Ian and Karl have put another rifle through its paces over at InRange TV; this time a Masterpiece Arms MPAR-556. The MPAR-556 is based on the Leader T2 rifle, an Australian design by British designer Charles St. George. Like the Leader, it uses a large amount of stampings, as well as an AR-18-derived bolt carrier and gas system, with St. George’s patented triangular bolt head. First, Ian, Karl, and several other competitors ran the MPAR-556 through their local 2-gun course (differing from 3-gun in that it excludes shotguns). The video of the rifle’s performance is available on Full30.com.

Following up on that, they posted a complete video review of their experiences with the MPAR-556. Unfortunately, their experiences were not highly positive.

Forgotten Weapons has done overviews of the original Leader rifle before, including running it through the same event, though a different course of fire, two years ago:

Ian also posted this field strip and reassembly video a year before that:

And finally, back in SHOT 2012, Ian interviewed Charles St. George:

Interestingly, while the MPAR-556 performed much more poorly than the original Leader T2 rifle, both suffered from lost e-clips on the exact same fire control pin. In light of this, perhaps a different fire control pin retaining method would be advisable.