American manufacturer rolling out 60 & 100 round AR-15 magazines

12/16/2010

SureFire, traditionally known as a manufacturer of illumination accessories, has announced today that it is releasing high-capacity 60- and 100-round aluminum magazines for .223/5.56 mm NATO AR-type rifles.

Dubbed the MAG5-60 and MAG5-100, the two new magazines are designed to give military operators the ability to stay in a firefight longer. According to SureFire, with a 4-second reload time, the current standard magazine allows soldiers to fire no more than 150 rounds in 30 seconds. The MAG5-60 increases that figure to 240 rounds, and the MAG5-100 to 293 rounds.

http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/surefire-high-capacity-magazines/

Looking at their website looks like there will be no restriction except to states that limit magazine capacity for civilians to order & own.

Wonder what will happen if some whack job ever goes on a shooting spree with one of these?

This is new how they are approaching this though. It is intriguing. I wonder if they will perform better than the magazine that failed in the shooting of the congresswoman causing him to retreat.

Thanks

hold 50-100 rounds. I believe they are called beta mags or beta drum mags.

Every time you propose to ban something---particularly if that something is among the most popular guns or magazines in the United States among lawful shooters---then you will see hedging against the small but nonzero chance of a ban passing. A lot of people got burned in 1994 (myself included) and won't make that mistake again.

You aren't even using...grammar.

I once heard an ex-East German border guard basically say that with an AK, you needed the entire 30 round magazine if you wanted to hit something. :D

Probably...but for the purpose of serving as a battle rifle the AK platform fills the accuracy requirement just fine. I own several various AK rifles, both semi and full auto, and I guarantee that any of them is accurate enough to engage enemy combatants at 200 yards and beyond. While the AR series rifles are indeed capable of amazing accuracy, this does not diminish the AK platform in any way for the role that it was created to fill, and when the cost of production is taken into account, it is truly a fine design. Simple, cheap, reliable and accurate enough for battle field use. Hard to argue with....


JW

(I still prefer the AR platform...the only interesting rifles are accurate rifles.)

I own a civilian AK-47 derivative (2002 model Romanian SAR-1), and it will keep every round in the magazine in a 12" circle at 200 yards, from a rest. Some examples will do somewhat better than that (6 to 8" groups at 200 yards) with good ammunition. The biggest impediment to shooting an AK well is the stubborn belief that they can't be shot well, hence the person shooting them doesn't bother with the basics of good shooting, e.g. breathing, sight alignment, NPOI if using a rest, and trigger press.

They aren't nearly as accurate as civilian AR-15's, but a lot of deer rifles aren't as accurate as AR-15's.

I'm just saying when you compare it to, say, an AR performing at 1-2 minute of angle, I don't see why there's such an attraction to the reputed reliability of the AK when you're sacrificing any ability to make a truly long distance shot. Also, bear in mind that I've heard that most of the civilian AK knockoffs are substantially more accurate than the "real" licensed production models, which makes sense.

Disclaimer: I own neither an AR nor an AK, so I don't really have a horse in this. I'm just talking in theoretical terms.

The best point of comparison for a 7.62x39mm AK would be .30-30 class rifles, such as the quintessential iron-sighted lever-action .30-30, which is comparable in terms of ballistics and accuracy. For a civilian .30-30 class rifle, there are very few instances in which you'd practically need to shoot at more than 200 or 250 yards. 7.62x39mm is not powerful enough to hunt deer with beyond 125 yards or so (if you use 1000 ft-lb as the energy cutoff for a humane kill of a deer-sized animal), and defensive use is almost always inside 100 yards and usually inside 25. If you truly need long-range shots, then you'd want to begin with a cartridge that has a flatter trajectory (like 5.45x39mm or 5.56x45mm/.223 Remington), and if you need power at range then you need to step up quite a bit in caliber anyway, which is why .308 and up rule that domain.

You also have to separate the caliber issue from the merits of the platform itself. The best comparison to the M16 is the AK-74M (5.45x39mm) or AK-101 (5.56x45mm NATO), rather than 7.62x39mm. By all accounts, the 5.45 and 5.56 AK's are much more accurate than the 7.62mm models, and they definitely shoot much flatter.

As far as the "why" question, the attraction of the AK is that it is a very economically priced, very reliable carbine that shoots very economical ammunition, yet is versatile enough to use for plinking, USPSA/3-gun type competition, home defense, and light hunting. It is also mechanically quite simple and is exceedingly durable.

I do like AR's, and if I had to choose one or the other I'd probably choose an AR, but the AK is a very, very good rifle when compared to a Winchester 94 or a Ruger Mini Thirty, especially when cost is a factor. The AR typically comes in at a much higher price point.


I doubt this is the case, only because a lot of civilian AK's (including mine) use milspec barrels, and until very recently many were built with actual used military barrels that came in as parts kits. So accuracy with the same ammunition should be the same. It is possible that the lack of a slant brake on many U.S. civilian models may cause a slight accuracy improvement, though.

I think the reputation for AK in accuracy may stem from the fact that U.S. forces have commonly faced (and easily beaten) poorly trained insurgent forces using either completely worn out AK's or bootleg copies made in a cave somewhere, and those weapons are often wielded by untrained individuals whose manual of arms seems to be "set selector to Auto, hold gun well below the line of sight, yank trigger, and pray for hits." If 30-year-old M16's with the rifling shot out were issued to people who think "firing from the hip" is an effective way to wield a firearm, the M16 would be equally inaccurate. I suspect that Third World ammunition may also be widely varying in quality.

In the hands of capable shooters (whether U.S. civilians in the case of non-automatic civilian market guns, or first-tier Russian military in the case of the real thing), and used with decent ammunition, the AK is quite a capable platform, IMO.

Here's my civvy AK, a basic Romanian SAR-1. It's a 2002 model (ban era), so it has a smooth muzzle instead of a brake, and no bayonet lug.

On semi, they are not the pinnacle of accuracy, but good enough to do the job if the user has been trained/practiced. IIRC, the East German guards weren't exactly highly trained and frequently less than motivated... YMMV.

he will melt his barrel.

The gas tube will fail LONG before the bbl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzfm4pYhIyY

As you will see, the plastic handguards are set alight, and the gas tube ruptures, and the heat in the chamber starts to "cook off" a couple of rounds.

This weapon would still work, though, it would just no longer be automatic/auto-loading and would require manual charging before each shot, something that isn't exactly convenient on an AR/M series rifle.

nt

The kind they had years ago , not these new ones promising to cause a paradigm shift and local extinctions .
Hell I bet he would have been happy with modern repeating arms and 10 round mags .

We have a "common sense" mag limit. Thirty one is the number. Since that's the standard capacity of an issue GI magazine it passes the smell test. Of course that kind of common sense isn't so common in some places.

If you want to shoot higher capacities then you can go the NFA route with a full-auto. Problem is Congress arbitrarily shut off the NFA registry so it's only the wealthy who can afford it. Go figure.

I think it would be a bit too heavy to be practical, IMHO.

if they get the price down a bit these will sell.

with no associated bans on adjustable stocks, handgrips, and other irrelevant miscellany, it probably wouldn't have been particularly controversial, as long as it ended there. Now, though, after they've been pushing bans on even Civil-War-era magazines, I don't think even a pistol-20/rifle-30 limit would fly, because of the certainty that the fundamentalists would subsequently push to reduce that limit.

The holy war to institute an unreasonable 10-round cap is only going to increase sales of the really big magazines, IMO.

I only use factory Glock mags in my Glock 23, and I replaced the mag springs with Wolff springs. Even the factory Glock mags tend not to consistently feed, IMHE.

The drums are also a royal bitch to load.

Hi cap Scherer Glock mags, so I've read, are among the few that work reasonably well.

and I doubt a whole lot of gun owners will either.

They ain't worried about payin the bill if it's put on a credit card.

I remember thinking after Virginia Tech that it might form an impediment to mass shootings if it were made illegal to buy firearms using a credit card--cash or debit only--seeing as how Cho died with all his gear in effect unpaid for.