Frankengun:
Build A Defensive Monster
An Easy Budget Bugout Blaster
When glass breaks downstairs at 2 a.m., you need a maneuverable, reliable and effective weapon — Will’s Frankengun fills the bill.
Alex Bosco is my hero. He’s the brains behind the Pistol Stabilizing Brace. This inspired contrivance birthed an entirely new genre of firearms.
The PSB was originally intended to allow disabled veterans to run a gun one-handed. The brace bit includes a strip of Velcro that affixes to your arm to help support the weight. After a few fits and starts, the BATF finally ruled the addition of a PSB did not change the host gun’s pistol classification, no matter how you held it. The end result is pure, unfiltered, short-barreled awesome.
The PSB has gone through several evolutionary iterations, but the latest SBA3 slips over a standard M4 carbine buffer tube and slides on in the manner of a buttstock that opens up new vistas for the enterprising gun nerd. If you have a screwdriver and a credit card, you can bodge together the most remarkable Doomsday Bugout Gun (DBG) right on your dining room table.
Will’s “Frankengun” sports the Multi-Position Front grip from Hera Arms. For reasons Will doesn’t
understand, you can put an angled foregrip on a pistol but not the vertical sort.
Mission-Specific
Everybody needs a Doomsday Bugout Gun as a primary defensive firearm. You’ll grab the thing — along with a handful of spare magazines — as you jump into the family minivan with your brood to flee the pending Zombie Apocalypse. Okay, forget that zombies aren’t real — technically. You still need to be on the safe side.
Some will swear by a 1911 or their favorite tricked-out Kalashnikov. Others might opt for a .22 autoloader or Marlin levergun. (I’m a Stoner black rifle acolyte myself.) In this tidy little DIY homebuilt pistol we find the apex predator. Small enough to stow, this tricked-out nuclear handgun is the coolest thing on the range
Swiss Army Can: Silent Legion’s Multi-Caliber Suppressor Kit includes mounting hardware
to outfit most rifle-caliber guns. It amps up the cool and lets you run indoors with ease.
“Okay, forget that zombies aren’t real — technically. You still need to be on the safe side.”
Essential Components
The SBA3 PSB from SB Tactical is what facilitates the whole project. It’ll set you back $169 and includes a buffer tube if you don’t already have one. If your local laws don’t allow you to play with such stuff you should move. Down here in the Deep South, the weather is pleasant, the girls are gorgeous, and we are not encumbered by any ancillary infringements on our right to keep and bear arms. Just sayin’ …
The general parts kit, which cost $300, came from CDNN Investments. It includes everything you need to build an AR pistol with a 10″ barrel except the lower receiver and a bolt carrier group (which cost another C-note).
The lower receiver can come from anyplace but has to transfer through an FFL dealer. Fortunately lowers are just stupid cheap these days. If you are really feeling froggy, pick up an 80 percent lower, an inexpensive box store router, and a completion kit with milling fixtures. You can then legally craft the whole thing at home without a trip to the local gun emporium.
If you want to stop there, you can have yourself a simply magnificent close combat tool for about the same cost as a high-end plastic pistol. A set of flip-up polymer sights from CDNN set me back $20. But anything worth doing is worth doing excessively, so this meant adding an EOTech Holosight and a quick-release, multi-caliber suppressor from Silent Legion.
The nasty end of a Holosight is the last thing Osama bin Laden saw before his eternal deepwater nap. I can think of no higher accolade. The Silent Legion Complete Multi-Caliber Kit is one-stop shopping for most all your rifles.
It includes a single titanium .30-caliber rifle suppressor along with thread mounts for both .30 and .22-caliber platforms. There’s also a quick-detach mount and a pair of corresponding flash suppressors. By mixing and matching, you can use the same can on everything from a .22 rimfire plinker up to a .300 Win Mag sniper rig.
The SBA3 Pistol Stabilizing Brace from SB Tactical is key to the whole project. It slides in
and out in the manner of a stock and costs $169.
It’s Alive!
At close ranges, the resulting “Frankengun” runs like a scalded ape. Nothing is faster indoors or within the confines of an automobile. We prattle on incessantly about short barrels and sub-optimal ballistics affecting 5.56 performance, but this gun has plenty of horsepower.
My new homebuilt gat also reaches out farther than a football field to ring steel with satisfying regularity. This neat little mongrel sports a motley parentage but looks like a movie prop. It’s the ultimate bugout tool.
