The Downside of bullpup rifles.(one of them)

ztunelover said:
Not to be a #### but I would trust my life to a firearms giant like FN Herstal way before I do to a nobody like Kel Tec. IWI, haven't heard any reports of them going KB, but I can't imagine it would be a pleasant experience seeing it's right beside my face. I haven't seen any ar like HK416 or knights or DD ever take off the face, some lacerations on support arm , but even that is rare. There was a site about the HK416 squib detonation tests, I can't find it anywhere anymore, maybe you will have more luck. The barrel bulges and not much else happens, the gun makes a loud noise, the mag pops out, guy popped in a new mag and it still shot.

Here is a 416 otb test with a sauceboss techno theme. The standard ar breaks away from the operator with no serious injury.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjMH94PuT_I
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The RFB has two layers of steel plate protecting your face in case of a kaboom.
It doesn't take a firearms giant to have an engineer capable of designing a firearm to direct the explosion away from the shooter. As long as there is an easier path for it to go it will.

You may notice in the slow motion portion of the video you linked that the top of the receiver blows off and either bounces off his helmet or goes very close to it. So even the mighty AR (which I own 3 of) can still explode and hurt the operator. Granted the standard DI AR was not designed to be shot full of water so that is kind of a silly test to perform and really doesn't show the superiority of HK, it only shows that a piston gun can cycle full of water. Which is also stupid to do since even though it may cycle you are pretty much guaranteed to ruin your barrel.
I don't care what brand or type of firearm I'm shooting, I don't want it to explode in my hands. I had an HK USP Tactical kaboom in my hands and while the pistol did a fairly reasonable job of holding itself together my hand was tingly for a couple hours and I had little pieces of polymer stuck in my hand for a couple days. Bad handload was the culprit.
 
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What is all this talk about "detonation"? It doesn't happen, nope, never sorry. From what I can gather from discussions on the Cast Bullet forum "detonation" has never been replicated in a lab environment. What can happen is the charge is set off in two distinct stages where the bullet is advanced into the rifling then the main charge goes off. When this happens you get the same effect as a blocked barrel and things can come apart. Out of battery discharges are not detonations which is likely the source of some of the concerns with a bull pup design. It would seem to me the designers of these guns have just as muc or perhaps more then the combined wisdom in this thread and would take the out of battery discharge into consideration when designing the guns.

The bull pup design isn't going to go away any time soon and several army groups have adopted it so the design has to have some attraction and advantages over the standard rifle layout. If it didn't it would have died out long ago.

Is the design better than my LE Longbranch. Well I own a Longbranch and don't own a Bull Pup so I guess the Longbranch is better. Now if I owned an AR it likely would be better but if I owned......

Take Care

Bob
 
enefgee said:
If they were legal to own and new production was not excluded, they wouldn't be $10K - Marstar will sell you a Yugo M70 for less than a grand if you've got the right paper.
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The price of prohibs is artificially low due to Canada's ban on new prohib-owners. In Canada it's a buyer's market and in the US it's a seller's market.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but if anyone could own a FAL I don't see them selling for the $6-800 I've seen them go for. I'd figure around $1600+ for guns with newly manufactured semi-auto only receivers.
 
Canuck44 said:
What is all this talk about "detonation"? It doesn't happen, nope, never sorry. From what I can gather from discussions on the Cast Bullet forum "detonation" has never been replicated in a lab environment. What can happen is the charge is set off in two distinct stages where the bullet is advanced into the rifling then the main charge goes off. When this happens you get the same effect as a blocked barrel and things can come apart. Out of battery discharges are not detonations which is likely the source of some of the concerns with a bull pup design. It would seem to me the designers of these guns have just as muc or perhaps more then the combined wisdom in this thread and would take the out of battery discharge into consideration when designing the guns.

The bull pup design isn't going to go away any time soon and several army groups have adopted it so the design has to have some attraction and advantages over the standard rifle layout. If it didn't it would have died out long ago.

Is the design better than my LE Longbranch. Well I own a Longbranch and don't own a Bull Pup so I guess the Longbranch is better. Now if I owned an AR it likely would be better but if I owned......

Take Care

Bob
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Very well said Bob.
 
I feel like I can weigh in here...
Now First off we all know when we see that TDC started a thread on bullpups what he thinks. I don't think he will sleep until everyone on the planet decides bullpups are crap, which they aren't. No offense to the tactical shooters but most of us don't give a rats arse about reload speeds or whatever this mysterious thing called ergonomics is :p. Most of these guns are people's plinkers pure and simple.

Now I have had an incident with my bullpup recently ooooo scary right? I can't be sure yet but I am very certain the malfunction was due to ammunition (cheap norinco). My rifle had a case split and fed a subsequent round into the chamber and jam. Not a scary malfunction you say? Well I have had an m14 totaled due to the exact same malfunction with a slam fire in the mix. Sure it is worrisome for some having basically a controlled explosion next to your face all the time that could eventually result in a catastrophic failure. Most bullpups are designed to direct the explosion away from the operators face should it happen, not that it will be always successful. Sure TDC may say I am dumb for continuing to shoot my rifle, so what? He's is just another gun nut on this site, and his opinion means absolutely nothing to me (sorry friend).

Really it just comes down to what you are comfortable with and your intended use for the rifle in the end. Remember not everyone is a tacticool superman soldier expert, and some people just want a compact rifle that they can take out in the woods, which is scarce given canadian firearms laws. Regardless of what rifle you are shooting, you should always use eye and ear protection.
 
driller212 said:
I feel like I can weigh in here...
Now First off we all know when we see that TDC started a thread on bullpups what he thinks. I don't think he will sleep until everyone on the planet decides bullpups are crap, which they aren't. No offense to the tactical shooters but most of us don't give a rats arse about reload speeds or whatever this mysterious thing called ergonomics is :p. Most of these guns are people's plinkers pure and simple.

Now I have had an incident with my bullpup recently ooooo scary right? I can't be sure yet but I am very certain the malfunction was due to ammunition (cheap norinco). My rifle had a case split and fed a subsequent round into the chamber and jam. Not a scary malfunction you say? Well I have had an m14 totaled due to the exact same malfunction with a slam fire in the mix. Sure it is worrisome for some having basically a controlled explosion next to your face all the time that could eventually result in a catastrophic failure. Most bullpups are designed to direct the explosion away from the operators face should it happen, not that it will be always successful. Sure TDC may say I am dumb for continuing to shoot my rifle, so what? He's is just another gun nut on this site, and his opinion means absolutely nothing to me (sorry friend).

Really it just comes down to what you are comfortable with and your intended use for the rifle in the end. Remember not everyone is a tacticool superman soldier expert, and some people just want a compact rifle that they can take out in the woods, which is scarce given canadian firearms laws. Regardless of what rifle you are shooting, you should always use eye and ear protection.
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Both guns Norincos, the M14 and bullpup? That could be the biggest factor. Good post, and fair points.
 
Both are chinese yes. However we will see of it is the headspace or not. I dont think it is since I shot about 250-300 rounds through the rifle flawlessly before that one. Also, usually with excess headspace you do not get a split where I got mine as far as I am aware.
 
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