17 Comments

  1. I’m not much for the snark, but here’s what concerns me about bullpup type rifles:

    How many Kabooms do we read about in the course of a year?

    Granted, it doesn’t happen often…it’s downright rare when you think about it…but it DOES happen.

    How many people are seriously injured in these incidents? I’ve seen AR-15’s with the entire upper reciever blown to pieces and the magazine blown apart, where the person firing the rifle stepped back after it was over and said “darn, that was scary”.

    Now…move the chamber back to right underneath your cheekbone and the magazine against your chest.

    When (not if) one of these rifles goes kaboom…what’s going to happen to the operator?

    I think the entire bullpup concept is an unsafe design. Yes, the shorter package is convenient, but I won’t compromise my safety for convenience.

    My just my 20,000 micro-dollars

  2. if i bash the rifle before even seeing it can i get one as evaluation sample? apparently Sailorcurt didn’t read the interview as the whole, what happens if the rifle blows up thing was discussed.

  3. “Free cleaning with each warranty service visit.”
    “Lifetime warranty — your lifetime, not the rifle.”
    “It’s supposed to be deadly! Duh… it’s a gun!”
    “So, what does your widow… er… wife look like?”
    and Caleb’s new go-to line:
    “What’s wrong? Are you chicken? BARACK BOCK BOCK BOCK!”

  4. OK. Here’s some snark:

    apparently Sailorcurt didn’t read the interview as the whole, what happens if the rifle blows up thing was discussed.

    Yes, because we all know that a company representative discussing the product that his company manufactures could NEVER be wrong (or misleading for that matter) about what MAY happen if their product malfunctioned.

    I wonder: Did they actually test their gun with overpressure rounds to see what would happen? Or are they making assumptions about what would happen? What if the gun failed not due to overpressure rounds, but due to poor quality steel in the construction or a manufacturing defect? Regardless of the claims of manufacturers, these defects do occur, and their denials notwithstanding, some of the catastrophic failures that have happened over the years have been a direct result of them.

    I wasn’t dissing this particular gun, I was dissing the design in general. I don’t think it’s safe. That’s my opinion. If you like them and feel safe with your face perched directly on top of the chamber in which an explosion occurs every time you pull the trigger, more power to you. If they send me a sample for testing, I’ll forward it directly to you. I don’t want it.

  5. Military ammo being what it is, wouldn’t the users of the FAMAS and the AUG have lots of experience with KB’s in Bullpup’s?

    And that’s ignoring the many bullpups in the American civilian market, with tons of quality and not so quality ammo available in our civilian market place.

    There’s bullpup conversion stocks as well.

    In place of fear mongering, research might be worth doing.

  6. Fearmongering:

    “THESE GUNS ARE UNSAFE, THEY WILL EXPLODE IN YOUR FACE AND KILL YOU!!!!!11111!!11111ONE1!!!”

    Expressing an opinion:

    I think the entire bullpup concept is an unsafe design.”

    “I don’t think it’s safe. That’s my opinion.” [emphasis added]

    I know the nuances are subtle, but surely you can spot the difference.

  7. Haven’t the British been using a bull-pup for quite some time? I think the Austrians are as well (the AUG).

    I wonder what their rates of KB!s are, and what the results are. I’d imagine that if there were a serious issue with this, the Brits at least would have run into it.

    That being said, I’m not sure I’d really want a bull pup anyway, though the RFB target version looks interesting.

  8. In regards to the SA-80, you’d need to get it to shoot first before you could get it to kB!

    In all seriousness, I’m genuinely curious about the RFB. I think a drawback to the bullpup is that the reloading procedure is clumsy and awkward and pretty much guarantees that the troopie is going to spend some time looking straight down or at his armpit.

    But in a DMR type rifle, blinding fast mag changes aren’t a requirement, and if the RFB can live up to the accuracy and reliablity claims, its size will be a big advantage.

    Kel-Tec has some talented engineers working in the R&D department. If they can get some equal talent in the QA area, we might have something here.

  9. Having literally shot one of their .40 S&W pistol caliber carbines into pieces, I am less than confident in the engineers at Kel-Tec. It’s not that they don’t have interesting ideas, it’s that I don’t think they have ANY idea how to execute those idea.

    Just because I can close my eyes and see a medium framed polymer revolver that says “Glock” on the side doesn’t mean I can actually MAKE it.

  10. As I clearly stated in my original comment, Kabooms are not a common occurrence. I’ve been shooting all my life and have never experienced one.

    But that doesn’t mean I dismiss the possibility out of hand.

    In my life, I’ve also never been the victim of a violent crime…in fact, if you’re not a drug dealer or gang banger, the chances of being a victim of violent crime are quite small. So, by that logic, I guess we shouldn’t be advocating the everyday use of defensive firearms because the odds are you’ll never need it right?

    Relatively speaking, how many bullpup style firearms are in use?

    If the number of kabooms that occur with rifles every year is already very small, and a very small percentage of rifles are bullpups (and most of them are relatively new as the bullpup design is a relatively new concept in and of itself)…it stands to reason that kabooms in bullpups would be few and far between, statistically speaking.

    The fact that we don’t hear about them every day is irrelevant to my point. We don’t hear about ANY rifle kabooms every day. A handful every year is all I hear about. Out of MILLIONS of rifles in circulation.

    I don’t believe that bullpups are any more susceptible to exploding than any other design. If they are, in fact, constructed more robustly than conventional designs they may actually be less susceptible to such an event. But does that make it impossible?

    I’m not some cowardly “live in a bubble” type, but I do believe in reasonable (to me) precautions. I ride a motorcycle, I’ve never been involved in a motorcycle crash and I am supremely confident in my riding skills, but I always wear a helmet, even when riding in states where it is not required. That doesn’t mean I believe helmets should be legally required…I don’t…but I choose to wear one because it seems prudent to me.

    If I’m ever going to experience a kaboom…unlikely at best, but the possibility exists…I want the explosion of metal as far from my body as practical. Placing the point of detonation right under my face and placing the magazine (which almost always violently disintegrates in such an event) virtually right against my chest, just doesn’t seem prudent to me.

    It’s a feeling, an opinion, an instinct. It is not based on verifiable data or research. Unless the verifiable data and research can demonstrate absolutely that such an event is IMPOSSIBLE with a bullpup, I will stand by my belief that it is an unsafe design and I won’t use one.

    You are free to disagree and I won’t even malign you for it. Please show me the same courtesy.

  11. Of course we’d love to see a good destructive test on the RFB, forcing a KABOOM to see if that thick covering of metal could contain the explosion. It looks like an easy block to me, that rear piece of metal holding the pieces in, but I’d like to see it in slow motion.

    Still, I’ve got my order in with my dealer to get me one!

  12. I wasn’t aware that fear mongering was an activity that excluded opinions.

    I thought that people stating their fears are almost always stating their opinions.

    I wasn’t very diplomatic in my comment, but harping on the problems of KB’s without data to back up the fear is pretty silly to me, and triggers my grumpy reflex.

    Probably because I’m a Glock shooter:)

  13. Well look what I started. Just so everyone’s clear, when we say “forward ejection” on the RFB, I’m not talking about a tried and true method like you see on certain machine guns, I’m talking about the fact that the chamber and those good ejecty bits are completely enclosed in the gun, and the brass comes leaking out of a little tube at the end. It’s a bad thing(tm) waiting to happen.

    Also, the next person that gets all butthurt because we’re having fun at the expense of an untested product from a company with a history of sketchy QC is going to get made fun of.

  14. It would seem as though Matt at Kel-Tec already has first-hand experience concerning kabooms in RFBs.

    Granted, his experience does not answer the magazine-turned-into-shrapnel problem, but it does answer the explosion-under-your-cheek question, at least partially.

  15. @ Salorcurt “I wonder: Did they actually test their gun with overpressure rounds to see what would happen?”

    Are you just silly? there is a good story he included about a box of proofing rounds being far to over powered and the results. But if you choose not to read it I can’t help you with that 😛
    I am looking forward to my new RFB when it comes in 🙂

    Back on topic:
    The Kel Tek RFB Carbine: Hunter quality accuracy and power with Civilian defense compactness. If you have just one rifle, this is your baby.

Comments are closed.