{"id":43899,"date":"2014-05-16T09:05:47","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T14:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43899"},"modified":"2014-05-16T09:56:18","modified_gmt":"2014-05-16T14:56:18","slug":"hot-gear-friday-the-steyr-aug-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43899","title":{"rendered":"Hot Gear Friday: The Steyr AUG"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s that <\/em>gun. The weird one that looks like some propmaster built it.<\/p>\n

You know the one. That <\/em>one.<\/p>\n

That weird, space-age-looking thing that “Karl”, the cyborg-y looking “terrorist”\/thief (Alexander Godunov) in Die Hard<\/em>, all uncustomary lines and strange curves and fussy, funky handgrips…:<\/p>\n

\"20140516-090453.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

…that blazed away at John McClain on the roof of the Nakitome Building.<\/p>\n

Or the one The Governor used to rub out his voter base in The Walking Dead…<\/p>\n

\"20140516-091548.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

…all foreign and threatening-looking (moreso than regular assault rifles, even).<\/p>\n

It’s the Steyr AUG (Armee Universal Gewehr<\/em>, or “Universal Army Rifle”) – and its’ even more space-age than it appears in the movies.<\/p>\n

Developed in the seventies by Steyr-Mannlicher Arms in Austria, the AUG was an attempt to build one gun to fit just about every need an army has for firearms below the company level.<\/p>\n

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By simply changing out the barrel, the bolt and bolt carrier, and the magazines, a single AUG can switch between being a squad support light machine gun, an infantry rifle, a short carbine, or (with pistol-caliber components) a submachine gun.<\/p>\n

\"20140516-091540.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s not just a space-age toy and movie prop, of course; it’s the issue rifle of the Austrian, Australian, New Zealand, Irish, Argentinean, Saudi and several other armies – as well as the main battle rifle of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement service, keeping America safe from the invasion of contraband duty-free booze or whatever the hell ICE does other than watch the border.<\/p>\n

The biggest thing to get used to is that it’s a “bullpup” – the magazine is mounted behind the trigger and pistol grip. Which means that when you’re shooting it, the chamber is right next to your cheek.<\/p>\n

Not to say that I thought much about it when I finally got a chance to shoot one, at the Bill’s Gun Range “Shooter Show” last month; the adrenaline of getting to bust off a few caps with an AUG took my mind off the fact that there was an explosion with 40,000 PSI of pressure going off inches from my head<\/em>, not 6-12 inches in front of me like a regular assault rifle.<\/p>\n

I didn’t think about that ’til afterward.<\/p>\n

Three things I did think as I shot it?<\/p>\n

Hot Hot Hot<\/strong>: During shooting? That little folding vertical foregrip is a nifty feature for holding the gun on target in rapid fire (I shot a semi-automatic version) – but you’ll notice that it leaves nothing<\/em> between your off-hand and the barrel.<\/p>\n

Which gets very very hot<\/em> after 100 rounds or so!<\/p>\n

\"20140516-090536.jpg\"<\/a>

My friend from high school, Mark, shooting an AUG at Bill’s last month.<\/p><\/div>\n

High And Tight<\/strong>: The bullpup configuration makes it a very compact piece – which means your stance is a lot<\/em> more closed than with a conventional rifle, even a small one like an M4-pattern carbine. That makes shooting it feel more…up close and personal?<\/p>\n

Tactical<\/strong>:\u00a0 It was the first time I’d ever personally fired a gun with a modern tactical scope – which is an important accessory on a piece with such a very, very short sighting radius.\u00a0 Not great for precision point-shooting (there are other scopes for that); excellent for putting lead into paper in a big hurry.\u00a0 I can see what the fuss is about.\u00a0 C’mon, tax refund\u00a0time.<\/p>\n

Hypothetically, at least.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How to describe it?\u00a0 There is no way not <\/em>to feel like a paper-shredding animal shooting the AUG.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s that gun. The weird one that looks like some propmaster built it. You know the one. That one. That weird, space-age-looking thing that “Karl”, the cyborg-y looking “terrorist”\/thief (Alexander Godunov) in Die Hard, all uncustomary lines and strange curves and fussy, funky handgrips…: …that blazed away at John McClain on the roof of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hot-gear-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43899"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43910,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43899\/revisions\/43910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}