You remember the No Stock Needed or NSN, the thingy that was supposed to make AR-15 pistols more controllable and enjoyable? The thing I just got to review? Well, turns out the device is being shelved and the inventor is refunding the pre-orders. We’ve also been asked to return the demo version to NSN home base. Rumor has it there’s a newer better version in the works, but we’ll have to wait and see what this guy comes up with. The question of the moment, though, is what I thought of the original version. And well…
Its not something I’d put on one my guns. Then again I’m about to send out a Form 1 to make an SBR, so I might not be the prime market for one of these things.
The #1 issue I had with it was the way it moves your jaw about. That’s especially of concern because there are no nerves designed in your body to tell you whether that specific motion (slapping your jaw around) hurts. The best your body can do is tell the nearest nerves, which aren’t really in the same place. And the actual pain and can be deceiving (called referred pain, and a pain in the ass with abdominal trauma where there are similarly no nerves). So I have no idea if this thing was hurting me because I couldn’t feel it.
Issue #2 was the inability to fold the chin rests away. It’s permanently fixed, meaning that trying to transport this thing in a case was…interesting. It could never lay completely flat without taking off the buffer tube, so standard hard cases were out of the question.
Even so, and even with the flaming pig muzzle device (which makes the recoil even worse) it wasn’t completely uncomfortable. Sure it felt strange, but if you only used this device for you home defense gun, I think it would work well. Handy for when you need to operate in tight conditions. It’s definitely not an everyday range toy, but definitely not useless either.
The biggest reason I liked this thing, though, was that it represents some outside-the-box thinking on the part of the inventor. Just like the Franklin Armory XO-26b, the NSN is a contraption that thumbs its nose at the law and gives shooters more options when it comes to the kind of gun they want. Needless to say I’ll be waiting to see what else this guy comes up with.