Fuck you Idaho, you can't have the 1911. It's been the official state gun of Utah for years, since John Moses Browning is actually from Utah and designed most of his firearms here. Pretty sure he designed the Winchester 1894 as well, but you can have that one.
Please, southern Idaho is basically hardcore splinter sect territory (FLDS and AUB abounds), so it's basically Mormon to everyone not a Mormon, so you can consider it a more extreme Utah.
PSA currently has a deal for a ruger RXM with a AIMPOINT COA for 600 bucks! They're basically giving you the RXM for free with the purchase of the dot! It looks like the slide on this model is cut only for the AIMPOINT COA View attachment 9602304
I'm going to get this and sell the red dot + slide immediately to basically get the RXM for almost free
PSA currently has a deal for a ruger RXM with a AIMPOINT COA for 600 bucks! They're basically giving you the RXM for free with the purchase of the 600 dollar Aimpoint dot! It looks like the slide on this model is cut only for the COA View attachment 9602304
I'm going to get this and sell the red dot + slide immediately to basically get the RXM for below 200 dollars. Even if you sell both the complete slide and dot for only around 500 bucks, you still get the RXM FCI, magazine, and grip for 100 bucks. Tell me I'm not crazy for thinking this is a killer deal
Totally random question that I'm sure the people of this lovely thread can answer... How much has gun design changed in the last 26 years? Or even just the last 16 years? Are new guns released today noticeably different to guns made at the start of the century, or is it one of those technologies that was essentially "solved" a while ago? Just curious as someone who only really has personal experience with antique guns (19th-early 20th century) what the 'modern gun scene' is like.
Totally random question that I'm sure the people of this lovely thread can answer... How much has gun design changed in the last 26 years? Or even just the last 16 years? Are new guns released today noticeably different to guns made at the start of the century, or is it one of those technologies that was essentially "solved" a while ago? Just curious as someone who only really has personal experience with antique guns (19th-early 20th century) what the 'modern gun scene' is like.
In my (non-expert) opinion there has been a refinement of guns in the last 26 years: more reliability, more durability, things like that. But the technology has largely stayed the same and there hasn't been much change in how guns operate like in the previous century. There are some things that look promising for changing the landscape of design, like better metals that are capable of handling higher pressure ammo, both from a barrel/bolt perspective and a case perspective, but it's hard to say if the AR pattern rifle will cease to be the best pattern of military rifle in the next 50 years. For non-military guns it seems like more is being done on a company level when it comes to quality of manufacture and QC than in changing gun design itself.
Design, very little in the mainstream. Glock has reduced the number of parts and reliability to what for now is understood to be just about the bare minimum for solid performance with excellent reliability. AR-15s basically the same statement is true. Competing with those designs is largely just replicating it with tweaks or accepting you'll be selling to a niche market.
Competitive shooting has taken off, so many new and innovative handgun designs are unsuitable for defensive use, and working off proven principles. The new stuff here is fundamentally evolutionary not revolutionary.
The NGSW program had some cool stuff going on. Proper new ideas and radically different cycles of operation with incredible performance benchmarks. And guess what won? The AR derivative. Oh, and it kinda sucks.
Much more exciting things happening on the chemistry and metallurgy side of things. But to make those breakthroughs viable... you need to establish and industrial base large enough to make mass production feasible. And that won't happen any time soon because the improvements remain incremental or not necessary for common uses.
Basically, AR-15s and Glocks on Mars. And between the two, Glock could be dethroned before Stoner's masterpiece is imo.
All it really takes is someone to make a good enough pistol that is cheaper. It's really not about the design itself. It's the ease and cost of acquisition when it comes to consumers and govenment agencies alike. The M17 wasn't adopted because it was a better design than Glock. It was cheaper, and the military (mistakenly) judged that to be good enough. Even that is more about SIG fucking up the QC.
With the rifles, it's a bit different because everyone is doing a flavor of the AR rifle, but nobody dominates the market. It's more that the design is so widespread and most importantly, PATENT FREE, that if you are a gun manufacturer it only makes sense to just take that design and add your own small tweaks to it. As long as it takes STANAG-mags, and you can fit accessories to it that fit any other AR style rifle, it will be fine. What the gas system is or what shape is the charging handle, nobody cares.
Totally random question that I'm sure the people of this lovely thread can answer... How much has gun design changed in the last 26 years? Or even just the last 16 years? Are new guns released today noticeably different to guns made at the start of the century, or is it one of those technologies that was essentially "solved" a while ago? Just curious as someone who only really has personal experience with antique guns (19th-early 20th century) what the 'modern gun scene' is like.
-Most Firearms today use mechanisms and actions designed and invented before 1950
-The AR-15 (more specifically the rifle that would thought slight modification become the AR-15 we know today) was made in 1959, the AR-10 even earlier
-The Glock, the first successful polymer framed pistol, was accepted into Austrian military service in 1982, and came to America in 1986
-95% of Bolt action rifles are essentially upgraded and or modified Mauser actions
-Most firearms made today are derivatives, variants or slight refinements of earlier designs, You can trace a direct lineage from Stoner's AR-18 to like half of all modern military rifles, The AR-18 in turn has DNA from Simonov rifles
-The only real advances in Firearms technology today are 1. Stronger materials, especially for use with high pressure ammunition coupled with reinforced actions 2. Ergonomics 3. QOL features largely for military customers but used as selling points for Civilians (Replaceable cam paths aka MCX, QD handguards, maritime capability, ease of maintenance etc etc) 3. Integration with """ Enablers""" (Lights, lasers, advanced optic systems, NV/Thermal)
If anything I would say there's at least an order of magnitude more innovation in the firearms accessory market than the actual firearms market.
Unless someone invents a radical new action or has a epiphany that makes every other firearm designer look like a drooling retard in one aspect or another, we're basically going to be using the guns we have today, with occasional refreshes and improvements, and have had for a long time for the foreseeable future until we can figure out a way to get batteries with power densities high enough to make laser guns or do the same with rail guns after fixing the rail durability problem, or just abolish infantry combat all together and make war a gamefied event where nerds controlling robots slaughter their physical avatars like it's a CounterStrike Match.
There have been dozens of future weapons programs for infantry small arms and most of them have failed because the prospective replacements are 1. Way too expensive/complicated for not enough improvements 2. Just not very good
Iterative, improvements of old designs, yada yada...
Magazines. That's the biggest improvement and change in firearms (handgun) design in the past 50 years, other than plastic. That's why you can get a springfield hellcat which holds 11+1 rounds of 9mm with a flush fit magazine in something smaller than a PPK (the standard of subcompacts 50 years ago). Reliable double stack magazine feeding was hardly a thing in the small handgun world 50 years ago, there were few double stack handguns and none of them had anywhere near the capacity for size of modern subcompacts. Why am I neglecting rifles? They're basically the same as they were 50 years ago minus the plastic, much smaller change in rifles than pistols.
But you can now pocket carry a gun that holds 12 rounds of 9x19, and it works. That was unheard of even 20 years ago, when the capacity/size king was the Kel Tec P11, the first of the modern "micro 9s", introduced in 1995.
If the SPEAR/M7/M8 were being made by SIG from 15 years ago, back when they still gave a damn about quality products and having a strong reputation, I think it would be a good rifle. The big issue holding the rifles back, and all SIG USA products, is they are being made by Cohen's SIG SAAR and not the Swiss SIG Sauer/SIG Arms or the early American SIG USA.
That being said, I think the next "big thing" in firearms design will be increasing performance in small, lightweight packages. Trying to get better range, velocity, penetration, and terminal performance out of a short barreled AR-sized package. We're already starting to see the early stages of it.
If the SPEAR/M7/M8 were being made by SIG from 15 years ago, back when they still gave a damn about quality products and having a strong reputation, I think it would be a good rifle. The big issue holding the rifles back, and all SIG USA products, is they are being made by Cohen's SIG SAAR and not the Swiss SIG Sauer/SIG Arms or the early American SIG USA.
Even if every rifle was flawless and lasted a million billion rounds, it's still a fundamentally flawed concept. Trying to fit a 10 lb battle rifle into the role and form factor of an M4 just isn't gonna work, and the XM8 is proof of this.
If the SPEAR/M7/M8 were being made by SIG from 15 years ago, back when they still gave a damn about quality products and having a strong reputation, I think it would be a good rifle.
There is a fundamental issue with the whole concept of the cartridge, and that isn't going away even if the gun was made by Holland & Holland. The issue with the M7/M8 is not that it's made by SIG USA, it's the stupid ass cartridge.
There is a fundamental issue with the whole concept of the cartridge, and that isn't going away even if the gun was made by Holland & Holland. The issue with the M7/M8 is not that it's made by SIG USA, it's the stupid ass cartridge.
A round that burns through a barrel in under 5k rounds is so stupid and expensive to run that you literally can't effectively train with it, due to broken fucking parts.
