There is nothing wrong with the bullpup as a concept, but most bullpup designs suck because they are designed by committees or people who are not very good shooters. It is like people who expect Porsche 911 performance from a VW Beetle just because they both have rear mounted engines. There is nothing wrong with mounting the engine in the back of car, just like there is nothing wrong with mounting the bolt group behind the pistol grip of a rifle. On the other hand, you won't find a race car driver who thinks the Beetle is a great racing car, but millions of people who know nothing about race car driving are happy with the mediocre Beetle because it is a good enough car for them. Just like the bullpups, most of the bullpups are designed by people who are not "race car drivers" in the shooting community, and the end users are average grunts(and sometimes conscripts like the IDF), not super duper direct action dudes that shoot 20,000 rounds a year. For end users like that, it is more important to have a rifle that is handy in a moving box, easy to carry when jumping over walls and crawling through conduits, easy to rig when got pushed out of an airplane.
Whatever floats your boat. I'll take my bullpup over any AR-15 platform any day. That's not me saying AR-15's are crap as we know fine well they are not. It's just that this is the rifle I'm used to, am accurate with and suits my shooting style.
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I would take just about any gun over an AR15.... the one in your post would not be one of them.... that L85-A2 is a POS, I used it for 3 weeks on ex and hated it every moment. its heavy, a pain to take apart, hard to clean (you need a drill bit otherwise you pouched) is easily fouled and is unreliable, the things are jam'o'matics. Even if you said "here you can have this gun for free, you can shoot it full auto at the range no prohib status for you with this gun." I still wouldn't take it. It would piss me off just looking at it and having it remind me of those 3 weeks of wanting to pitch that POS from the top of my LAV.
AS for the OP's article break down... he is very correct. The person writing the article sounds like a desk general.
It maiby the alcohol but it funny cause of the fail!
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It's only difficult if you've locked yourself into conventional rifle habits. same goes for the "hands coming together naturally" concept he mentions making having the mag out front better than to the rear. that's all BS which only stands because of one's current habits. If we took someone who's never operated a firearm before and trained him on a bullpup he'd learn it just as fast and operate it just as well as another guy with no experience trained on an AR.
The only reason bullpups are popular here is because of the NR status.
I would take just about any gun over an AR15.... the one in your post would not be one of them.... that L85-A2 is a POS, I used it for 3 weeks on ex and hated it every moment. its heavy, a pain to take apart, hard to clean (you need a drill bit otherwise you pouched) is easily fouled and is unreliable, the things are jam'o'matics. Even if you said "here you can have this gun for free, you can shoot it full auto at the range no prohib status for you with this gun." I still wouldn't take it. It would piss me off just looking at it and having it remind me of those 3 weeks of wanting to pitch that POS from the top of my LAV.
There is no restricted vs non restricted bs in the USA, yet more and more people are going crazy for bullpups such as Tavor down there. So to say that nobody would own bullpups up here in Canada if AR's were non restricted is not quite true.
That has more to do with their sbr tax stamp baloney than anything.
Matt, I have to agree with LordEvilPepper entirely.
I was in Wainwright in '89 and got together with some brits engineers.
They cried nostalgically longingly gazing at my smg with envy.
They showed me their first generation L85s.
All I can say is that they made the Sten Gun look like a lovingly crafted piece of art in comparison.
Bad ergos and cheap welding of rejected metals.
Only thing useful was the glass optical sight. They felt that it was only there to keep the eye of the user, from looking at the rest of the rifle.
I know you like it.
But you got to deal with it after three or four government and private industry attempts to make it work.
I suspect your attitude has more to do with some kind of a firearms version of Stockholm Syndrome.
As for bullpups;
I am down from 14 ARs to nine, as well as two Tavors and a Type97.
It is mostly about muscle memory.