#Fnc

At SHOT Show 2024, Pindad, renowned for their replication of military-grade firearms, touted the latest in their offering, specifically the civilian versions of the Indonesian SS1 rifle and PM-1 SMG, clones of the famous FNC and PM-12 respectively. The Pindad booth at the show became a center of interest, stirring excitement among not only the military technical equipment enthusiasts but also ordinary audiences.

Today we take a look at the exercise Swenex 19, as the Amphibious Battalion in Sweden shows off their skills.

The Cold War is famous as the squaring off of two superpowers: The United States, and the Soviet Union, and their duel-by-proxy in Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas. The standard rifles of each side, as well, became proxies: On the Soviet side, the famous AK-47 (more properly AK and AKM), and on the US side the M14, FAL, and later the M16. As early as the late 1950s, however, the AK’s success led to it being copied by NATO member nations, and perhaps the very first of these was the Madsen LAR.

The redheaded stepchild of the SCAR contract was Robinson Arms’ XCR, an interesting design from a small company in Salt Lake City, UT. A rifle that is part AR-15, part FNC, and part noodle, the XCR represents an attractive looking and interesting might-have been, and now exists as a small player in a big market (although, as Ed knows, it’s big in Canada!).

According to several sources, the Police in Hamburg (Germany), are getting new body armor, helmets, armored cars and HK MP5s and Haenel CR223s.

It’s no good to discuss how firearms work without also giving the context surrounding the firearms themselves. With that said, let’s talk about the AR-15, its copycats, competitors, and relatives. Together these rifles share space under the loose umbrella of black rifles, a term which references the use of lighter and more durable black polymer gunstocks in place of traditional wood, something that became common from the 1960s onward in military firearms design. Today the term simply means any modern military rifle, or any rifle patterned after a modern military rifle, the two most common of these by far being the AR-15 and AK types. For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the AR-15, but much of what we’ll talk about will be applicable to any black rifle.

The FN FNC is the standard service rifle of Belgium, and the gun that Al Pacino once used to shoot Tom Sizemore with in the face. This piston operated, rotating bolt weapon is an example of how the AK’s piston and bolt arrangement can be paired excellently with ergonomics preferred by Western nations.

Before 1989, the marketplace for semi-automatic rifles in the USA was much broader and offered consumers many interesting choices. Some 25 years later things have recovered a bit, but still there are many designs from abroad that enthusiasts in the USA simply cannot get ahold of due to arbitrary rulings.
In this list, we take a look at five guns that are legal to own, buy, and sell in the US, but are banned from import.

Debris testing has been done to death. Here at TFB, we’ve covered mud and sand tests conducted by  InRange TV, Guns & Ammo TV, and the Military Arms Channel on everything from the AK,  AR-15 to the Vz. 58. So what about ice, instead?

In October, I traveled out to see my co-writer Alex C. to collect data on the weights of different long guns and some of their components. Over that weekend, I weighed 58 rifles and submachine guns, and numerous magazines, bolts, bolt carriers, and other miscellaneous items. The purpose of this was not only to collate a general list of the weights of different weapons, but to be able to enhance the accuracy of a previous spreadsheet I’d produced showing the loaded “combat” weights of different rifles; that being available at this link.

The Ak5 is the Swedish military’s variant of the FNC carbine. The “C” variant is the short-barreled carbine model, now widely used by the Swedish Army. Shorter still, though, is this bullpup conversion of the Ak5, shown below: