#Slovakia

The Slovak Republic has announced plans to procure 5,000 M4A1 carbines from the US. The $17 million procurement will be financed through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), which ‘enables eligible partner nations to purchase US defense articles, services, and training’ through either a US government loan or a grant. The Slovakian Ministry of Defense also shared the announcement in their social media, explaining the benefits of the M4A1. Announcements also noted the carbines would be procured from Colt.

Gun law, gun culture, and gun businesses from overseas never cease to fascinate me simply because they are somehow thriving in the fairly unfriendly territory when it comes to firearms. Falco Holsters is a holster manufacturing company born out of the rich hunting culture of the country of Slovakia and although they originally started out just making leather falconry gloves, the company has rapidly grown to be one of the largest European holsters manufacturers featuring designs and styles for virtually any handgun on the current market. Our guest Katarina also explains to us today some of the unique gun laws that Slovakia has (such as their Shall Issue CCW laws), and how some of the hardships we’re experiencing over here in the USA are shared by the firearms owners of Slovakia.

Welcome back to our Photo Of The Day! If you haven’t shot the back-to-basics VZ-58 rifle, I can tell you that it sends the brass just as pictured here – kind of straight up, and with brute force to a place far, far away. Don’t try to bump fire one with a cap on, because the cap will only catch the flying brass and direct it to your face. Don’t ask me how I know, and follow us for more advice like this.

My first contact with ZVS was with their Shotgun ammunition, as the winner of the first IPSC World Championship in Hungary 2012 was sponsored by them. I used another brand and let’s say there was room for some improvement between how my Molot Vepr shotgun and my ammunition behaved together, so I looked in envy for other solutions.

Slovenian  Arex and Slovakian  Grand Power have almost simultaneously announced that they are developing competition versions of their handguns. The Grand Power’s pistol is shown on the top image of this article. It is called X-Calibur Match. The Arex’s pistol is based on their Rex pistol design and it will be called Alpha (see the image below). Both pistols are in the prototyping stage.

I’m a long term loyal customer for proven platforms. As many of our readers know, I have shot Glock’s for years. The Austrian wonder pistols are a fine example of what can be done with rampant simplification, but they are not the be all and end all of handguns. In fact, some of the weaknesses of the platform have kept me on the lookout for the next best thing.

In a recent announcement, the U.S. Government has released a 7 million dollar award modification notice for Colt Defense’s over 35 million dollar contract to provide M4 and M4A1s in the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. This modification notice specifically mentions the countries of Georgia, Lebanon, Iraq, Slovakia, Pakistan, and Bahrain.This latest modification tacks on another 7 million dollars for the additional countries, specifically mentioning the number of 8,730 M4/M4A1 carbines. The numbers bring this to around $800 per carbine, but we assume the actual cost per rifle is much lower with the extra cost being taken on by other equipment.

As a gun scribe, I have been blessed with exposure to a large portion of the market. With various shooting events conducted on a regular basis, my itchy trigger finger gets quite the scratching, but often enough its shooting the same platforms with little tweaks. While I enjoy watching and being a part of the inexorable march of progress and product improvement, often enough the larger domestic brands and larger international brands overshadow various platforms.

After World War II, the nations of the world retired to lick their wounds and rebuild, but their arms engineers also began thinking about the next war. The war have brought forth a storm of new technologies and inventions, and one of the most significant in the field of small arms was the finally mature assault rifle in the form of the Nazi-developed “Sturmgewehr”, and its intermediate 7.92x33mm Kurzpatrone cartridge. One nation that took notice of this new weapon and its ammunition was the newly reconstituted Czechoslovakia. That nations engineers quickly took to copying and improving the 7.92 Kurz caliber, producing by the early 1950s a short-lived but unique round called the 7.62x45mm Kr.52, or more popularly the 7.62×45 Czech. The 7.62×45’s projectile was a near copy of the Kurzpatrone’s stubby, steel-cored one, but its case was much longer, while being slightly thinner, and having a greater internal volume. This gave the Czech round an additional 250 ft/s muzzle velocity versus the German 7.92×33 when fired from the barrel of the rifle that was designed alongside it, the strange but wonderful vz. 52.

Thanks to my friend Jan Lučanský of Laugo Arms for telling me about this company. Originally he was remarking on the Hungarian Steiner Bark that I posted earlier. The Bark9 is actually a Slovakian firearm. It uses a Scorpion EVO3 fire control group and mag well.

Rafael of Eagle Imports brought a plethora of pistols to Big 3 East. I will be honest, I did not think much of Bersa until I got to see them first hand. I relegated Bersa handguns to something just higher than Hi-Point and Kel-Tec pistols. Inexpensive and they work but nothing stellar to get me excited. How wrong I was.

Thanks to one of our readers, we’ve come across a company in Europe that makes bullets in a variety of colors, 26 to choose from, to be exact. The company is called ARES, and is based in the small town of Nitrianska Streda, Slovakia. They make lead rounds, from a machine casting process, then either use a waxing process, or special sort of paint, to coat the bullets in whatever color you pick from their choice of colors, which range from light yellows or pinks, to darker blacks, or blues. Their page is in Slovak, so I’m not sure if they have any customers in the U.S. or else they might have an English option to read and place orders. So it looks like for now, their clientele is mainly in their home country of Slovakia. As far as I know, there isn’t an equivalent service in the United States that offers this sort of variety of choice when it comes to bullet colors.

The vz. 58 is a rifle well-known for being easily mistaken for – but totally different from – an AK. Everything down to the locking mechanism, fire control group, and operating mechanism is different from the famous Kalashnikov, despite appearances. In fact, the vz. 58 rifle was a huge achievement for the relatively small country of Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), as they had produced a weapon every bit as good as its contemporaries from the superpowers. Certainly, a gun’s merits can’t be boiled down to a simple mud test… But it wouldn’t hurt to see how it does anyway, right?

Slovakia is overhauling its pistol inventory in the biggest arms deal in the nation’s history. Almost 50,000 handguns are to be delivered to the armed forces, police, and other government departments, in a deal worth $25 million USD. Four new models of pistol are to be delivered, including the Glock 17 Gen 4, CZ 2075D RAMI P, CZ-07 Compact, and full-size CZ-09 handguns. The different models of handguns were adopted to meet the requirements of the different agencies in Slovakia. Jane’s reports:

An observant forum poster, warhawke, noticed that “new” STI GP6 pistol bore a striking resemblance to the Slovakian K-100 Grand Power pistol. They are in fact one of the same, although there is no mention of the pistols’ heritage on the STI website ( here or here).