Innholdsfortegnelse for Volume 73, Issue 20 i Firearms News

Rock River Arms introduced a new 9mm carbine design this past year, the BT-9. RRA makes two variants of the BT-9, the R9 Competition carbine version with a collapsible stock and 16-inch barrel, and a pistol available with two different barrel lengths, seven-inch and 10.5-inch. I secured a sample of the seven-inch pistol to test. Hold fast for a very brief “you kids don’t know how good you have it” rant. Back in the very recent past if you wanted an AR pistol, very few reputable companies even made them, which meant they might be reliable, maybe, and then you were stuck shouldering that bare pistol buffer tube. If you haven’t noticed, things have changed. Drastically. Let me start by pointing out that the BT-9 is far from the first…

“The land of fruits and nuts.”“The country is tilted to the left, and everythingloose rolls to California.” “Kaliforniastan [or Commiefornia] … TheWorkers’ Paradise of California.” The jokes are many, but it wasn’t always like that. While California is currently in the grips of anti-gun zealots, there was a time. A time when California was the dream. Detroit may have been the “Arsenal of Democracy,” but in WWII, California had almost 50 airfields for training, and staging aircraft (built in California) to be flown to the combat zones. Airfields that were a short hop from the plants that were producing aircraft literally faster than the Axis powers could shoot them down. There was a time when California was clean and spacious, looking for workers, and if you lived there you could…

January 17, 1918 dawned a cold, misty day as the U.S.S. Monocacy steamed up the Yangtze River in central China, negotiating the notorious gorges about fifty miles above the city of Chenglin. On a good day, this was a dangerous stretch of river, but with the low water common to that time of year, the channel was only about fifty yards wide and the entire crew was standing deck and engine room watches. About 9:00am, without any warning, a fusillade of shots rang out from the bank which, because of the low state of the river, was about forty feet above the Monocacy’ main deck. Battle stations were called, the ship’s six Colt machine guns were manned and small arms issued to those crew members not immediately needed to run…

Recently I was having a conversation with my fiancee’s twenty-something son, giving him some history on Flint and Detroit of which he was completely ignorant, mostly because modern news media at all levels is, with very few exceptions, an idiot echo chamber and a parade of tabloid propaganda that deliberately keeps its viewers ignorant of facts and history. But, that conversation with him was a reminder to me of the phrase, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” For example, most people think of Rock River Arms (RockRiverArms.com) as an AR company that also makes 1911s. I’ve got enough gray in my beard/ miles under my tires/pick a euphemism that means old/ that I know Rock River Arms is a 1911 company that jumped on the AR bandwagon just at…

I think it was sometime in the early ‘90s when I first fired a friend’s Colt 9mm carbine. I was impressed by the accuracy and mild recoil of the weapon but a 16-inch carbine in 9mm didn’t seem very useful when compared to one in 5.56mm of the same size and weight. I found it somewhat interesting but I didn’t run out and buy one. A dozen years later a similar carbine showed up at my shop for a minor repair. Again, I could see a possible use for a pistol caliber carbine as a suppressed weapon but I wasn’t inclined toward a purchase. A suppressed pistol caliber SBR interested me but I dragged my feet on the project and didn’t get it done. Enter the era of the pistol…