Burning Ammo, Having Fun

Sometimes, there’s just nothing more fun than going to the range with friends and trying out a new gun. It doesn’t have to be anything special, expensive or exotic.

The fun of trying “new” is nearly irresistible with me. I’ve gone to the range in driving downpours, sleet, snow, sizzling sunshine and the inevitable smothering southern humidity simply because someone said “want to go try out a new gun?”

The infrequent range sessions are one of the dirty little secrets of doing what I do for a living. Seems if I’m not going to the range for a testing session, I’m certainly not getting out as much as I once did.

That’s why I was especially excited at getting out to the range last week to try out a gun I’d been promising myself I was going to shoot -even if I had to buy one to do it: Transformational Defense Industry’s KRISS Super-V.

When I first wrote about it two years ago, it was a gee-whiz feature. You know, new company says it has an entirely new weapon system that’s going to revolutionize the shooting world. But TDI/Kriss produced a video showing a small female holding a full-auto .45ACP KRISS with a very short barrel and viciously fast rate of fire. While she was holding this new gun, the muzzle was rising ever so slightly- in a full auto .45ACP.

The secret was in their non-linear operating system. In the traditional rifle, the recoil can actually work against your ability to put rounds on target. It’s the reason it’s hard to perform a double-tap with a heavy caliber rifle and darned near impossible to keep a full-auto weapon from rising.

With the KRISS, the Super V (Vector) design actually moves those equal and opposite forces down and away from the shooter-reducing felt recoil (significantly) and nearly eliminating muzzle climb.

When my friend Payton Zarzour called to tell me his store had been approved as a dealer for the KRISS, I scooted right over to give the sixteen-inch barreled, civilian model a quick once-over. Other than the absence of select fire and the longer barrel, it looked exactly like the submachine gun that had caused a stir at SHOT Show.

Technically speaking, it’s a carbine firing .45ACP with a standard package that includes an adjustable folding stock, top/bottom Picatinny rails, ambidextrous fire/safety controls, custom flip-up iron sights, a grip that holds batteries, and comes with a mini-cleaning kit, and uses Glock Model 21 magazines. It came equipped with one standard 13-round Glock magazine and a modified 21 magazine that holds 30 rounds. Yes, it is limited to 10-rounds in some states.

Folded, it’s 26.5 inches long, 34.8 unfolded, is 6.9-inches high, and weighs 5.8 pounds unloaded. As I mentioned, the barrel is sixteen-inches long.

It carries an MSRP of $1,745.00 and is only available through approved dealers.

When we decided to take it to the range, there was a collective groan through the store. Everyone wanted to go.

Fortunately, everyone was limited to two – Zarzour and, well, me.

The carbine was equipped with the iron sights, an EOTAC electronic sight (that ate batteries at a prodigious rate for some reason), and one of Crimson Trace’s new light/laser foregrips.

After basic boresighting, the KRISS really didn’t need anything else. At 25 yards, it produced the kind of groups you’d expect from a close combat weapon. As we became more accustomed to it, however, the groups tightened considerably, averaging out at around 3″ for a 5-shot group off a rudimentary rest.

But the KRISS isn’t built for bullseye shooting. Everything about it says “move”- and it performed well whether we fired it offhand, sitting, from a rest or without. And it ingested – quickly- nearly 200 rounds of an assortment of excellent, good and dubious 45ACP with no complaints- even when hot and nasty.

But the surprise came when we moved to 100 yards. It fired accurately – and flat at 100 yards. Tossing 230 grain FMJ ammo downrange is impressive enough, firing it downrange with accuracy sufficient to punch paper with groups inside six inches or send fist-sized rocks skittering was downright impressive.

After allowing the rifle to cool, I broke it down (four pins and it’s in three main components) and was amazed to see the kind of gunk inside. And the gun didn’t complain, hiccup or fail to feed anything.

The KRISS system certainly isn’t for everyone – and is primarily targeted at the military/law enforcement community. But it would make an awesome home defender- while giving you some pretty serious style points. It is not for precision marksmanship – in today’s.45ACP or the 40-cal promised sometime in 2010, but long story short-it’s a hoot to shoot.

–Jim Shepherd
www.shootingwire.com