1 Oct 12

At an Urban Rifle Course in NV last weekend, a student brought two Ruger Mini-14s, both equipped with a curious device called an “Accu-Strut.” First time I’d seen one!

It is a otherwise-functionless metal rod, attached under the barrel between the front sight and the forend, via two screwed clamps. It does little but sit there and contribute weight and bulk. There are no moving parts.

The ostensible reason for this after-market attachment is to reduce “barrel-whip” and thus enhance accuracy. If accuracy was significantly “enhanced,” it was undetectable, as the rifle in question was no more, nor less, accurate than any of the other rifles present.

Like most such after-market gimmicks that are screwed, glued, and pinned to guns, it came loose and fell off the rifle within the first two-hundred rounds! My student thereafter completed the Course, absent the device, with no further difficulties. At the end of the second day, he removed and discarded the device from his other Mini-14. The copy on his first Mini-14 had already self-jettisoned, as noted above.

There are some after-market, add-on products that are genuinely useful, and are recommended. MGI’s D-Ring (for the extractor-spring on ARs) is an example.

The one noted above, like the vast majority, in my opinion, contributes significant weight and bulk, provides scant genuine advantage, and, when it precipitously self-ejects as this particular device is apparently inclined to do, represents a real liability.

With any luck, the one described above is the first, and last, with which I’ll have to deal!

/John