This has got to be the coolest rifle barrel design I have seen in a very long time. The equation is pretty simple:
1. Take a barrel with a breech-face-to-crown length of 12.25 inches – that would be regulated by the National Firearms Act, quantified as a Short Barreled Rifle, and subject to a $200 tax stamp (and background check), right? Well…
2. Add a permanently-attached 4.75 inch flash suppressor, making the overall barrel a solid 17 inches, and one inch over the legal definition of an SBR.
3. Make the flash suppressor wide enough to allow a sound suppressor to be inserted into it.
4. Insert 5.5 inch suppressor.
Result: you get as short a barrel as you can on the baseline Ruger stock (without having to pay an idiotic $200 tax stamp for the privilege), then you screw in a sound suppressor (into the flash suppressor, no less… though you do have to pay the $200 tax stamp for it), and you end up with a package no bigger than what it has to be. (You can see the finished product in the clickable-to-big-ize image to the right.)
And, what do you know – a coworker is looking to sell a 10/22 of hers…
So… when is someone going to do this kind of thing for AR-15s? I can guarandamntee you that there will be no shortage of interested customers.
beat me to the punch
Speaking of not having enough money… A little while back, regular readers might remember that I wrote about a very shiny 10-22 barrel design that incorporated a suppressor-length flash suppressor that was wide enough to actually accept a suppressor p…
Don’t AR-15s that go below the 14in barrel mark start to have wounding issues from lack of velocity? Interesting concept though.
That is really interesting and clever.
Stan: I honestly do not know. I do know there appears no shortage of 10.5″ barrels, for the whole tacticool SBR look, and I would assume that the terminal ballistics will be affected by this decreased barrel length, but I have no idea how large of an impact it will be.
Ride Fast: You really do have to give them credit for an easy work-around of a stupid-assed law.
in review
Once again, we are going to look at the performance and statistics of this particular webpage over the last year. Just like the last time we did this, I am going to use Google Analytics data, with the repeated warning…
A good background check service is darn near impossible to find.