I had mentioned, a few posts back, that I impulse picked up a Poverty Pony lower that had been registered as an SBR by the Iron Mountain guys out in Potomac. Since I had a ‘wrist braced’ JAKL ‘pistol’, and the the JAKL uses a 95% (have to use a slightly modified bolt release paddle) standard AR lower, this seemed like a good opportunity to turn the wrist-braced-pistol into what nature and man intended it to be – a stubby carbine with a real stock. And thus, this happened:

Pretty cunning, innit?

The JAKL (and the AR-180) [and by extension the Sig MCX] are interesting guns from a survivalists perspective because the have almost all of the AR’s ergonomic benefits and modularity, while removing one of the AR’s (questionable) liabilities – the buffer tube making folding stocks impractical.*

Unless youre driving around in a GMC van with three of your war buddies, dodging the military police for a crime you didnt commit, the utility of being able to fire your carbine with the stock folded is something that doesn’t seem like a frequent need. Not saying it won’t happen…hallways and stairwells exist, but as a general sort of thing…not a frequent need. However, being able to reduce your carbine to a compact, easily storable, portable package…well thats a different story. This particular package will just barely fit, assembled and ready to shoot, in my Bag O’ Tricks ™ (admittedly not leaving me room for much else).

I'[ve become rather fond of SBR/SBS’s in the last year or two. Their compactness and handling of a short barrel, combined with the steadiness and rigidity of a ‘real’ stock (as opposed to wrist brace), just feels quite good in the hands. Obviously there’s a tradeoff with a shorter barrel, but for the distances at which such an arm could reasonably be expected to be employed the differences in exterior and terminal ballistics will be niggling.

First choice for running out the door when Der Tag kicks off? Nope. But when that time does come its a nice choice for keeping in the truck when quick handling goes from ‘nice to have’ to ‘best practices’.

And, as you can see form the picture, I’m starting to drop red dots on pretty much everything, although iron sights for backup are a non-negotiable.

*= Keywords here: impractical and practical.