Anyone who knows anything at all about guns is familiar with the mini-14. Chances are he already owns one. Its lines are strikingly similar to the M14 that had replaced the M1 as the standard battle rifle for the U.S. Armed Forces and its action borrows heavily from it. But whereas the .308 chambered M-14 weighs in at 9 pounds, the mini comes in at a svelte 6.5 pounds. Light and compact the mini 14 was one of firearms designer genius Bill Ruger's most successful offerings in a long string of successful and brilliantly conceived firearms innovations. Firing the same .223 round as our military's M-16 rifle at over 3,000 feet per second, the mini 14 can spit rounds out as fast as a man can pull the trigger. Although Ruger supplied 5 round clips with each gun his company sold, 20 round clips could be ordered from the factory and 30 round clips could easily be found from third party vendors. The rifle could and can still be had for half the price of semi automatic versions of the M16 sold to the civilian market. The mini-14 was almost too good to be true, and Ruger sold zillions of them.

 Its light weight is both one of the mini-14's outstanding virtues and greatest failings. Its thin barrel's lack of rigidity gives it mediocre accuracy, and it gets worse after several rounds have been fired. The high speed .223 round causes the barrel to overheat which prevents tightly placed groups. Four inch groups from a cold barrel are typical at 100 yards. Considering that a handgun that groups 1 inch at 25 yards is a tack driver, whether this is such a bad thing or not depends upon the requirements of the shooter. Nor does the Ruger's standard peep sights and rough out of the box trigger pull contribute anything close to match accuracy.

Several years ago I wanted a rifle that delivers a high volume of firepower from a round that can stop a man. I had an M 1, an M-14, and an M 16 on my wish list. Each rifle not only could fulfill these two conditions but also represented a significant place in our Nation's military History. I nearly bought the M-16. But being the purist that I am, I also wanted a rifle capable of extreme accuracy. Again, the M-16 qualified. But I already had a mini-14. While doing my weapons research on the web I became acquainted with, Accuracy Rifle Systems, a firm out of Odessa, Texas that specializes in accurizing min-14's. From everything I had read, I had learned that the mini-14 was more reliable than the M-16. One could have the best of both worlds if I had a custom rifle made to my specifications.

Accuracy Rifle Systems had equipped special units of the Navy Seals during Desert Storm and still do. Units of the IDF–Israeli Defense Forces had bought their weapons from the Texas firm. I asked Tim Lewis, the company's owner, why such elite units would buy his customized rifles when they had the M-16 available. "In Desert Storm," Tim replied, "many of our troops wrapped their M-16's in panty hose to keep the sand out of them. You never see pictures of our soldiers landing on Omaha Beach during World War II with anything protecting their M-1's from the sand and dust, do you?" The mini-14's action is very similar to the M-1's."

He had a point. Accuracy Rifle System's web site suggested that the German made Lothar Walther bull barrels it fitted to mini 14's would virtually guarantee sub 1 inch groups at 100 yards out of a mini-14 and that one half inch groups were not uncommon given the right load.

My mind flashed to all kinds of improbable fantasies. "I'm a sniper trying to shoot the head off of a chipmunk at 300 yards. Or surrounded by thirty drug addled aliens armed with machetes wanting to take my Miata away from me."

Let's see, a very reliable mini-14, stoked with a thirty round clips, capable of firing into half an inch at 100 yards as fast as I can pull the rifle's trigger should be just what I need. And hardly anyone else is going to have anything quite like it. It's just the thing that will impress all the babes down at the beach."

The scope is the ATN 5 X 33 L professional. Note that this is called "professional", not "hunter", "tracker" or "big game". It has a built in range finder, a series of parallel hash marks one uses on a six foot target. Although one can use a deer in the standing position to estimate range, the .223 is not considered a deer cartridge. It was designed to be a man killer. One simply finds two hash marks while looking through the scope at a six foot man, then reads off the range in 100 yard to 500 yard increments. The shooter then turns a dial on the scope to the range indicated which moves the scope's reticle to account for bullet drop. Say a man is standing 500 yards away. The 500 yard indicators will bracket him within the two horizontal hash marks from head to toe. Turning the dial to 500 yards allows the marksman to center the scope's cross hairs on any part of his adversary, say his nose. If the shooter does his job, the bullet will hit exactly where he's aiming at.  

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