Grab the Bull By the Pup (Get It? Bullpup?)
Every now and then, you get a trend that seems to pop up out of nowhere. Once one company latches on to it, more and more come on board. Next thing you know, it’s the new standard. The fun thing is, often times that “new trend” is nowhere near new. It’s just someone took an old concept and finally got it right. Take smartphones, for example. They’ve been around, sort of, for a long time now. The Palm PDA by 3Com was a big jump in technology and eventually came with cell service for email and such. This was years before Apple even started considering the iPhone. Believe it or not, there was one of those “House of the Future” type of videos in the 1950’s that almost perfectly described the iPhone as it exists today! There truly is nothing new under the sun.
So the trend in firearms, at the moment, seems to be in the realm of bullpup guns. While some companies have been producing bullpup rifles for a long time now, others seem to be jumping on the bandwagon and pushing them like it’s some new concept. This “new concept”, however, has been around longer than the beloved 1911 pistol!
The whole thing started back in 1901 with the Thorneycroft carbine. This was a bullpup bolt action rifle. That’s right, bolt action. Needless to say, the ergonomics were terrible and, as a result, the gun never got very popular. There were other attempts shortly after by various companies but none really worked very well. It wasn’t until after WWII that people really started to give bullpups a serious look. Germany and Russia both gave it a try and developed passable weapons but they were difficult to manufacture so they too were scrapped. Then, Enfield developed the EM-2 rifle for the British Army and was put into service in 1951 until 1954 when England adopted the 7.62 NATO round. The EM-2 couldn’t be adapted to the new round and was therefore scrapped. It still marks the first actual time a bullpup rifle was put into service.
It was the late 1970’s before another bullpup saw widespread military use. This was the Steyr AUG and it was a runaway hit, as far as bullpups go, and it was in service in over 20 countries. In looking at this gun and considering the mentalities in that time, the AUG really turned some heads. This gun looked like something right out of a sci-fi movie. In fact, it has been used as the basis for an incredible number of sci-fi movie rifle props. Since then, more and more companies and militaries are making use of the bullpup design. Even the US Secret Service has dropped the famous UZI for the FN P90.
So that’s the history but what exactly is a bullpup? In most firearms, the components for actually firing the bullet are located either on top of the trigger or just in front of it. Take your average AR-15 as an example. The bolt, magazine, chamber, barrel and everything else sits just in front of the trigger and grip. The only thing behind it is the shoulder stock and buffer tube. Considering the average barrel length for ARs is 16 inches, that gives an AR an average length of 34 inches.
So let’s do some theoretical gunsmithing…
Let’s say you can figure out a way to run an AR without the need for that long buffer tube. Say an unholy union between the AR platform and an AK-47’s gas system. Without that tube, we can re-arrange that AR into a bullpup design. Slide all the firing components into the shoulder stock, move the magazine behind the grip and move the barrel back. Now we have an AR in a bullpup configuration with an overall length of about 20-5 inches or thereabouts. Keep in mind, this is just theory, in the AR’s case, but the concept is what we’re talking about here. Usually, it’s a 20% reduction in length, depending on the rifle.
When you make a bullpup rifle, what you ultimately get is the inherent accuracy and power of a full length barrel but with the size and maneuverability of a submachine gun. They’re easier to carry and transport due to their smaller size. They also cause less fatigue on the arms. This is because the arms say closer to the body which provides better leverage for holding the gun’s weight.
Downsides? Well, there are a few but there are ways that manufacturers and users can get around most of them. For starters, the chamber of the gun and ejection port is right next to your face, due to it being farther back. Your sight radius is also shorter which can counteract some of that accuracy that was retained by still having a longer barrel. Some of that is counteracted yet again by using a Red Dot Sight, however. There’s also an issue with muzzle rise. With all the weight of the gun towards the back, there’s not as much there to counteract the recoil of the gun when firing. Some models get around this by having porting and/or compensators on the muzzle.
The big downside for the longest time was the trigger. With a normal rifle, the trigger directly releases the hammer with few moving parts. Because the actual firing assembly is so far away from the trigger in bullpup guns, they had to use a linkage setup. This lead to bullpups being notorious for having squishy, gritty, terrible triggers. It seems in recent years that FN Herstal, IWI, and Kel-Tec figured out ways to fix those problems with their triggers all around the same time and have really started changing people’s opinions about bullpups.
Yes, the design has been around for a while but it’s finally coming into its own and people are really taking it seriously these days. I’m not usually in the habit of making predictions but, in this Noob’s opinion, I think you’ll see more and more organizations and companies adopting and pushing the bullpup design over the next few years.
Images used under Creative Commons License from Wikipedia.
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