The Election-Gun-Buying-Mania does not appear to be purely an American phenomenon. The black market in India have seen prices for guns double since before the general election. The arms dealers claim the spike in demand is attributed to the various political factions arming themselves. The Telegraph of India reports:
He said each round of bullet fetches Rs 150 to Rs 200, pipe-guns are Rs 1,000 a piece, and single-shotters between Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000. “There is good demand during elections and both the CPM and the Congress buy them. That is why we have almost doubled the prices now. We test the fitness of each piece we sell, if a bullet turns out to be dud, we return half the money charged through the linkman,” he said.
Nice of them to return half the cost of any dud ammunition! One US Dollar buys about 50 Indian rupees.
The first phase of the general election began in mid April and will end mid May. There are an estimated to be 714 million voters.
The American Tactical Imports / German Sport Guns Kalashnikov has finally arrived. The Kalashnikov, endorsed by General Kalashnikov himself, is a AK-47 patterned rifle chambered in .22 Long Rifle.
An American model holding a German made copy of the iconic Soviet rifle … oh the irony
Two models are available, synthetic or wood, with either with 10 or 24 round magazine. They have an overall length of 34.5″ (an inch longer than the original wood stocked Russian AK-47) and a barrel length of 16.5″. Click to expand the photos:
Synthetic model.
Wooden model 24 round magazine.
Wooden model 10 round magazine.
It was rumored that the wooden stock would be wood-looking plastic, but it is real, and looks really nice. The gas system is defiantly fake, it is a blowback operated rifle that requires high velocity .22 ammunition to cycle. You can see in the above photo that the 10 round magazine has the same AK-like size as the 24 round magazine, which is a nice touch. It appears to be compatible with the AK side mount for optics.
The MSRP is $549 for the synthetic model and $569 for the wood. I think this will be very popular rifle.
The Tuffy is a new single shot youth shotgun chambered in .410. It features a thumbhole stock that can store five rounds, and has a viewing window for checking how many rounds are stored.
Two models are available, one in stainless, the other in matte blue. Both has 18.5″ barrels and weight 3 lbs. The MSRP is $172 (I think this is for the blue version).
The first Rossi I shot was a .22 / . 410 matched pair. They are really neat guns and an ideal inexpensive candidate for teaching children shot to shoot.
The RCI XRAIL (Roth Auto Index Loader) is a auto index loader magazine extension that can expand a tubular shotgun magazine to hold up either 14 rounds (compact version) or 23 rounds (full version).
This video shows the XRAIL mounted on a Benelli M2 Tactical. The benelli magazine appears to be shortened and the gun can now hold a total of 26 rounds.
Now I will be honest with y’all, I don’t actually know what an “auto index loader” is. This is how I imagine the system may work:
* Each of those tubes are a magazine.
* Each of those magazines feeds into the shotgun magazine.
* Once a magazine is depleted it rotates.
* The final magazine contains a spring long enough to feed the shells that are in the shotgun’s magazine.
Because I enjoy making you suffer by awful drawings, here is a graphical representation. The blue box represents the shotgun magazine. The red boxes represents the XRAIL magazines. In this example the shotgun magazine holds three rounds while the XRAIL has three “magazines”, with two holding two shells, and the third a spring.
First two shots
3rd and 4th shot.
Last three shots
I have watched the above video frame by frame and there is seems to be some additional things happening during the magazine rotation. Maybe I am completely wrong … in which case I would have patented my above idea and not blogged about it
The system will be able to work on multiple guns. From what I have seen on youtube Benelli and Remington autoloaders work with the XRAIL. I don’t see why this system could not be adapted to work on pump action shotguns, aside from the fact that if would have to be mounted quite far forward.
A very interesting product. Hopefully it will come to market soon (and probably a video game as well, when game designers get word of it)
