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Let’s face it — the Barrett M82 .50 BMG is sooo 2009. I mean, all that range and knockdown power is great, but who wants to lug around a 57-inch long, 30-pound light artillery piece?

If this kind of problem keeps you awake at night, Micor Defense can lighten your heart, your combat load and your wallet all at the same time with their ‘Leader 50’ semi-automatic .50 BMG bullpup. Micor boasts that the beastly bullpup has a “low recoil impulse” which I find somewhat hard to believe. But the design’s weight and portability advantages are fairly obvious even though Micor doesn’t actually provide the rifle’s length or weight on their website.

The Leader 50 lists for $7996, and I like that price point because an even $8k will buy you the rifle and a single round of ammo to practice with.

Micor’s press photo, though, is a fail on so many levels: the insufficient hearing protection, the CQB reflex sight on a .50 BMG, the chrony and the stuff on the table about to be blown to Eastern Kansas by the muzzle blast.

But I don’t care. I couldn’t afford to feed a Leader 50 and I’d have nowhere to shoot it, but I’d still love to beat myself senseless with one, wouldn’t you?

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41 COMMENTS

    • #1

      Same here. I fired M60s and .50s back in the service. I also jumped out of perfectly good airplanes in the middle of the night. I spent today bike riding and looking at a nice classic bolt-action CZ in .22 LR.

  1. I’m guessing the recoil will be reduced a fair amount because it’s a semiautomatic and probably has some sort of gas bypass system. I just don’t know what the point is of a 50 BMG bull pup with such a short barrel? I get the idea of having a quick, portable one but I would put a little longer barrel on it.

      • Being a bullpup will naturally hide the barrel’s length. I would hazard a guess of 20″ or so. At this length, most long range shots are very possible. I doubt this will be a sniping rifle. It’s more likely for infantry to disable vehicles and hit those pesky guys on (read:through) the other side of a highway divider.

      • The recoil on a barrett 99A isn’t bad at all. I think its less than a 870 12.
        What gets you is the muzzle blast, its sucks the snot out of your nose. You can feel it in your eyeballs.

  2. I remember being all jazzed to shoot the Barrett. A lot of fun, then everyone with fillings had to go to the dentist and have every single one redone. Luckily my ma was a stickler on dental hygiene. The Big .50: when you hate yourself and want to break your face.

    • My typical English teeth & dentistry has withstood more that a few rounds through different Barrett products over the past few years. 🙂

      I can’t say I noticed the back blast from the brake either, though those to the side & behind made comment upon occasion. Felt recoil isn’t much when the firearm weighs on the thick side of 20lbs & has a sodding great brake on the pointy end.

      I’m glad my ammunition was supplied free & in quantity, as $4 a pop sucks the fun out of things.

  3. The ida of the gun is cool… On paper it sounds like the best thing ever… It looks like a giant version of the Bushmaster M17S.

    I still want one, but I don’t want it to look like it’s make from extruded aluminum siding.

  4. “who wants to lug around a 57-inch long, 30-pound light artillery piece?”

    I do. If I could afford it. And had a place to shoot it. And could afford to feed it. I would gladly lug a 30-pound beauty all over the place. For science.

  5. For me, a .50 BMG is somewhat expensive.Not because of state law or the gun itself, but because I’d have to personally build a range large enough from scratch to shoot it.

  6. lol

    One of the owners of a private outdoor range I used to be a member of would shoot his .50 at the 25 yard berm just to rustle everyone’s jimmies. It worked.

    • I’m pretty sure my local indoor range will let you shoot 50BMG at 50 feet if you really want to piss off everyone else on the line.

    • “I’m pretty sure my local indoor range will let you shoot 50BMG at 50 feet if you really want to piss off everyone else on the line.”

      The Front Range Gun Club in Loveland, Colorado — which is a 25 yard indoor range — does allow .50 BMG.

      I can’t imagine what that must be like.

      • “I can’t imagine what that must be like.”

        Stick your head in a 50 gallon drum and fire a .50 handgun inside of it. Don’t forget plugs and cans, unless you really don’t want to hear your old lady’s complaining anymore.

  7. It looks like the total cost might be $7,996.00 PLUS the $1,999.00 non-refundable deposit. Dang! I was just about to do it, too…

    Yup. Just checked the terms and conditions. $7,996.00 is the final payment. Ouch.

  8. According to Wikipedia it weighs only 17lbs empty and is 39″ OAL w/ a 24″ barrel. So almost 1/2 the weight and 2/3rds the length of a M82A1.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MICOR_Leader_50

    I wonder when Accushot is going to come out with their 50 cal bipod, that ATLAS sure does look funny on such a big gun. I have a version 8.0, and i’m not sure how well it would hold up to the abuse of a 50 cal.

  9. This is an excellent design concept if you want an arm capable of defeating barriers in a smaller package. If this company plays their cards right they could sell one to almost every PD in the country, not to mention DHS, TSA, FBI, foreign sales, etc….

    • Cops with anti-materiel weapons? I know they’d *want* them, but there’s no reason on earth to let them *have* them. Enough bystanders get hit by police bullets already, and the last thing we all need is the NYPD going gansta with a .50 BMG. It will shoot through through most apartment buildings until it hits a girder or beam.

  10. Would I want one? Nope. I have no realistic use for something that will shoot thru buildings. And my days of wanting to see how much recoil I can handle are long behind me.

  11. …there is an incredible national .50 cal shooter association, with friendly learned elders, beginning novices and the cutest girls… National matches, a shiny thick quarterly magazine that resources state-of-the-art techniques and member articles. This is where BAR, SF and gov’t go to get answers questioned.
    One of the greatest things I’ve ever done, was to join.
    http://www.fcsa.org

  12. The chronograph didn’t blow away and we clocked 2800 fps through a 24 inch barrel.
    Recoil is very mild and less than a .308 without any brake. It is a giant version of the M17-S. I designed that weapon in 1986. It’s all out there on the internet. Just got back from a bullpup shoot in Kentucky, awesome weekend.
    Best regards to all,
    Charles St George

  13. Anyone know if the price is going to come down to the previously mentioned $6,800 after the initial launch? Thanks.

  14. I like the EOTech on it. They’re basically saying, our new 50 cal rifle is short and light enough that you can carry it around like an AR — just in case you need to stop hard targets like vehicles inside of 200-300 yards. In fact, I’d very likely put an EOTech on it with a 3x mag. You can see some similarly arousing gun pics mixed with video games, if that’s your kind of thing at http://www.thecontrollershop.com

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