Sangamon County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois


Brent Harney
The SIG 5.56 Rifle
February 2009 GunNews











Brent Harney talking about the Sig rifle that Tom
Shafer brought in - SCRA Meeting 1/5/09



If you pop it open it does look a little bit like the AR15.  It doesn't have to have the buffer spring and buffer back here.  It can shorten up even more by putting the side folding sight on it.  This is an AK operating system.  Its got your big gas port comes up through here and its got a tube yea big around instead of the little bitty pencil one that the AR15 has.

One of the guys at work bought an AR and he came by, turned around for a second to talk to somebody, looked back and went "Oh, it doesn't come apart that far does it?"  I had it disassembled on the table and he's freaking out.  "You can put it back together, right?"

They come unglued when you strip it further than they know it goes.

I can take all the springs and everything apart on them.  Instead of being a great big carrier and a little bitty bolt that spins, this has got a little bitty bolt up here and when you pull it out it looks almost like the AK one.  What this is is an updated Sig 550 which they came out with years ago.  What they've done is put the Picatinny rail system on it and taken off the H & K style Diopter sights with the little barrel.

This is a 556.  They've changed it to the rail system up front.  Whether or not we will be able to get them in the United States or not they've announced they're going to start making this in a 6.8.  They've already made the 550 and the 7.62 which looks almost like this except it has the H & K style Diopter sights up here but they're modifying it a little bit.  This is a one in seven.  It's a hammer forged barrel.  It'll shoot the heavier bullets because of the faster twist.  They modified it because the NATO standard is the AR Meg.  Everybody in NATO uses the M16 Meg.  So this uses the M16 Meg.

They taught us some really neat little tricks.  It's a plastic magazine which you start seeing the PMeg and the Israeli or light mags which are plastic so they don't dent like ours do.  Ours are aluminum.  The British are steel.  They're even in the H & K, the heavy duty one is steel  The aluminum ones get bent and you take them out to the range and they start misfiring.  They'll keep issuing out that mag unless somebody jumps up and down on it and you can't use it anymore which is what we do.

It's got these little grooves on the side and this little clip.  Two of these clip right together so I don't have to reach out for my pouch.  I've got one in here and this will work in my M4.  The other one is right here.  All I have to do is reach up, push, scoot it over a half-inch and I'm ready to go, its right here.  Thats all the further it has to go.  Its got them on both sides so I guess you could build a little wall out of them I guess if you wanted to.  Shafer passed around the Sig catalog which shows them three in a row on both sides.

It doesn't have the rail down the entire thing but the entire top so you can put the back up iron sights from the AR's on it, you can mount the imports on it, you've got the lower rail to mount your bipod and it has a bayonet mount.  The nice thing about this is that even though the tube is huge, it doesn't get clogged up nearly as fast as the AR model.   I've had the AK and I've had the AR.  I really liked the AK but I hate the way the mags lock into it.  They have to be tipped in like this and they'll get jammed, they'll not lock in, they're a pain in the @#*%.

What they've done is take the better operating system in my opinion and put it with the right mag and make for a hell of a gun.  If this thing decided to get dirty, I mean really dirty, like you've got it down in the mud, or the jungle, in the sand and you're firing really crappy ammo with it, and it starts getting slow, turn the gas valve up to high and let her rip again until you've got time to clean it.  It'll unjam and it opens up a bigger gas port and really starts jamming.  You don't want to run it that way all the time because it will beat your shoulder to death.

Shafer commented that the Swiss who designed this rifle and its predecessors, mandated that every male member of a family must have a Swiss made machine gun in your house with a couple cases of ammo and train a couple times every year.  The Germans looked at their country and at the type and quality of rifles and their training and their mandated ownership and they didn't invade Switzerland.  They said, "Nah, we're going to go around Switzerland."  Switzerland remained neutral, was never invaded by the Nazi's and never took a hit.  You'll notice what gun ownership did for their entire country during World War II when the Nazi war machine said, We're going to go around Switzerland, we don't need the headache because we'll get out butts kicked with rifles like this and Swiss guys up in the mountains who are used to using them."

It just goes to show you their equipment is really first rate.  Their whole national consciousness is first rate.  Shafer said his brother bought it because he said there wasn't a better one in the world.

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