The .50 BMG cartridge is an absolute beast in terms of recoil. There’s not much that beats it until you start venturing into the tax stamp hell that is destructive devices. McMillan has designed a new device that they’re fitting to some of their stocks to reduce the recoil felt by the shooter when using such big calibers. Here’s how it works . . .
Instead of all of the force of the recoil being transferred directly into your shoulder, McMillan has placed a pneumatic tube between the back of the receiver and the buttstock assembly. But it doesn’t work quite the way you think it does.
Normally a pneumatic tube would be designed to temporarily absorb some of the recoil and distribute it over a longer period of time, reducing the instantaneous velocity of the rifle stock. But all of that force is still going into your shoulder at some point. McMillan’s pneumatic system instead converts that force into heat and dissipates it using a heatsink in the stock of the gun.
The system claims a 90 percent reduction in felt recoil. It will be available shortly as an option on their TAC-50 rifles.