Every once in a while I get the opportunity to test some exquisite firearms.

The last to pass through my hands was Ruger's first entry into the AR market, the piston-driven SR-556, which I was able to outfit with an Insight Technologies MRDS optic. I just returned it last week after having it for three months, and it was tough to send back. I'll post my range report in the weeks to come.

Having a newly-released gun in your hands sometimes lead you to try to get into the mind of the designer to try to understand why they decided on the features they brought to market, and in my case, that leads me to wonder about other firearms that I'd be interested in seeing developed from existing firearms, or entirely new designs.

There are two that I've been kicking around in the back of my mind in recent weeks, one being a 5.56 Garand, and the other is a user-friendly dedicated home-defense shotgun.

The 5.56 Garand

The Garand needs no introduction. It was America's premier service rifle in World War II through the Korean War, a semi-automatic firing eight .30-'06 rounds loaded from an en bloc clip.

There are millions of Garands in the hands of American shooters, with the vast majority of them chambered in the traditional .30-'06, but the .308 Winchester increasing being adopted in new rifles. Modification of Garands into other calibers is nothing new, with custom Garands chambered in .338 Magnum and 458 Magnum being available to those who can afford them, but I'd like to see development taken the other way.

I'd like to see a Garand design modernized and scaled to the 5.56 cartridge. Imagine a Garand at 90-percent the size of the original, with a forward-mounted short section of picatinny rail for "scout"-type scopes, with a detachable rear sight (and perhaps a folding rear backup iron site). Even scaled to 90-percent, I wold think an 8-10 round en bloc clip is quite possible.

I imagine it as a truck gun, equally suited for utility work, plinking, predator, and defense or light to medium game hunting.

The Home Defense Shotgun

While the 5.56 is a nice " want to have," the next firearm on my wish list is for a real and vital market that in my experience, is under-served.

When I was selling firearms, the most heart-wrenching work I took on was trying to help someone who had recently been the victim of a crime. A young couple just starting out was living in rough part of town, awoke one night to a someone high on drugs battering open their front door. A single older lady found signs that someone had tried to force open her apartment window. A single woman in her 20s, visibly shaken, scared that her obsessive ex-boyfriend was going to break in one night and hurt her for leaving him.

None of these customers was the caricature of a gun owner that liberals love to set up as strawmen, and none really wanted to purchase a gun. What they really wanted was the sense of security that only firearms can provide in a potentially dangerous situation.

For each of these customers, I wish I had a better option than what I had on the shelves. What I wish I had to sell was a very easy to operate, compact and nearly foolproof shotgun, one that was light and compact enough for women and smaller-statured men, without punishing recoil, and with at least 4-5 rounds in the magazine. I still don't see a perfect solution on the market (and a one-size fits all solution will never exist), but something built off the basic concepts behind the Kel-Tec RFB would certainly be a step in the right direction.

The RFB is a very compact bullpup-style .308 rifle that ejects spent shells forward, meaning it can be used ambidextrously without any modifications. A similar weapon chambered in 20-gauge with simple iron sights and larger game loads (#4-#6) could certainly be the in-home, last defense gun that I would have recommended if we had it on the shelf.

I don't know that there is a significant market for either firearm, but it would certainly be interesting to see how such concepts might work out.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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