#Ar-15

If you have an A2 style front sight base on your AR, but no rail coverage between it and the birdcage, I’ve found the product for you: the KeyMod Forward Rail (KFR) from Ergo Grips.

Faxon Firearms had several new items and a number of older ones to showcase at Bullpup 2016 this year. Most people probably know of Faxon for their ARAK rifle, a combination of AR15 and Kalashnikov platform designs but Faxon probably does more business with making barrels and AR15 parts than experimenting with new weapon systems.

If any of you still had doubts about the HK416’s rumored win of the French AIF (Arme Individuelle du Futur – Future Individual Weapon) contract, doubt no more. The French DGA (Direction Générale de l’Armement, their defense procurement office) has released the final decision for the contract, naming Heckler & Koch as the winner. The press release is replicated in machine-translated form below:

Its truly hard to keep up with the pace by which Strike Industries has been putting out product. In fact, we have occasionally missed one, which has not been on purpose (which despite often being Made in Taiwan, tends to be some innovative stuff, like their new safety selector which has me as a believer).

Daniel Defense announced another new rifle recently, this time in 300 BLK. Well, I suppose it might be more accurate to rephrase that: the company reworked an existing rifle to chamber the popular .30-caliber cartridge.

Standard Manufacturing Co announced the release of a new STD rifle. The Model C of the STD-15 family follows the Model A and Model B that were announced earlier this year, and is a more affordable option when compared to both of those guns.

Guns of the Special Forces is a recent publication by Pen & Sword Press written by Leigh Neville, an Australian defense and military author. The book is inspired by Guns of the Elite written by George Markham, an in-depth look at the history and then current (1990s) usage of small arms by special operations units in the world. Neville is essentially bringing the SF narrative of small arms knowledge and development up to date, in an extremely well written, 244 page publication filled with excellent description, discussion, and amazing photographs. In fact, I think the photographs are some of the best to appear in print from this secretive community the world over. I’m very used to being awed and seeing a number of photographs from OIF/OEF of SF weapons, but even for me the book blew it out of the park with the selection of pictures.

Battle Arms Development is now offering a new clamp on style front sight for the AR pattern rifle. The new sights, called the Architek, is designed to be placed as far forward as possible on the barrel to provide the maximum potential sight radius. It will fit on barrels with an external diameter of 0.735″ – 0.750″. This includes government profile barrels which are frequently used in AR builds.

If you have spent any time shooting a suppressed AR-15, you know what gas face is. For those of you that haven’t run into this uncomfortable phenomenon, gas face is caused by the excessive blowback you experience when shooting suppressed. There is a number of charging handles on the market with the aim of helping defeat gas face, but nothing really does the trick. AXTS feels they have the solution with the Freedom Bone ported charging handle.

Scalarworks makes some pretty nice (and light weight) optics mounts. Their minimalist styled Low Drag Mount Aimpoint Micro mount weights only 1.33oz and looks pretty sweet. They also make a really good optics mount for the Benelli M4 shotguns that we did a write up on last year.

Slide Fire announced the company had teamed up with Colt Competition on a new CRZ-16 variant called the CRZ-16 Bump Fire Rifle. The new version of the gun, as you might expect, is equipped with a Slide Fire SSAR-15 MOD stock that allows the shooter to “…achieve simulated full-auto fire without compromising safety or accuracy.”

Not deterred by now highly restrictive ownership rules in Australia, a new company called Wedgetail Industries has started manufacturing semi-automatic AR-15s for domestic sale. Named after a large Australian bird of prey, the wedgetailed eagle, the company is manufacturing many of the critical components for the AR-15 including, but not limited to:

D.S. Arms, the well-known manufacturer of FAL and AR-15 rifles, was booted from Wizard World Comic-Con as a result of a misunderstanding and public pressure earlier this month. The gun manufacturer had already purchased the booth space and was all set up to display their line of replica weapons to sell to cosplayers as props when they were informed 40 minutes prior to the show that they would not be allowed to attend the show.

Note:  I want to take a moment to point out that most bloggers, reviewers and even magazine writers don’t do this as their primary job.

A start up company by the name of H.S.S.S (High Speed Shooting Stabilizer, and their Facebook group Mobile Marksman LLC.)  is coming out with their flagship product, the FANG. Essentially it is a polymer picatinny mounted device that allows a shooter to stabilize their rifle against a surface while in a crouching or standing position. It works well enough that a shooter can free up his non firing hand and continue to use the rifle, whether that be because of an injury or working with that hand. The founder of the company is a Marine (Infantryman and 1st Recon) and Navy ( EOD) Veteran that was looking for something he could add to a weapon system so he himself could shoot better. Check out the video of the product from Rated Red ( couldn’t find a public viewing to share here)-