24 Aug 99
At a Rifle/Shotgun Course last weekend in the Midwest, a student used his H&K-91. The weapon itself worked just fine, although it did, true to form, beat him up. However, the rear sight came off! This is the first time I’ve seen an H&K rear sight even come loose.
I know from experience that you can’t keep any kind of optical sight on a H&K-91, no matter how you mount it. It will either shake loose, or the scope itself will self destruct from the recoil impact. But, I always thought the factory sights were secure.
He reattached the sight assembly with a screw from the pistol grip, and it promptly came loose and fell off a second time.
At the same program, a local police officer brought over a new H&K G-36 rifle. It’s integral, optical sight is very useable and very rugged. The folding stock is comfortable, and the thirty-round magazines clip together. This is a nice rifle! I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of them.
One other incident of note: One of my students used a Colt 9mm carbine (the one that looks like an AR-15). It had a three-round burst feature, which we, of course, used very little. However, in semi-auto mode it would fire full-auto when it got hot! When it cooled off, it went back to semi-auto. Once again, I’ve never seen this phenomenon before either. Needless to say, we pulled the gun out of service and gave the student another rifle.
… just when I thought I’d seen everything!
/John
