Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Gun Reviews - How Not To

Here's a review of the Just Right Carbine. Hat's off to the fellow for going out in 11 degree weather to record his day at the range. The JRC is an AR-ish PCC that takes Glock magazines, like a Kel-Tec Sub 2000 in Mag Pul clothing. O.K. good start.

No muzzle velocity data. He has some nice gear, but no chrony? He mentions that the trigger is rough. Very rough. Also the mag release is located right at the center of gravity where it's most comfortable to hold the gun with the left hand.

Accuracy: Using the red dot sight and 10 rounds to determine holdover, it scores rather less than 50% hits on a 24" square target at 300 yards. This does not inspire much confidence, notwithstanding that those 9mm rounds aren't going to be traveling very fast at that distance anyway. 24" at 300 yards is 8 MOA which is mediocre at best. Next time put some paper up at 50 or 100 yards and show us your best group.

Price: MSRP is not mentioned. It is a blowback gun in spite of the AR-like construction so shouldn't be too expensive.

I like PCC's, they let you do all the carbine-y stuff without costing $1/round to pull the trigger. It would be nice to know a bit more about this one.

2 comments:

R said...

> I like PCC's, they let you do all
> the carbine-y stuff without costing
> $1/round to pull the trigger.


I don't know where you're getting the "$1/rd" for rifle ammo, especially with all the money you save by re-loading.

5.56mm : about $8 per 20 rounds = $0.40 / rd

.40 SW : about $15 per 50 rounds = $0.30 / rd


As for being able to "do all the carbine-y stuff", a friend of mine who as an Israeli tank commander in the Sinai during the Yom Kippur war told me that

"When I enlisted they gave us Uzis
with folding stocks, Comfy but totally
useless against mid and long range
targets. Few months later my unit got
the long M-16. Great fire power and
accuracy but was a big problem inside
the tank. So obviously we kept them
outside the turret. For whatever reason
they developed a tendency to get lost
during training... My unit was quite
lucky to get the collapsible stock
version of the M-16. That one was great!"


Note that the pistol-caliber Uzis were regarded as "totally useless against mid and long range targets." You should have kept your Leader Dynamics T2 Mk V rifle instead of trading it for the Hi-Point.

Because you're only saving 10 cents a round by shooting .40 SW instead of 5.56mm, but you're giving up a lot in terms of range and terminal ballistics. And 10-round magazines for the Hi-Point cost twice as much as the ubiquitous 30-round AR-15 magazines for the Leader Dynamics rifle.

R said...

> No muzzle velocity data.
> He has some nice gear, but no chrony?

So what?

That's going to vary from load to load anyway -- and even vary by lot to lot of the same load. If I want to know the velocity of Load X from a barrel of Length Y, I can look it up elsewhere.

In fact, if somebody thinks that things like "muzzle velocity" and "foot-pounds of energy" is worth mentioning in a gun review, I usually take that as a sign that the reviewer is a person to be ignored.