IWI_US_TAVOR_SAR_16 5in_black_with_Mepro_21_3259a_1

If anyone knows where Nick is at the moment, please restrain him. IWI US has just announced the TAVOR SAR chambered in … 300 Blackout.  The good news is that if you already own a TAVOR SAR in another caliber, conversion kits will be available for $499 MSRP. Here’s their announcement . . .

Harrisburg, Pa. (January 2016) – IWI US, Inc., a subsidiary of Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) Ltd., is proud to announce a new caliber for the TAVOR SAR; the .300 Blackout. The bullpup deemed “Rifle of the Year” by the NRA’s American Rifleman Magazine in 2014 continues to excite the American audience who have embraced the TAVOR SAR and the bullpup concept with open arms. For those who already own a TAVOR SAR in 5.56 NATO or 9mm, a .300 Blackout conversion kit will also be available.

“We’ve had a ton of requests for this particular caliber as its popularity has grown as a good self-defense round as well as a hunting round,” Michael Kassnar, VP of Sales and Marketing for IWI US explained. “The .300 Blackout is a highly accurate, soft shooting round that is also a very effective hunting round, unlike the lighter more traditional varmint or military calibers. We listened to our customers on Facebook and through our Customer Service Department and this was a round that kept coming up to the top of the wish list. And we listened to our customers express their need for a .300 Blackout rifle that can reliably handle sub-sonic and supersonic loads. The result is an integral gas regulator built into the Tavor barrel that is easily adjustable for sub or supersonic rounds.”

The TAVOR SAR bullpup configuration offers the short rifle convenience but with a full size rifle’s velocity, energy and accuracy. All of the TAVOR SAR’s parts are MIL-STD and 100% interchangeable. The 16.5″ or 18″ .300 Blackout barrel is cold-hammer forged and chrome lined, made from CrMoV steel. The long-stroke gas piston system is also 100% ambidextrous in configuration and operation with an optional opposite hand bolt, and a simple field stripping is all that is needed to quickly and easily break down the TAVOR into two major serviceable subassemblies. MSRP is $ 2,049.00.

The .300 Blackout conversion kit includes a 16.5″ or 18″ cold hammer forged chrome lined barrel made of CrMoV steel with a 1:7 right hand twist, a headspaced bolt, an A2 flash suppressor and barrel wrench. MSRP is $499.00.

71 COMMENTS

  1. I have owned a Tavor. I don’t see the attraction and sold it. Difficult to reload, bad ergonomics and poor access to rail mounted accessories.

    300blk was designed for a 9-barrel. I have one as a pistol and one as a SBR.

    • Even though blackout is efficient with a 9.5″ barrel, it doesn’t suffer from the extra barrel length. I like 300 blackout, and I don’t want the tax stamp for an SBR, so a bullpup is ideal for someone like me.

      • Agreed, but a good AR and SBR tax stamp costs less than the Tavor. A pistol can be transported with ammo and is accepted everywhere my license has reciprocity allowing me to have it in the passenger compartment

        • It is in not difficult to reload, it is just different and you don’t care enough to learn how to operate the rifle proficiently. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to adapt, but that’s your problem, not the rifle’s. You can do whatever you want but the people who learn to use the rifle love it

      • Color me unimpressed. Posting a video of you fumbling a mag change and looking at the magwell isn’t going to win many conversions.

      • wow. kewl.

        Now do the same thing while under a car. Do it while running. Do it with gloves. Do it wet and in the dark. Do it with a pulse of 160bpm and after you’ve got tunnel vision. Do it and clear a double feed.

        This is the same nonsense bullpup owners work themselves into. The guns are hard to reload, and harder to clear malfunctions from. That’s the truth, and there is no way around it. Now, for range use, or if you can’t own an SBR, or you really really train with it they’re good comprimises. But they will never be as effective as traditional layout.

        • JNZ, S.P.O.R.T.S. your AR under the same conditions. Now do it again, since it still didn’t clear that jam.

          Aerindel, Just because a good chunk of the civilized world is ahead of us, our fanbois will pretend that there’s some reason the US military keeps that sad AR platform, save for sloth and institutional graft.

        • JNZ, One more thing since I pressed send too soon…

          The AR/M platform has lousy reliability compared to the Tavor. Which is why the Israelis chose it, despite our heavily subsidized platform. Long-stroke piston is a whole lot more reliable than a tiny gas-jet. And had you actually cleared a Tavor, you could do it blind-drunk. it’s as easy as an AK.

      • That video only makes me cringe at how easy it looks to unintentionally drop the mag. I guess that’s not really a worry?

    • It’s yet another israeli POS gun.

      I’ll take a SCAR 17s any day. Hell I’d take an AK over one of this country’s guns.

  2. Kinda too little, too late now that the Desert Tech MDR is about to drop. Same MSRP, supports a wider range of calibers (.308 length as well as .223 length rounds) and won’t require a $250-300 Super Sabra or Tav-D trigger pack to get a decent trigger.

    • I’ve been hearing that for years now… Where is it? If you say, “They’re showing it at SHOT show,” remember they also showed it at SHOT starting in 2013.

      • “Kweef Blastocyst says:”

        You mis-spelled ‘Queef”…

        Reef, you have your own fanboy…

        🙂

  3. One concern I’ve heard about 300Blk is that there have been cases of bullets getting stuck in longer barrels- even with supersonic rounds (which sounds a bit odd to me). How common is this and is it a general issue? When I hear about things like that I tend to assume reloading errors.

    • “is that there have been cases of bullets getting stuck in longer barrels- even with supersonic rounds”

      Please clarify.

      • On a separate forum, someone who has more experience than I do in this matter said that there had been cases of 300BLK rounds getting stuck in longer barrels (18 inches and over), even supersonic rounds. I could see subsonics getting stuck in a longer barrel, particularly in a gas-operated semi, but supers sounds a bit much to me.

        • That can happen with just about any caliber if you don’t put powder in the cases when reloading. A primer ignition has enough power to propel the bullet from the case crimp and get it stuck somewhere in the middle of the barrel when the friction of the rifling stops the forward progress of the bullet. It’s a “squib” load.

    • What? Must be squib rounds. Any caliber can have this. I shoot subsonic and high velocity out of a 16″ all the time. Tell my daughter ‘s two dead deer that .300 gets stuck in the longer barrel.

  4. I am a fan of the Tavor 9mm and will look into this chambering a little more before commenting but I would like to say that I am quickly blossoming into a fan of the 300 blackout and all the potential for the re-loader . I played with the 300 whisper a few years back and recognized the potential , being a long time re-loader and a super fan of the 30.06 , I can’t wait to climb into the blackout with both feet and I’m looking around at a few more guns with different barrels to play with . I think it may be a nice pistol cartridge to tinker around with and compile some more data , I’m pretty OCD and love filling up notebooks with this stuff . We’ll see .
    I might be a taker on this one .

    • Yeah, I’m really hoping the X95 comes out in 300BLK. That would be ideal on the X95’s default configuration of a 13″ barrel and I’d want one of those. For 5.56/.223 I’m satisfied with the Tavor barrel lengths of 16.5 and 18.5″. Although I really like that the X95 is a pound lighter. A suppressed 300BLK short-barreled X95 might become my primary home defense weapon someday. I hope someone will make a good over-suppressor X95 handguard for the X95 for a less scrunched up shooting position (and less risk of accidentally touching a hot part). I can’t wait to see what the aftermarket comes up with. I hope there will even be good 10″ 300BLK barrel mods for use with a suppressor (sacrifice 130fps/142ft-lbs for a 3″ length reduction). The X95 could be a peerless self-defense rifle.

      However, for now I’m glad to see the Tavor come in 300BLK. 16.5″ barreled 300BLK is nothing to sneeze at, and since supersonic I’ve heard it’s measured to be 10dB quieter than 5.56, this chambering could be a superior one for many situations (home defense, hunting, etc.) This also lays the technical foundation for a 300BLK X95.

  5. I was keeping an eye on Gear Head Works. They have a 300bo barrel in the works for the Tavor. The downside to this is that anything over 12″ is too long for the 300. Beyond that, it creates drag on the round. 12″ on a 300 is like 20″ on a 5.56.

    • I hope my AAC Handi-Rifle doesn’t read this, it might decide to get lazy. Or are you talking about subs?

    • Thats just not true at all, you pick up about 150-200fps on 300BLK going from a typical 9-12″ SBR up to a non-NFA 16″ barrel, posted on TTAG no less http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/07/jim-barrett/comparing-sbr-calibers-5-56-223-versus-300-blk/ . The gains when you go above 16 drop off pretty quickly though. The only place you run into issues is that most subsonic rounds will either not cycle properly unsuppressed and/or not stay subsonic out of a 16″ barrel.

      • Word. From my 416R 16″ .300 BLK barrel:

        -Hornady 110 Grain Vmax: 2450 FPS average
        -Barnes 110 Grain TTSX: 2381 FPS average.

        I had some crappy range reloads that were only doing around 1725 FPS with 150 grain FMJ’s and caused the occasional feeding issue. I’m not a fan of underpowered range ammo, and won’t be buying that stuff again.

      • Went back over the data with my range bud, and found that my statement was indeed based on the subsonic loads. Sorry for the mix up.

  6. I just did a 300 BLK AR build last year. And I have a wedding to pay for this year. Time to see what I can get for free to free up cash for this Tavor.

  7. If I didn’t have so many calibers…. Managed to stay out of blk game but this is making it harder.

  8. Damn. Already got a dedicated suppressed SBR. I am now willing to wait for a nice .308 bullpup when available and marketed for at least a year.

  9. For what Tavor wants for one bullpup I was able to build a pair of 300BLK SBRs, including tax stamps. I just like the ergonomics of the AR platform better, which is probably why, even though I have an AK47 I reach for my AR chambered in 300BLK first.

  10. $2050 MSRP? $500 more for the .300 AAC conversion kit? So, $2500 MSRP, total? What will that likely street for? $2000?

    Maybe if you just gotta have a bullpup. Otherwise, I just built a 8.5″ bbl .300 AAC pistol for like $450, sans BCG & Charging handle. Has Magpul MBUS sights, Shockwave Blade, no optic. I can throw a $260 (I know, ouch) “folding stock adapter,” BCG & CH, and budget optic on there and have a ~20″ OAL folding gun for under $1k.

    What’s the OAL on this thing?

    • $2050 msrp for the .300blk rifle. No need to add the conversion. Will likely settle at $1,700 (like the 5.56 version).

      The $499 conversion is for folks who already have a 5.56 Tavor, and they will likely sell for $400 right out of the gate.

      A folding stock gun with an OAL of 20″ when it is *folded* right? Because I’ve shot folding stock guns that are folded, and that sucks.

      I like AR’s, and a good AR is cheaper than a Tavor- but your $450 AR pistol is outclassed.

      There are things AR’s are better at, but there are certainly also things the Tavor is better at.

      • A folding stock gun with an OAL of 20″ when it is *folded* right?

        Well, yeah.

        Because I’ve shot folding stock guns that are folded, and that sucks.

        Only “folding stock adapter” I know of for ARs isn’t designed for firing with stock folded, and you can only get one round out, if you have one chambered. The stock fold’s for compactness only. Still pretty awesome. I was never attracted to folding stock AKs so I could fire them folded. Now their folding stocks aren’t a selling point (for me) any more.

      • By this point, the AR platform is almost a well-polished turd, sorta like a 350 Chebby. Horrible inherent design limitations If you objectively analyze it – but if you throw a metric f-ton of aftermarket parts at it, you can squint reeeeally hard, and kinda pretend it was something that was designed right in the first place.

        Just like a 350, people are still slavishly devoted to a 55 year-old plastic poodle popper that pukes in it’s own mouth. C’est la vie. At least they like guns.

        • Please be a little more condescending.

          So intermediate cartridges are “poodle poppers” unfit for use against men, polymer is “plastic” and unsuitable for a proper firearm, and direct impingement is fundamentally broken inferior gas system, and the AR is a “turd”.

          I guess you believe our military should go back to wood-stocked M14s. Myself, I’ll generally prefer the lighter ammunition that is effective at most combat ranges and is proven to afford a combat advantage (intermediate cartridges), I’ll take lighter and far more reliable and stable polymer furniture, a DI gas system that works just as well as a gas piston and is lighter, and an AR that is more accurate, lighter, and more reliable than an M1A.

        • 5.56 is a varmint cartridge, I have no problem with plastic furniture (polymer is plastic) – when it doesn’t look straight out of the 1960’s, and yes, direct impingement is one of the dumbest ideas to ever be even tested, let alone actually deployed. It can all be made to work, but why not just do better in the first place? Nothing is perfect, but the AR/M is mediocre until you throw a grand at it, plus the gun.

          Deploying known defective guns is something of an American tradition – at least for the last 60+ years. Just look at the Remington 700 – the Walker Fire Control group was a horrible idea before it left the drawing board, yet somehow got put into production. Remington has been settling suits on that for 30+ years, and only recently agreed to fix it. The funnier part is the fix had problems of its own, and is now being recalled as well. They did take the R51 back post haste, but god only knows how even one of those pieces of garbage left the factory.

  11. “We’ve had a TON of requests….”

    Seems the freedom industry needs some staff writers who have read (and follow) “The Elements of Style”.

    The gamer, hipster, everybody gets a participation trophy crowds, have watered down the fine art of truthfully, fully, and fairly presenting corporate press releases.

    Not exactly slouching towards gomorroah, but “least common denominator” writing cheapens the Queen’s English.

    Please, Colt, write us a concise, factual, warm, and complete press release today explaining the company’s emergence from Bankruptcy!

    The armed intelligencia and Commetariate can do without 7th grade rah-rah writing when following the news.

    #EngageCurmudgeonProtocol and
    #CarryOn

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