Manual Action Lever Release (MALR) rifles gets a come-back in the new 2019 IPSC Rifle rule book.

You may laugh at this division, but remember that some countries have banned semi-automatic firearms. I am thinking of the United Kingdom in particular, but there are a few others (unfortunately).

In the First Rifle World Shoot 2017 there were about 50 people in the Manual Open Division.

These types of rifles were previously approved under the Manual Action Open Division, but as the definitions changed they were phased out unless you wanted to shoot manual style versus Semi Autos and lose big time.

Firstly, let’s look at the full list of divisions in IPSC Rifles, and where goes what and what’s allowed and not.

The 2019 RIFLE COMPETITION RULES – JANUARY 2019 EDITION.

The IPSC definitions between manual and manual action lever release are:

A Manual Action type is defined as a firearm where extraction of a spent case is caused entirely by a competitor’s physical manipulation. Rifles which operate fully or partially by way of gas, blowback or inertia do not qualify as Manual Action.

versus:

Manual Action Lever Release is defined as a firearm where extraction of a spent case, together with re-cocking the action, may be caused by way of gas, blowback or inertia, but which requires a competitor’s physical manipulation of a release lever to manually prepare the firearm for a new discharge by chambering a new round.

Hopefully this will fuel Rifle Shooting and IPSC Rifle competition in United Kingdom and other countries.

Unfortunately it looks like the UK Government is trying to ban these types of rilfes as well in an Offensive Weapons Bill. Source It is a never ending story.

My conclusion is that the new MALR division in IPSC Rifle is not going to be successful. We will see in the upcoming World Shoot 2019 in Sweden, but I think only a few competitors will chose these type of rifles.

The Southern Gun company Ltd. offers a Lever Release .223 Remington in case you want to check a sample rifle out.

At about 5 200 USD, they aren’t exactly cheap, but I guess it comes down to the limited volumes that they (presumably) build. There may be other suppliers that can offer MALR rifles cheaper, or people can build their own but I am guessing there will be very limited interest.

You may also have noticed that the old Manual Action Standard now allows real sized magazines – that is good news!