A couple people had expressed interest in this topic, and I have a bit of extra time for a couple days, so here goes:
Bona fides: I am a former infantry NCO and sniper, hunter, competitive shooter, reloader, hobby gunsmith, sometimes firearms trainer and currently work in a gun shop, mostly on the paperwork/compliance side. Back in the day, was a qualified expert with every standard small arm in the US inventory circa 2003 (M2, 4, 9, 16, 19, 249, 240B, 21, 24, 82 etc.), and today hang around the 75th percentile of USPSA classifications. I've shot Cap-and-Ball, Trap and Sporting Clays badly; Bullseye and PRS somewhat better and IDPA/USPSA/UML/Two-gun with some local success. Been active in the 2A community since the mid-90s, got my first instructor cert in high school, and have held a CPL for almost twenty years now.
I certainly don't claim to be an expert in every aspect of firearms, there's huge areas that escape my knowledge base, but if you've got questions I'll do my best to answer.
Technical questions
Gun control proposals for feasibility
Industry
Training
Wacky opinions
General geekery
Some competition links (not my own) just for the interested.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=U5IhsWamaLY&t=173
https://youtube.com/watch?v=93nEEINflXE
https://youtube.com/watch?v=utcky0zq10E
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Notes -
Bundeswehr was the one who wrote the contract in such an absurd way in the first place. One may wonder about corruption in weapons procurement.
I'd be really interested to find out what the original series as delivered us as reciever material, because polyamide with fiberglass - what the newer guns Ian tested use, is a very high end material.
Actually, someone at another forum says he's translated the actual testing report:
https://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=562681
quoting his post:
@FcFromSSC ^^
That's apparently the culprit, so I remembered correctly. It's not really a design issue, but the design requires very particular manufacturing, so perfectly plausible the rifles manufactured at other times aren't as affected which is why the problem wasn't discovered by foreign buyers.
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