#Breaking

This morning, August 14th, 2020, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down California’s law against magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Those who have been following this case for some time may recall that back in March 2019 the Honorable Judge Benitez temporarily struck down California Penal Code section 32310. This is the section of California law that relates to magazine capacity limits. Specifically, it makes it illegal to have any “large-capacity magazine”.  Punishments ranged from a $100 fine per magazine up to a year in county jail. That ruling resulted in “Freedom Week”, also known as the California Airlift or the Great California Magazine Rush, before the ruling was stayed pending a hearing by the 9th Circuit.

Rest in Peace Interim Combat Service Rifle, we hardly knew thee. The Army’s ICSR program has joined the much more ambitious Advanced Combat Rifle program of the 1980s and the more recent ill-fated Individual Carbine program in the annals of US Army rifle procurement history.

It looks like Smith & Wesson is planning to throw down with the Glock 19 in some good ol’ fashioned fisticuffs. The brand new M2.0 Compact seems to check just about every box that the Glock 19 does, AND it has more features than the Austrian wonder pistol.

SIG Sauer – recent winner of the US Army’s Modular Handgun System competition – is being sued by an officer from the Stamford, Connecticut Police Department Special Response Team over an incident he claims was the result of a defect in their P320 handgun. In the suit, the officer alleges that he dropped the pistol – still in its holster – while he was loading equipment into the back of his vehicle, which caused it to discharge a bullet into his leg. From the Connecticut Law Tribune:

It is finally official: The SIG P320 will definitely be the US Army’s next service handgun. Soon after the January announcement of SIG Sauer’s win of the half-billion-dollar MHS contract, gunmaker Glock filed a protest on the decision with the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO had until Monday, June 5, to make a decision on whether to hold up the contract or allow the program to continue with procurement of the SIG handgun. Today, the news is out: The GAO has rejected Glock’s protest, and the MHS program can now move forward with procurement of the SIG M17, according to a story from Army Times.

Russian gun magazine “ Kalashnikov” has published this image on one of their social media pages. It is taken in Beretta facilities. Supposedly these are the upper and lower receivers of a new Beretta submachine gun or pistol caliber carbine. Unfortunately, there are no details available yet. However, let’s take a close-up look at different portions of the receivers and try to find out or guess what features it will have.

Heckler & Koch is building a US factory in Georgia, a welcome surprise for US gun buyers. The German arms manufacturer is building a 23 million dollar facility in Columbus, Georgia to built pistols, sport, and hunting guns. At this time we are unaware of exactly what lines are to be produced in the new stateside facility, I assume that it will be models that were previously affected by import restrictions.

Taser International has renamed themselves Axon. The Scottsdale, Arizona company, which has a monopoly on “projectile conductive energy devices” used by law enforcement worldwide, has decided to switch focus from arming law enforcement to monitoring them with their Axon line of Body Cameras and their Evidence.com subscription service for law enforcement organizations.

Our friends over at Maglula sent over a notification that their excellent loaders have been counterfeited. Below is the release they sent over, sadly we do not have any photos of a fake loader to show you. Your best defense is to buy from a quality retailer until the folks at Maglula can sort everything out.

Dimensions

In a move that will define Army small arm procurement for decades, the Department of Defense has just announced that they have selected Sig Sauer to produce a “Modular Handgun System” for Army warfighters. The new handgun will replace the current M9 sidearm and is the culmination of over five years of testing and trials between several manufacturers.

According to an as of yet uncorroborated report from the French publication RETEX MAG, the next French rifle will be a variant of the German-made Heckler & Koch HK416. The report cites notices sent out to the five participants in the French Army’s AIF (Arme Individuelle du Futur – Future Individual Weapon) program, which allegedly called the contest a win for the Rottweil-based gunmaker. From RETEX’s Facebook page:

Our friends at All Outdoor.com report that just recently the ATF sent out their monthly explosives industry newsletter detailing a new take on the legalities regarding transporting “wetted” nitrocellulose, a compound used in the production of smokeless powder, stating that wetting the nitrocellulose no longer made it a non-explosive and it would be subject to increased regulation.

The US Army announced today that it is advancing the Modular Handgun System program ahead of its schedule. Due to pressure from Chief of Staff Milley, and a lack of entrants in the competition, the Army is dropping all solicitations for the existing 9x19mm NATO cartridge and focusing on the .40 S&W round. Further, program manager Colonel Scott Armstrong said to the press that only three packages submitted to the PEO Soldier office were complete enough to advance to the next phase of testing and evaluation:

Colt’s exit from bankruptcy has hit a snag: The owners of the company, Sciens Capital Management have defaulted on a $15 million funding commitment to Colt Defense LLC, as part of the company’s exit from bankruptcy. The private equity company agreed to pay the money to help Colt meet its commitments to its lenders, but failed to actually provide the money within the deadline.  Nasdaq.com reports: