Faxon Firearms has been generating quite a lot of buzz on the net with their ARAK upper in the last year or so, and I was thoroughly excited that Bob Faxon showed up at the Blue August Gun Conference with several of his company’s toys for us to beat on.

Bob Faxon has a very impressive resume. He owns an Aerospace outfit that takes up 130,000 square feet and he makes components for bombs, heavy ordnance, nuclear plants, and he even has some of his company’s parts on Mars! When the joke was made that he was jumping over a dollar to grab a quarter by getting into small arms production, he laughed and in a moment of sincerity said that he sought another revenue source so that he could keep his machines running and his employees employed. To me this speaks volumes of the man’s character.

Bob telling us about his operation.

Bob went to the SHOT Show to see what wasn’t being done to the AR platform and became discouraged when he had a hard time finding an answer. A moment of clarity came when he realized that an upper (not a firearm in the US) could potentially give the user all the benefits of the AK design with the finesse of the AR platform.

Of course barrels are quick and easy to change:

The barrel extension has been replaced with a more traditional trunnion block:

Bob also added an extra ejector pin. When the room laughed at how the bolt face resembled an angry man, Bob remarked that they have nicknamed it the “get the shell out of here” bolt:

Shouldering the ARAK is identical to other ARs and most people felt right at home:

Bob brought plenty of calibers and we were all eager to hit the range.

The whole crew got a chance to run the ARAK-21 uppers and we all agreed that they shoot great:

Now personally I was drawn to the 7.62×39 version because I like how cheap the ammo is. All in all, I really enjoyed it!

We were all sharing a few targets between us, but while rapid firing we were able to land our shot were we wanted them. That said, I would like to see a legitimate accuracy test.

All in all the ARAK system is unique and I can’t wait until this unique system becomes prolific.