I have my own story about the cool kids and their early variant models. This happened in the 80’s while I was in Israel. Some of the Spec Op guys and even some of the Para’s were having the armorers cut down their barrel lengths and tweaking the gas tubes to have a carbine that could be used in house clearing and at other very up-close, personal and bad breath distances. They worked but had a horrible flaw, get people killed kind of flaw… I’ll come back to this. Now when the cool kids saw these they just had to have one. It started with the senior officers and quickly made it’s way down the ranks to even platoon leaders that had connections and the chuff to carry one. They had become “the” status symbol for the cool kids to be seen carrying around.

And now for the fatal flaw. A few border hoppers (not Mexicans looking for work) had cut the fence and were on their way to a community in the north of the country. The first respondents consisted of five guys, 3 regular Joe’s and 2 cool kids. They were able to locate the bad guys and got into a pretty intense firefight that was not decided until another full squad of border guards arrived. Unfortunately one of the cool kids lost his life. What came out in the after action report was that the cool kids with their cut down rifles could not hit shit. Even at very short distances, like 25 meters kind of short. Each new cool kid batch of rifles that were being cut down and fiddled together were getting shorter and shorter, with some even cut down to 10 inches or less. This was before all ballistic studies into the proper way to cut them down, they were just being cut down. The jihadi’s realized that one of the cool kids could not hit shit and over ran his position, and the other cool kid who was supposed to be providing cover for his friend… well, he couldn’t hit dick either and was forced to take cover while the others could engage and hold them up until more good guys arrived. It sucked all the way around because it did not have to happen. I would love to be able to say that this kid losing his life created a great awaking that put an end to this kind of weapon modification with the need to be like the high speed – low drag kind of guys, but this kind of nonsense still goes on today…

I still remember this event like it was just last week. I guess that is one of the reasons I am not real big on modifying firearms and really enjoy seeing originals like this, even if it is put together from several donor rifles! I have prattled on way to much.

Munro