Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Just a Tool

7 comments:

  1. And thanks to people like you, mikeb, a tool none of us will ever have.

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  2. There are always tradeoffs. If you want more penetration without recoil you make a smaller lighter bullet. What you give up is stopping power- it will take more hits to do the same damage. In the line of duty, that may mean return fire. I am not sure there are civilian non-penetrating versions of the HK cartridge the way there is for the FN 5.7.

    -TS

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  3. So, this is a personal defense weapon and you need to have one for the house, the car, the place in the country and, of course, one for the Black Tie/Camo optional dinner dance at the gun club?

    Why did they have the guys in the video wear camos and boonie hats instead of jammies like you would be wearing when the gangs of MCCK (Murderous Crazed Criminal Killers) start assaulting your neighborhood?

    I don't know about this weapon, but I think that back in the 70's and 80's there poachers in Africa shooting elephants with M-16's and AK-47's. Not a big slug, but you can put a lot of them on target in a hurry.

    It appears that someone else has a better idea, though:

    http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=318717

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  4. Democommie says:

    So, this is a personal defense weapon and you need to have one for the house, the car, the place in the country and, of course, one for the Black Tie/Camo optional dinner dance at the gun club?

    Why did they have the guys in the video wear camos and boonie hats instead of jammies like you would be wearing when the gangs of MCCK (Murderous Crazed Criminal Killers) start assaulting your neighborhood?


    Not quite sure what you're getting at, but if you're under the impression that "Personal Defense Weapons" are being marketed to civilians, that's not quite what's going on. The idea is to issue them to troops for whom carrying a full-size rifle (like an M-16), or even the carbine version (M-4), would be impractical (by virtue both of the weight and bulk of the weapon, and of the fact that these are troops who aren't intended to be on the front combat lines). Theoretically, a PDW would give them more capability than a pistol would, without much more weight and bulk. The PDW concept really hasn't caught on, even in the military market, but companies keep trying.

    Even if HK came out with a semi-auto only version, before it could be sold on the mainstream civilian market, they would have to put a 16" barrel on it, negating much of the compactness advantage.

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  5. This weapon has been around for a while (it went into production in 2001). Zorro is correct that it hasn't really taken with the military market. The G36 seems to be much more popular and there are rumours the British Army may switch to this from the SA80/L85A1 (or 2).

    Why anyone would want it on a civvy basis is beyond me since I would imagine it to be a fairly expensive toy to "feed".

    Besides, most people prefer arms which have a reputation. Making a civvy version of the G36 a far more likely candidate than this thing if such a thing were to end up on the consumer market.

    Zorro also neglects that any civvy weapon has to pass BATF's technology branch and prove it is not readily convertable to fully automatic fire.

    Also, executive order, such as Bush's 1988 order can ban these weapons from importation.

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  6. @Zorro: That, or remove both the front grip and buttstock and sell it as a "pistol". That's the NFA at work.

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  7. The dog says:

    Zorro also neglects that any civvy weapon has to pass BATF's technology branch and prove it is not readily convertable to fully automatic fire.

    Not sure I "neglected" anything--if the BATFEces pukes fabricate a lie about a gun being "readily convertible to fully automatic fire," like they did with these CO2 cartridge-powered toys, then the gun is not, by the twisted definitions used by the feds, a "semi-auto only" version.

    I do agree that an abusive presidential executive order could also ban importation--I hadn't meant to imply that I was providing an exhaustive list of ways it could be made difficult for civilians to legally acquire an MP7.

    And, Kevin--yeah--that would be another way to make a civilian version, and with a little round like that, it would probably not be too hard to control even without a buttstock and foregrip--especially in semi-auto only. But remember, HK hates civilians, anyway (very funny read).

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