#H&K

Throughout the sixty-seven years Heckler and Koch have been in business, there are a number of firearms produced by the company that one could consider perennial. Chief among such designs would be the MP5 and or the G3, both weapons which continue to see use even fifty years after their creation. While for many, rifles and sub-machine guns would be the first to come to mind, HK has a history of producing pistols which define the concept of utilitarian and are practically indestructible.

Alright so it is no secret that I am an H&K guy, and if you have followed my previous articles then you can definitely see that I have taken a liking to them over the years. Hell, the US Government will not let H&K import modern sporting rifles due to the ’89 import ban so I went out of my way to build a semi-automatic G36 clone out of an SL8 and even a title II UMP want-to-be out of a USC carbine. That being said, it came as a shock to me when I got selected to review the new H&K MR556A1. You see, the way us writers get selected to review products (when it comes to firearms) is done by rotation rather than intentional selection so I was thrilled when I got the word. I was also pleasantly surprised at how easy H&K was to deal with; I got in touch with a delightful H&K employee via e-mail and she had a shiny new MR556A1 rifle at my FFL within a week.

H&K has never made a true G36 rifle available to civilians in the USA mostly due to import regulations and what I assume would be a lack of demand (lets face it, your average consumer is happy with one of the many AR variants that have taken over the semi-automatic 5.56 rifle market). However in the 90’s to comply with the 1989 import ban on foreign “assault weapons” and the now expired 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, H&K came up with an idea to market a new sporting rifle known as the SL8 that was a cousin of the G36. The rifle functioned via the same operating system but looked a whole lot less scary and a whole lot more like an old IBM computer keyboard:

NOTE: This product review was made possible by GunsForSale.com.  To get up-to-date information on where to find Century rifles for sale, please visit  GunsForSale.com.

The Norwegians finally seem happy with their new H&K 416 rifles. They have solved the problem of soldiers getting sick from inhaling the fumes of their “green” 5.56mm ammunition by simply not shooing at their indoor ranges.

The fact that guns get dirty is is one of those unfortunate facts of life, along with death and taxes.

I know I said I was not going to blog for the next few days but I am very excited to finally see photos of the new Chinese made submachine gun I had heard about.

As the western world moved away from full power battle rifles such as the H&K G3, FN FAL and M14, Heckler & Koch developed the HK32 and HK33 chambered in 7.62x39mm and 5.56x45mm respectively. Both were based on the G3 design and roller-delayed blowback operating mechanism.

UPDATE: The Tactical Wire got it wrong. Production was not halted.
Tactical Wire claims that significant problems with the HK416 have been uncovered and production has been halted:

In my recent article about the Norwegian H416 rifle, Mauken, a Norwegian soldier, posted a link to this article at aftenposten.no (I have translated it into english using google):

Tanfo, a Norwegian soldier, reports at the ar15.com forum that they have been having problems with their new HK416 rifles.

PTR 32 KF is a H&K G3 / 91 clone chambered in 7.62x39mm. It is manufactured by PTR 91 Inc.

The new H&K P30L is a long slide version of the P30 pistol. It is identical to the P30 with the exception of having a 4.44″ barrel instead of the P30 3.86″ barrel. The sigh radius is 0.57″ longer.

H&K fans rejoice. The HK416 / HK417 piston driven AR-15 derivatives are finally coming in a semi-automatic form for civilians. The civilian 5.56x45mm HK416 is called the MR556 and the 7.62x51mm HK417 civilian equivalent is the MR762. They are expected to arrive in late 2009.

The Army Times reports that the H&K developed M320 will being replacing the M203 in February next year.