IWI Tavor
By James Nicholas

I know the Tavor bull pup rifle is not new, but they were at the Media Range Day for their second year. Last year it was so cold in Las Vegas that basically after a half hour I left, it was not worth it to get any hands on time with new firearms. This year while cool, that weather really cooperated. Thinking about the whole day and all of the different guns I was able to shoot, the one I was most impressed with was the IWI Tavor. The Tavor if you do not know is a 5.56mm Bullpup rifle that is one of the Israeli battle rifles. One new item of interest is that they are now shipping their 9mm conversion kits and should be available now on dealer shelves. They will also have OD Green furniture available later this year. 

In my opinion the Tavor is one of the most underrated rifles right now. Bull pups in general get a bad rap since a few in the past either are not user friendly or have horrible triggers. Thats what blew me away about the Tavor, it had a good trigger and after using it for a couple minutes I was intimately familiar with it. After 3 shots I was easily able to make hits on steel at ranges ~75-100 yards out on targets around 10 inches in size while standing. The ejection, reload and bolt release double be done seamlessly as if I had been doing it for years. With just a few range session I know I could manipulate the Tavor just as fast as I could an AR-15 platform. Take a look at the posted video and see what a professional can do when he gets his hands on one of these bad boys. I had to get him to slow down just so I could show the technique.