By Chris Dumm
Saying this may risk pushing me outside of the MSNBC target demographic, but I can’t think of a better way to spend Christmas Eve than touring the factory of a firearms importer and SOT manufacturer. Joe Grine wrangled us a Yuletide invitation to the rural headquarters of TNW Firearms, and I was in gun-guy Nirvana all day. What we saw was literally mind-boggling. This rack of 9mm takedown carbines are waiting for their lower receivers, but TNW’s Aero Survival Rifle production line was only the tip of the iceberg of what we saw yesterday . . .
The massively-fun ASR is not TNW’s only indigenous design. Their other flagship product is this switchbarrel piston-driven AR, called the SGBQCB. It’s at the top of this photo in pistol and rifle configurations, above a tan-anodyzed ASW. TNW Owner Tim Bero pulled out all the stops for our visit, and we sent some lead downrange with all of these guns before the shadows grew long and we had to head home. We’ve already lined up an ASR and SGBQCB for full testing after the holidays. That’s quite a mouthful of acronym, but I digress.
This is the real thing, a wartime 8mm MG42. It’s actually much lighter than I expected. In addition to making its own lines of rifles, TNW imports and converts several vintage machinegun patterns to civilian semi-auto configuration. I’ll hand the rest over to Joe Grine for followup in a future article, because he’s the machinegun expert and because he takes much better pictures than I do.
Merry Christmas, and may your holidays be as awesome as mine have already been!