#Ar-15

Without any doubt in my mind, the AR-15 is the rifle of both today and the future for American shooters. The guns are reliable, easy to shoot, easy to maintain and are very easy to modify for even novices. Quite literally, you can build one of these guns from a block of aluminum that has only been partially machined using hand tools. I suspect that this market will continue to grow as more people discover these rifles and current owners decide to spend more time customizing their existing guns.

The 6.5 Creedmoor seems to be getting a lot of love going into 2017 with a variety of guns and ammunition products being introduced for the caliber (such as this and this.) One of the latest is the XLR-20 rifle from 2A Armament.

DRD Tactical announced a new weapon system called the Aptus. Aptus, meaning “suitable” or “fit for a particular function” in Latin, is a rifle platform that uses the company’s recoil and quick barrel change systems. With this system, you can swap from any of the configurations to any of the others in less than a minute.

Advantage Arms has shown on their website a new AR-15 forward charging handle. It is ambidextrous with actual handles folding forward for a slimmer profile. The large handles allow easy access and must be good in a firefight when fine motor skills vanish under stress.

D&H Tactical is a subsidiary of D&H Industries, which is a large metal products manufacturing company specializing in metal stamping, deep drawing and welding. As the name implies, D&H Tactical makes firearm related products. Particularly, they manufacture various magazines.

Taccom, known for their competition oriented offerings including shotgun shell caddies, ultra-light weight buffer systems, and a plethora of magazine extension kits, has turned their attention to the red-hot pistol caliber carbine market with their latest buffer system, the Heavy PCC Carbine Recoil System.

You are probably well aware that even the very best soft armor is no help against rifle ammunition. Even relatively slow cartridges like 7.62x39mm and .300 AAC can still easily slice right through level IIIA armor. But what if several panels were layered on top of each other? Would it be enough to stop a rifle bullet? That is to say, obviously if you have enough layers of Kevlar you can stop any bullet but can you do it without looking like Ralphie’s brother in “A Christmas Story”? What if the shooter was far enough away? At some distance, it certainly could. At some distance, a cotton T-shirt could stop a bullet, but is it possible for a reasonable amount of soft armor to stop a rifle bullet at a speed that we can all agree is still truly a rifle bullet? To answer that question as definitively as is feasible, we shot a stack of four armor panels with a relatively slow .300 AAC load.

E-Blanks is an interesting concept that has been around for at least the past two years. The Norwegian company makes a recoil actuating bolt that replaces a standard AR15 Bolt Carrier Group, coupled with a battery powered straight walled magazine, and a muzzle device essentially turns an AR15 into a cosmetic blank firing device. The reasoning behind this is because there are some situations where firing actual blank ammunition could not be allowed or would ease logistics. Such as if a police department wanted to train in a mall, or maybe a school, whatever the case maybe. It also reduces the logistical footprint of having to supply and carry around pallets of blank ammunition, not to mention not cleaning the weapons afterwards. According to Jane’s, the Dutch Government has acquired some of the product for testing.

MagnetoSpeed will introduce a new modular grip storage system for AR style rifles at the 2017 SHOT Show next month. The new M-Series Grip System is designed to allow the shooter to do everything from storing a short magazine to using an monopod stored within the pistol grip. All of the accessories store inside of the grip and quickly drop free through an ejection system.

In this video, Patrick takes a tour of the Timney Triggers Factory. Timney has made a name for their self over the last six decades or so building some of the most reliable and cutting edge triggers on the market. Millions of hunters and sports shooters rely on them, and after seeing how precise the manufacturing process is, it is easy to see why.

A company called Smith Tactics manufactures an AR-15 bolt catch accessory – the Battle-Bar. It mounts on the lower receiver over the AR-15 bolt catch/release button extending it to the rear, to an area above the safety selector. The idea behind this accessory is to make bolt catch button manipulations faster and easier using the thumb of your primary/shooting hand.

Tyrant Designs has recently announced about the release of their new foregrip product called MOD ForeGrip. It is made of aircraft grade aluminum with polymer finger groove inserts. The MOD ForeGrip is compatible with M-Lok and/or KeyMod accessory attachment systems.

After several years of being undercut on the market by cheaper offerings from Smith & Wesson and others, Colt introduced early in 2016 a new addition to their lineup, the “Expanse” carbine, designed to cut the price tag of a Colt carbine by $200-300 versus the standard 6920. The new rifle was met with positive reviews and many felt very good about the opportunity to own a “real” Colt for significantly less than the cost of the 6920. However, is the Expanse really a Colt, or more specifically, how much of the Expanse is really Colt? Christopher Bartocci, former Colt technician, thinks the answer is “not much”. Bartocci explains why in the video embedded below:

CAA has announced the availability of their CDMAG, which is a 30 round AR-15 polymer magazine with round counting capability. The magazine has a small window on the bottom portion of its rear wall, which shows the exact number of the ammunition left in the mag.

Savage Arms posted a teaser video on YouTube yesterday showing remnants of an MSR (modern sporting rifle). Some simple features that can be seen from the shadowy video are an M-Lok free float handguard, a side charging handle, and a dust cover (possibly plastic). The Savage Arms MSR should officially be unveiled at SHOT Show.