Rifles

By at least one reckoning, if Bill Ruger and his engineers had developed the Mini 14 in the decade prior to when they first began to tinker with it in 1971, it might have become America's battle rifle instead of the M16/AR-15. At least that's R.L. Wilson's take, noted in his book Ruger & His Guns. After all, the Mini 14 was based heavily on the operating system used by the M14 rifle, with which soldiers and Marines were quite familiar back in the early to mid-1960s. And by chambering it in the smaller, lighter .223 Remington/5.56mm NATO, Ruger and his crew had essentially achieved part of what the Defense Department was looking for--a smaller, lighter infantry weapon.

While Eugene Stoner's AR design prevailed in the end, what Ruger and his team came up with proved to be one of the handiest and most fun rifles ever put into the hands of sportsmen. The Mini 14, introduced in 1975, has a big following because not only is it fun to shoot, it's a workhorse. It employs a Garand breech bolt locking system and a fixed-piston gas system with self-cleaning, moving gas cylinder. The Mini 14 design vents unburned powder particles, which keeps the system clean and running like the Energizer bunny.

And while utter dependability is one of the things people love about the Mini 14, its accuracy has always been questionable. Recently I was reading one of the discussion threads on the gun forum at www.gunsandammomag.com. One forum member, in the market for a .223 semiauto, had posed the question of whether he should buy a Mini 14 or an AR-style rifle. The responses he got were pretty consistent If you want a gun that will never quit on you, go with the Ruger; if you're looking for accuracy, go with the AR. My own experience with my Ruger Mini Thirty, the 7.62x39 variant of the Mini 14, certainly bears that out It's a "minute of milk jug" gun, but it will keep on shooting no matter what.

Even Ruger's own staffers who compete in a yearly industry shooting match were using the firm's bolt actions instead of the Mini 14 because of the latter's lack of accuracy, despite the fact that in this particular match there is no way you can shoot fast enough with a bolt gun to compete. That led Ruger head honcho Steve Sanetti to challenge his engineers to find a way to make their little semiauto more accurate.

This charge roughly coincided with an 18-month shutdown of the Mini 14 production line. The machines and tooling assigned to that gun had been rolling out Minis for three decades, and the company decided it was high time to initiate a complete retooling.

So between Sanetti's challenge and all-new tooling on the line, it wasn't too much of a stretch to build a better mousetrap the Mini 14 Target. Guns & Ammo got a sneak peek at the gun and a brief opportunity to test a prototype, and production rifles are expected to be hitting dealer shelves within the next few months.