Rifles

It isn't unusual for a dozen AR-15 rifles from different makers to be on the shelf at most gun shops. Some are regional makers, some are giants like Colt, and a few are new companies trying to earn a good name for themselves. The modular construction of the AR-15 means that the basic receiver may be fitted with a number of different barrel types, stock designs, and other accessories. As such, the price point is flexible, depending upon whether the user wants an entry-level rifle or something more. We picked the rifles in this report to see if the details and accessory package on a more expensive rifle really offered enough performance to justify the extra money. There are literally dozens of choices to make between rifles in this price zone, so as much as anything, this was a test of accessories and set-up, culminating in our advice on how to buy an AR that's a flexible platform for growth as possible.

Savage Arms Introduces the A17 Semi-automatic Rifle in 17 HMR

The gunny student who knows anything at all about Elmer Keith will probably know many of Keith's guns were sold off recently by a well-known auction house in Maine. Apparently, the auction was a huge success, and some of the offerings proved to be bargains. A brace of like-new Ruger No. 1 rifles sold for less than their combined new MSRP prices today, and a fabulous engraved and gold-inlaid Model 70 made by Frank Pachmayr for Elmer Keith sold for less than some unadorned custom rifles made by some makers on today's market.

Among the auctioned rifles were several by Keith's favorite gunsmith, Iver Henriksen (1910-1987). In fact, our Senior Technical Editor made a solid absentee bid for one of the Henriksen-Keith rifles. Alas, the rifle sold for three times that bid. From this auction, we discovered that if a rifle has Henriksen's name on it, especially if it was owned by Keith, it will have a value of about $5000; but of course that's not guaranteed. So we thought we had lost out on the chance to examine and test a Henriksen rifle. As luck had it, however, a friend of the magazine owned one of Henriksen's rifles, but didn't know it. We were talking with him one day and he said he had a rifle made by some Montana gunsmith. We asked if it could possibly be a Henriksen rifle, and he said he didn't know. When we got a chance to examine it, we saw the Henriksen name written around the base of the barrel, and explained to our friend what he had.

He graciously allowed us to borrow it for this report. He later found out the design and layout of this particular rifle in all its aspects had in fact been suggested by Mr. Keith to its previous owner. The rifle is a custom FN Mauser 98 in 338 Winchester Magnum with fabulous wood, and it is fitted with a classic Balvar 8A Bausch & Lomb 2.5-8X scope with the windage and elevation adjustments in the bases.

We chose to test it against a modern Winchester Model 70 in the same caliber, the rifle having also just been fitted with one of the old B&L Balvar 8A 2.5-8X scopes in adjustable-base mounts. We tested this rifle in the December 2012 edition of Gun Tests where it got high marks (A-). The Model 70, now owned by our Senior Technical Editor, got some serious upgrading, which put it into the realm of the Henriksen for its ability to handle long-seated bullets. Here's what we found.

Springfield Armory is introducing a Flat Dark Earth (FDE) color-tone variant in several categories, starting with the M1A Loaded Precision Adjustable Stock Rifle and the XD-S 3.3-inch pistol in 9mm and .45 ACP chamberings.

If you plan on attending the 2015 National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, look for two National Match rifles made by Armalite that seem pretty popular.

The roller-locked CETME Model 58 was the basis for Heckler & Koch's G3-based rifles, followed some time later by a semiautomatic version labeled the HK-91, which isn't gas- or recoil-operated in the conventional sense. The rifle employs a delayed blowback system with a nonrotating head and twin rollers. These rollers, located on the bolt on each side, lock into detents in the trunnion of a stamped steel receiver.

On firing, force on the bolt keeps the action locked until the bullet exits the barrel, then the action unlocks and the bolt is jolted to the rear against spring pressure. The bolt then returns to battery, stripping a cartridge from the magazine along the way. We have previously tested three roller-locked rifles made in the U.S., including the 308 Win. PTR-91 from JLD Enterprises. We mostly praised the PTR-91 rifle in the January 2005 issue, save it needing a trigger job and a flash hider. We also gave Buy recommendations to the Vector Arms V-53 in 5.56 NATO and the Bobcat Weapons BW-5 9mm in that same article.

Here, we revisit the PTR-91 and a similar rifle, the Century Arms C91 Sporter, both chambered in 308 Win./7.62 NATO. The original PTR rifle was first conceived in 2002, when JLD Enterprises purchased tooling and designs for the HK line of roller-lock weapons from Fabrica Militar of Portugal. The original "Precision Tactical Rifle" HK-91 clones were produced mostly from surplus parts acquired around the world from 2002 to 2006. Then, in 2006, PTR91 Inc. was organized and expanded beyond the original 91-style clones. The company was re-organized in 2010 with new management, and then three years later, PTR Industries made news when it announced it was leaving Bristol, Connecticut and was moving to South Carolina because of the former state's just-passed stringent gun-control laws.

Century Arms, headquartered in Delray Beach, Florida, makes and warehouses its surplus firearms and accessories business in Georgia, Vermont. Founded in the 1960s and run by William Sucher and Manny Weigensberg, Century is the largest importer of Romanian-made WASR-10 AK variants. The C91 has been supplanted in the Century Arms catalog by the C308 rifle.

So, no surprise — accurate, powerful, and well-made 308-Win. semi-auto rifles remain strong sellers. The question we wanted to know is, do shooters have to pay a premium to get one of these roller-locked mechanisms? The short answer is "No," but the longer answer appears below:

With much hype and anticipation, we took Kel-Tec CNC's RFB forward-ejecting bullpup rifle to the range 18 months ago to compare it with other bullpup-style rifles we've reviewed. This being the only 30-caliber bullpup we've tested so far, most of our shooters were eager to get behind the scope and send rounds downrange. Taking any bullpup to the range always draws some attention, and the Kel-Tec RFB was no different. The gun has a striking overall appearance, especially with the Nikko-Sterling 3-10x42 Nighteater scope we mounted on ours.

Sturm, Ruger has announced that the Mini-14 Tactical rifle is now available in 300 AAC Blackout. Suggested retail is one thousand and nineteen dollars.

This chambering should be interesting to Ruger shooters who want an AR-length round that can operate with both supersonic ammunition and subsonic ammunition, the latter for suppressed use.

Because of the 300 Blackout's bullet-weight range, it's easier to make a round that stays below 1100 fps but still has plenty of downrange energy.

After a lull of almost 25 years, IWI US is bringing back the Galil ACE family of pistols and rifles to the US commercial/civilian market.

The modernized Galil ACE is based upon the original Galil assault rifle first developed by IMI in the late 1960s. It has elements of the Russian AK-47 and the Finnish Valmet RK 62.

It's not often we get a truly interesting rifle to test. Most are commonplace, and frankly carry little excitement for our test team. Once in a while a surprise comes along, and that's what happened recently. Houston Product Coordination Editor Kevin Winkle sent a rifle to Idaho that got our attention, and the more we looked into it, the more we liked it. This is the Roessler Titan 6, with interchangeable barrels in 300 Winchester Magnum and 270 Winchester (about $1980 for the rifle). The rifle came with no scope mounts and no iron sights, though both are available from the importer. There was, however, an excellent manual with the rifle printed on heavy stock that should last a long time. The receiver was a simple cylindrical type, and we guessed — correctly — that Remington Weaver-style bases would work on it. We used a Leupold 4X scope in Weaver rings for all our testing. We tested the gun with both barrels, using Remington and Winchester 180-grain loads in 300 Mag; and 130-, 140-, and 150- grain JSN Federal ammo in 270. Here's what we found.

If we were a rifle maker with a line of AR-15s, we might put up a neon sign outside our establishment that had an image of our carbine with a simple message below: "Millions and millions sold." Because while that might not quite be true for an individual maker's line, it is certainly true for the ArmaLite Rifle platform collectively. The various configurations of ARs are among the highest-selling rifle designs ever, and their appeal seems to keep broadening, even in the face of political restrictions in some jurisdictions.

Despite this popularity—or perhaps because of it—other designs suited for self defense want to take the AR down a notch, make a little cheddar for themselves at the expense of the standard defense rifle of our time. One such competitor du jour is the Beretta ARX 100, itself an adaptation of the successful ARX 160 military rifle made by the famous Italian gunmaker. The ARX 160 service rifle has shown up in several war zones, and it certainly is not an M16/M4/AR-15 rifle. In fact, the ARX platform has little in common with the AR, which could be a significant hurdle for commercial success, or perhaps the beginning of the next big thing. Which one is what we aimed to find out when we went shopping for a 5.56 NATO-chambered Beretta ARX 100 JXR11B00, $1522, a recent online price for the rifle at TombstoneTactical.com. We put it against a Colt M4 Carbine LE6920SOCOM, $1622, which we recently priced at a Houston-based firearms and floral-design store called Texas Guns and Roses (TexasGunsandRoses.com). This price also includes a $15 handling fee for online orders.

The disadvantage the Beretta had to overcome was that most experienced rifle shooters handle the AR-15 as if it were second nature. To help dial out some of that bias, we assembled a group of both novice and experienced raters for this project, one of whom has fired rifles, but never the AR-15 or the Beretta. With no prior AR-15 experience, we would see how quickly our novice could be brought up to speed on both rifles. Other shooters included a 20-year law-enforcement veteran, whose abstract on carbine training has been published on a federal level, and another rater who is a military captain recently returned from a fourteen-month deployment and a certified NRA instructor. We felt that this mix, along with other interested shooters, would help us pick the best battle rifle.

To test them, we used loads in different weights from several makers. We included Federal American Eagle 62-grain FMJ Green Tips (prior to the recent BATFE attempt at reclassifying them as armor piercing), Hornady 55-grain jacketed soft points, and Black Hills' 77-grain Open-Tip Match. We also fired the Black Hills 52-grain Match, Hornady 55-grain Zombie Max, and Federal's 55-grain JSP and Winchester's 55-grain FMJs. Here's what we found:

Beretta's APX, a new striker-fired full-size pistol in 9x19mm, 9x21mm IMI and 40 Smith & Wesson cartridges, debuted at the 2015 International Defence Exhibition & Conference IDEX expo in Abu Dhabi Feb. 22.

"IDEX is one of the first venues where defense contractors present their wares to worldwide military customers and Beretta felt this was the ideal environment to present the international offering of its APX pistol," said Carlo Ferlito, general manager of Beretta and Beretta Defense Technologies (BDT) vice president.

Beretta intends to market a variant for the commercial market later this year. The new Beretta APX has an ergonomically-molded reinforced polymer frame fitted with a built-in MIL-STD-1913 Picatinny rail, interchangable backstraps and grip panels, and a modified Browning locking system. The APX is 7.56 inches long with a 4.25-inch barrel.

The trigger can be considered a light double action, with a 6-pound break, 0.2 inch of travel, and a 0.12-inch reset. The rear portion of the striker slightly protrudes from a round slot on the back of the slide as a loaded-chamber indicator.

The slide is machined from stainless steel and has a nitride coating that reduces glare, scratches, and corrosion. Other features include wide front and rear slide serrations, three-dot sights dovetailed into the slide, and no manual safety save for a Glock-style trigger safety.

Ferlito said, "Beretta waited to enter the striker-fired market until we had a pistol we knew would meet the needs of the operator. The APX has been more than three years in development. We tested it extensively with professional end users and incorporated that feedback at every opportunity. The result is a pistol platform that delivers superior performance in durability, reliability, accuracy and ergonomics."

A slot on the frame allows the use of a tool to decock it before it can be field-stripped by operating a lever found on the left side of the frame.

An optional manual safety system will be available upon request, consisting of a frame-mounted two-position switch. A reversible magazine-release catch and a factory ambidextrous slide stop/hold open release lever help make the pistol suitable for left- or right-handed shooters.

Supplied black double-stack metal magazines have polymer bottom pads and offer 17-round capacities in 9x19mm NATO and 15-round capacities in 9x21mm IMI (9 Italian) and 40 Smith & Wesson.