.

SCCY DVG-1 SPECIFICATIONS

• CALIBER                              9mm Parabellum
• BARREL LENGTH              3.1in
• OVERALL LENGTH           6.01in
• WIDTH                                   1.0in
• WEIGHT                                15.5oz
• MAGAZINE CAPACITY     10+1
• COATING                              H&M Black Nitride
• MSRP                                     $299.99 / $399.99 with Crimson Trace CTS-1500 Red Dot Sight

SCCY DVG-1 PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS

• Load                                                              Group Size (Inches)          Velocity (fps)
• ARX Inceptor 65gr Polymer                       0.75                                        1,664
• Black Hills 100gr Honeybadger                 0.8                                          1,142
• Winchester 115gr FMJ Active Duty          2.0                                          1,172
• SIG 115gr JHP V-Crown                            1.5                                          1,077

Group Size is best four of five rounds fired from a simple rest at 12 meters. Velocity is the average of three rounds fired across a Caldwell Ballistic Chronograph oriented ten feet from the muzzle.

War Story

The kid had never before touched a firearm. He was a responsible young man who held down a job as a clerk at a local convenience store. For his 21st birthday his dad bought him a SCCY CPX 9mm pistol. His application for a concealed carry permit was pending and he had not yet had time to complete the required training.

The young man dropped the gun in its original container along with an unopened box of ammo into his book bag before reporting to work. Once at the store, he stashed the bag in the break room. He and his partner were facing a long shift.

The armed robber surprised the young man and his terrified comrade, marching them both back to the break room and binding them up with duct tape. The thug explained in no uncertain terms that he was going to go clean out the register and then come back and tidy up the loose ends. The kid realized he had just minutes left to live.

The clerk worked feverishly to get his arms free from his bindings. Rushing to his bag he took the NIB SCCY pistol out and thumbed a handful of 9mm rounds into the magazine. He then stepped back into the store to confront the aspiring killer.

In the gunfight that followed the young man fired four rounds, the first four of his life. Two of them connected. When the cops arrived moments later, this awesome kid was doing CPR on the murderous thug who had just tried to kill him.

As is always the case in situations like this, the police took the young man’s gun as evidence. When the dust settled, the kid’s dad contacted SCCY to thank them for saving his son’s life. When the dad told them the cops took his son’s pistol, Joe flew the two of them out to Daytona Beach, FL, to meet his employees and take a factory tour. The kid left with a brand new pistol, free of charge. If you ever wondered why we take concealed carry so seriously, that’s the reason.

Joe Roebuck

Joe Roebuck is a mechanical savant. He was an introverted only child whose parents were well-educated immigrants. They inculcated into him at a young age a refined sense of hard work. By his 13th birthday, they had equipped a modest machine shop back behind the house. Joe toiled out there every evening and every Saturday producing parts for contracts his mom drummed up for him with local customers. He never saw a dime of the proceeds.

Joe learned to fly an airplane at age fifteen. By the time he graduated from high school (a year early at seventeen) he had earned about a quarter of a million dollars in his little shop. His parents presented this to him when he left home. A self-taught engineer, Joe eventually became head die maker for Schrade Cutlery. Using that cool quarter mill as seed, he then branched out a bit.

Joe designed the device used to emplace cardiac stents. Anyone who has ever had eyeglass lenses ground while they waited had them done on a machine Joe designed as well. After starting, growing and then selling several different companies, Joe Roebuck threw himself into designing and producing the best value-priced handgun on the planet. The end result is the new SCCY DVG-1. This gun is the culmination of Joe’s remarkable vision. sccy.com

This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V25N7 (August-September 2021)

Its reputation is legendary. An extensive review of a variety of respected firearms reference texts fails to uncover anything positive written about the Japanese Type 94 handgun. Everybody with access to a typewriter, word processor or computer seems to despise it. Where Georg Luger’s Parabellum oozes a sensual elegance and John Browning’s 1911 personifies utilitarian effectiveness, the Nambu 94 is simply viscerally repugnant. As such, when a low-mileage copy popped up on Gunbroker.com it was time to see what all the fuss was about.

The Type 94 was designed by the esteemed Japanese firearms designer Kijiro Nambu as a commercial venture in 1934. Not surprisingly, the 94 Shiki Kenju or Pistol Type 94 sold poorly early on, but as the fortunes of war turned against the Japanese they had to take what they could get. By the time the American juggernaut crushed Japanese industry in 1945, around 70,000 copies had been produced. Early specimens were issued to aircrews and tank personnel, presumably in the forlorn hope that they might not actually have to be used. However, the design eventually found its way into all arms of the Japanese military.

Broad brush, this pistol is simply wretched in all respects. The 8mm cartridge it fires has a nominal diameter of 0.315 inches and is fairly underpowered for general military use, particularly with full-metal jacket rounds. The round was likely adequate for coward control and summary executions, but for combat use it must have been pitiful. The magazine holds six rounds when fully loaded.

Where shall we start? The first time I drew the action back and released it, the gun pinched the holy bejeebers out of my hand. This heralded an ignoble start to our relationship. The magazine on my gun is ridiculously tight and must be vigorously wrestled for removal. There will be no fast magazine changes executed with this bizarre design. The magazine does have an exposed button to assist in depressing the follower for loading, and that counts for something. However, the magazine floorplate has no positive retention so it gradually and inexorably works off toward the front over time. Without attention, the magazine’s entrails would eventually simply erupt out the bottom of the gun unannounced along with all the onboard ammunition. This feature alone must have demoralized many of the Emperor’s otherwise fanatical minions.

The geometry of the gun is innately wrong. The pistol grip tapers from top to bottom so it has a tendency to squirt out of the hand when squeezed vigorously. The front edges to the frame are left sharp to ensure that they remain as uncomfortable as possible regardless of the operator’s hold on the gun. The sights are utterly worthless, being too small and too low to be of any utility at arm’s length. There are some little dimples to facilitate a ready grasp on the magazine, but there would honestly be no reloading the gun otherwise.

The magazine release is a pushbutton accessible to the right thumb. This represents one of the few bright spots of the design though, as previously mentioned, it still requires a fair amount of elbow grease to remove the magazine. Grips are checkered a bit, and the safety is situated on the right rear of the frame as it should be. A technical treatise on its effectiveness would be forthcoming, but the safety on my gun, which is actually in fairly decent shape overall, is broken off. Towards the end of the war workmanship and materials grew notoriously shoddy. This fact combined with a design that seems more like a bad joke than a battlefield implement made the Type 94 a timeless object of martial derision.

My late-war sample is rife with tool marks and sports sharp edges aplenty. Variants produced even later in the war sported simple wooden grips that look like they were harvested from loading pallets. However, it is easy to find fault from the comfort of my writing chair. These poor slobs were building guns with 1000-pound general purpose bombs and countless tons of aerial incendiaries showering down on their heads from the bellies of B29 Superfortress. While the marginal workmanship and substandard materials are forgivable given the circumstances, the innately flawed nature of the design is not.

Turning Ammunition into Noise

8mm Nambu ammunition is justifiably obsolete so you’ll not be finding it for sale at your local Wal-Mart. As the possibility of ever firing enough of the stuff to justify reloading was impractical we just sucked it up and bought a few rounds online. Don’t think this was easy. This writer has purchased functioning firearms for what that crummy reloaded Japanese ammunition set me back.

The action naturally lacks a positive disconnector to prevent the gun from firing out of battery so a glance at the ejection port between shots is a wise idea to prevent an out-of-battery discharge. Just in case his spirit tires of the vitriolic slander, Colonel Nambu’s ghost can reach out from the grave and kill you with his lousy pistol should you be inattentive to the details and try to cycle the gun too rapidly. Recoil is fairly trivial given the anemic nature of the cartridge, and accuracy is about what you might expect from a legendarily heinous service pistol that essentially has no sights worthy of the term. Little about the shooting experience is pleasant, effective or intuitive.

Magazine changes take about a lifetime due to the sticky nature of the design, but there were no failures to feed or eject in my admittedly limited live-fire trial. We could have considered further testing, but the ammunition might as well have been turned from solid gold given how much it costs. The bolt, if that is the proper term in this case, reciprocates out of the back of the frame of the gun, but there is sufficient beavertail to keep it from biting the shooter’s hand, my initial experience notwithstanding. Thank goodness for small miracles. There is also a serviceable lanyard loop attached to this beavertail. Ejection is straight out the top as is the case with the more-familiar Luger-esque Nambu Type 14.

We saved the best for last. For some unfathomable reason, Colonel Nambu chose to design the sear bar as an exposed assembly along the left side of the frame. As a result you can literally squeeze the gun from the sides with your fingers, depress this bar and fire the weapon without ever touching the trigger. The safety blocks the sear bar, but, as previously mentioned, the materials on my copy are so awful my safety is broken off.

The rumor that floated about the South Pacific during World War II was that this capacity to fire without manipulation of the trigger was perhaps intentional. In the context of the Pearl Harbor attack the Japanese had shown themselves to be a shifty lot. GI’s therefore presumed the Type 94 Nambu was so designed as to allow the Emperor’s soldiers to ambush hapless Americans while feigning surrender. While this makes for a good story, the more likely motivation was simply negligent, crummy design.

Never let it be said that we gun writers lack commitment to our art. After armoring my ears and eyes, slipping into a pair of Nomex gloves, loading a single round, clearing the immediate area and holding the gun by the sides around the far side of a tree with the muzzle downrange, we put this legendary engineering flaw to a practical test. As suspected, a little pressure on the side of the weapon caused a discharge. Concern for the safety of our intrepid gun photographer precludes photographic evidence of this adventure. Fortunately, recoil was so mild that the gun did not end up in the nearby lake. All things being equal, that might not have been an entirely bad thing.

Overall, the Nambu Type 94 is every bit as awful as everybody said it would be. The cartridge is anemic, the ergonomics are abysmal, and the gun could legitimately fire inadvertently while being holstered, hefted or simply laid left-side-down on an uneven surface. In its prime with a proper lot of ammunition the Type 94 might be better in a firefight than foul language and obscene gestures but not by a tremendous margin. After an afternoon spent on the range with one of these remarkable weapons it finally becomes obvious why all those Japanese soldiers carried swords.

It is admittedly easy to armchair-quarterback and dissect the failings of a particular gun’s design from the comfort of my living room. In the interest of fairness, Nambu did design the weapon in the days before Solidworks, CNC milling machines and finite element analysis. However, Georg Luger, Paul Mauser, Hugo Schmeisser, John Browning and Hiram Maxim enjoyed the same working conditions, and their products could pass for art in dim light.

Some of Colonel Nambu’s other projects were actually fairly innovative. Perhaps in the case of the Type 94 pistol he just had an off day. Regardless, as is the case with the Pontiac Aztec, bell bottom blue jeans and the timeless movie classic “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” some creative products are just so hideous that they earn for themselves a place in history based not upon their merits but rather for their more ignoble attributes. It is such stuff that earns the Nambu Type 94 service pistol the lamentable title, “Worst Combat Handgun in Military History.”

Special thanks to Mark at worldwarsupply.com for the Japanese equipment used in support of this article.