By Kevin Reese
SHOT Show, January 2016
Six part series: Part 5 of 6 : Radical Firearms’ Z-Coated .223
United States -(AmmoLand.com)- As an 8-year Marine Corps veteran, I’m fed up – fed up with the hordes of Washington thugs who have deemed time and time again that we’re too stupid to know what’s best for us when it comes to the Second Amendment.
By all appearances, their sole strategy to disarm law abiding American citizens is to simply lob ill-educated, naïve and often ignorant opinions, mandates and proposed legislation into the air hoping enough anti-gun rhetoric will stick and finally reveal the mosaic of a socialist society populated by subjects. Well, I have troubling news for those who deem it appropriate to tell us by what means we can defend ourselves.
The segment of our industry they hate the most continues to grow by leaps and bounds, especially with respect to production of those scary black rifles.
Anyone walking the SHOT Show floor with an ounce of brain activity can see that our tactical segment is alive and well… and I couldn’t be happier! With that in mind, I’m in the mood to really piss some people off by talking about a handful of the “scariest” black rifles at the 2016 SHOT Show had to offer. And by scariest, I mean exceedingly bad ass!
(This will be a series of Six(6) linked articles, the following is number 2 of 6. Click the Next button below for more.)
While not presented in any specific order, take a look at a handful that deserve some serious respect and lots of trigger time!
Radical Firearms’ Z-Coated .223 Wylde Pot of Gold!
I’ve mentioned a number of colorful descriptors in this overview of SHOT’s “scariest” black rifles; however, I’ve reserved grab-you-by-the-throat badassery with an exponent specifically for the Z-Coated Radical Firearms .223 Wylde.
Looking back over all of the tactical-style offerings showcased at the 2016 SHOT Show, it’s hard to recall any .223/556 that really wowed me as much as this machine and, more importantly, I feel as though I’m selling Radical Firearms short by only showcasing this platform; every rifle system on their wall clearly demonstrated their integrity-driven commitment to providing aggressively styled, premium performance modern sporting rifles, chock full of the kind of edgy innovation that stops traffic, at blue-collared price points that honest, hardworking folks can actually afford.
Seriously, while I thought the company’s rifles would come in easily at standard premium price points of $2,000 and up, a quick review with Radical Firearms’ rep, Mel Miranda, only revealed that nothing was inflated – quite exceptional in a rifle-world where inflating seems to be the norm every time someone decides to throw in super cool handguards. As an example, also check out Radical Firearms’ RF10 3-Gun and Hunter models, available in .308 and 6.5 Creedmoor for rock star grouping beyond 1,000 yards. Both models are heavy in premium, precision machined, stainless and billet components, including hand-lapped 416R stainless barrels. Of course, the RF10 does have super cool, handguards, too. Radical Firearms even offers a tier 1 RF10 complete with a stainless steel super-match carbon fiber barrel; of course, you’re going to pay quite a bit more for that particular model but at least you can trust that whatever your shelling out isn’t wasted. Radical Firearms’ integrity-driven bang for your buck is present at every level.
Enough sidetracking on the RF10, let’s get back to the Z-Coated .223 Wylde’s features. As implied, this insanely well designed, well protected premium modern sporting rifle features a proprietary Z-coating, similar to Titanium Nitride (TiN) but harder, with a lower friction coefficient than Black Nitride and, indeed, a coefficient rating exceeding electroless nickel boron (NiB). The result? Unparalleled protection from frictional wear, discoloration and corrosion. If that’s not enough to get your trigger finger shaking, it looks cool, too! Sort of like a pot of gold enshrined in some pretty Radical hardware. See what I did there? Pretty Radical, huh?
The Z-Coated .223 Wylde includes an 18-in. Z-coated stainless match-grade 1:7-twist barrel and Zero Shift Brake, Z-coated bolt carrier, bolt, and trigger, .750-in. adjustable glass block, billet magazine and trigger guard, RF MBA-1 modular stock with adjustable comb and heel, Ergo SureGrip and an 18-in. FTR lightweight free float rail system. What does all this mean? It’s black, scary as hell and I can’t wait to spend some trigger time just loving on it. In a nutshell, it made the hard-earned grade to appear here and seriously deserves your consideration, as does that ever so radical RF10!
*In the near future, I’ll be spending some quality time with both the Z-Coated .223 Wylde and RF10 in 6.5 Creedmoor, and reporting back on their precision shooting and pork chop producing performances. Stay tuned…
Click the next button to read part six:
A Not-So-Scary Wrap-Up
As an obvious disclaimer, AmmoLand is poking fun at scary. While antis bounce around using loose terms like “scary”, “assault” or “clip”, generally because they are ill-educated and have no business discussing topics they know nothing about, or care to learn about for that matter, we had fun using the terms “scary” and “black rifles” as descriptors, by our definition, synonymous with super cool modern sporting rifles! They hate, we love! In fact, we want to see more! I can’t wait to see what the amazing folks hard at work in our firearms industry have in store for us down freedom’s road.
As rifles go, were there others worth talking about? Plenty! But, you’ll have to read about them in another AmmoLand feature in the 2016 SHOT Show series, 5 Rifles that Rocked the 2016 SHOT Show – a combination of more scary-cool rifles, including the mind-blowing FN M249S Semi-Automatic Saw, and other phenomenal classic-style bolt actions. If anything was clear at the 2016 SHOT Show it was that tactical is still alive, well and booming;
…however, I also noticed greater separation between the scores of we’re-just-assembling-parts-and-branding guys and those who are laser focused on improving, innovating and pushing tactical performance limits with rifle systems truly worthy of serious recognition.
Stick around. There is more to come in my 2016 SHOT Show wrap-up…
About Kevin Reese:
Kevin is an award-winning outdoor writer, photographer, videographer, speaker, host of Global Outfitters TV Show’s GO Tips and a Marine Corps veteran. He owns and administers www.mainbeammedia.com and Main Beam Blog at blog.mainbeammedia.com. The Main Beam Blog offers great articles, press releases, outdoor industry news and reviews.