Springfield Armory Kuna
The Pistol-Caliber Counter-Chaos Machine
American gun nerds buy firearms for some of the most curious reasons. Intimate personal combat is arguably the suckiest thing anybody can ever do for real. However, practicing for that eventuality is simply great fun — hey, it’s a weird old world.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the God-given right to self-defense in America. That simple observation has led to a market in guns and ammunition bringing in more than $90 billion per annum. A massive percentage of this admittedly breathtaking expenditure goes toward weapons for personal protection. The finer points regarding maneuverability, reliability and downrange thump help put food on my table.
The folding pistol brace is, for the moment, legally permitted (at least on
the federal level) and locks up tight to help the shooter achieve better
accuracy than with a pistol alone.
Pretty Darn Wonderful
The flower of modern engineering prowess has invested untold time and treasure in developing the ideal home defense weapon. The landscape is littered with rifles, pistols, shotguns and carbines of all shapes, sizes, calibers and configurations. Some even slide, fold, collapse and telescope. After rolling around in the dirt with the new Kuna, I think I can safely opine the Springfield Armory mob has finally developed the perfect home defense tool.
Armed professionals calls these things “PDWs.” That’s milspeak for “Personal Defense Weapons.” PDWs are meaner than conventional handguns yet more compact than rifles. The Kuna reflects the current state of the art.
We normally save the price for the end but I’ll push back against convention today. The MSRP for the Kuna is $999 without a brace and $1,149 with it. The street price will likely be a bit sweeter once the dust settles. This actually represents an exceptional value. The Kuna is the cat’s pajamas. It — frankly — flirts with perfection.
Springfield Kuna Gear List
Suppressor: SilencerCo Sceptre 9
Chest Rig: Viktus Taculus MX
Ammo: Federal LE 124-grain HST
Duffel Bag: 5.11 Mission Ready
Light: Streamlight TLR 8 HL-X
Knife: Benchmade PST Auto
Ear Pro: MSA Sordin Supreme Pro
Hard Case: SKB 1510-6
Selective Breeding
Hybridization describes an animal or plant bred with an individual of another variety to optimize its genetic outcome. The formal goal of genetic hybridization is to take laudable traits from one entity and combine them with those of another to create something better than the component parts. Life is dirty with examples.
A mule is the cross between a horse and a donkey. A beefalo represents the union between a buffalo and a cow. The liger made famous in the inimitable comedy classic Napoleon Dynamite represents the combination of a lion and a tiger. If done sensibly, genetic hybrids make our lives better.
Origin Story
There are two arms to the extensive Springfield Armory catalog. Forged steel offerings like the SA-35 Hi-Power, M1A rifle, and their extensive series of M1911 pistols are all crafted in the U.S. Polymer-framed weapons like the Hellcat, XD-M and Hellion rifles are made by HS Produkt and then imported by Springfield Armory. HS Produkt is an arms-producing powerhouse located in Ozalj, Croatia, some 50 kilometers southwest of the capital Zagreb. They employ around 2,000 people and enjoy a well-deserved reputation for producing top-flight military handguns, assault rifles and grenade launchers. The quality of their offerings is unimpeachable.
I have ample experience with these guns. A Hellcat RDP is one of my primary carry weapons, and the Hellion helps secure my home. There are no higher accolades. The new Kuna takes all this to the very next level.
The business end of the Kuna features a factory-standard
suppressor mount, folding backup iron sights and both a
pic rail and M-Lok slots for lights or other accessories.
The Mission
The argument could be made the pistol-caliber submachine gun (SMG) is indeed the elusive ideal home defense tool. The pistol chambering keeps recoil and muzzle blast in check, while the compact dimensions make the weapon easy to run in confined spaces. The bigotry of the uninitiated effectively keeps true full-auto operation out of the hands of the vast majority of law-abiding American citizens, but everything else about the SMG is optimized for Close Quarters Battle (CQB). All that remains is to sort through the many details.
The pistol-caliber submachine gun combines the soft-shooting portability of the handgun with the control and accuracy of the carbine. In experienced hands, these weapons are surgical instruments. The British SAS famously used HK MP5 submachine guns to take down the Iranian embassy in London on international television back in 1980. Literally nothing is better for close-quarters personal defense.
More effective than a standard pistol and far more concealable than a rifle,
the Kuna offers a nice balance of firepower whether you’re a protective
operative or just want to channel your inner secret agent.
Details
So, what exactly is a Kuna? It sounds like either a Hawaiian shaman or a tasty fish, but that’s obviously not it. The Kuna is actually a type of European pine marten that is Croatia’s national animal. The pine marten is about the size of a housecat and is some sort of maniacal weasel. The Kuna is a vicious little predatory beast that will kill and eat most anything it can catch.
The Kuna also lends its name to the basic monetary unit in Croatia. It’s their equivalent to the dollar and seems like a pretty decent gun name to me.
The gun features a lightweight and indestructible aluminum chassis and optimized particulars. The charging handle is readily reversible and is located up front for easy access. The controls mimic those of the M4 but are utterly, totally and perfectly replicated on both sides for easy access.
The flat-faced trigger is crisp, abbreviated and divine. The 6″ Melonite-finished cold-hammer-forged barrel will outlast your children’s grandchildren. There is some nifty stippling on the front aspect of the magwell to give you an intuitive spot to park your support hand.
The original gun was originally chambered in .40 S&W. That would have rocked the world 20 years ago, but seems a bit anachronistic now. Because of the Kuna’s innate modularity, building it up in 9mm Para was no great chore. Scuttlebutt is there may yet be even more exciting chamberings to come down the road. We shall see …
The Kuna takes a standard M4 pistol grip and sports M-LOK real estate aplenty. The gun comes with a superb set of two-position folding backup sights. When stowed, the sights produce the same grinning cyclops sight picture as do those of the Hellcat concealed carry pistol. When deployed, they offer a generous rear aperture and front post. Most of us will use an optic on this gun anyway but the backup irons are indeed brilliant.
The translucent 30-round polymer magazines are proprietary and reflect the state of the art. That will no doubt cause some angst among those of us who have already amassed a decent collection of legacy mags. However, Springfield’s answer is to sell them cheap. The MSRP for replacement magazines is $24 and the gun comes with two.
Kuna controls are similar to the AR platform and the clean slab-side
design makes finding buttons in the heat of the moment an easier task.
Roll It Up
The real magic is the Kuna’s roller-delayed, blowback-operated action. Like the MP5 that inspired it, this system involves a pair of rollers camming into recesses milled inside the chamber end of the barrel. These rollers retard the movement of the bolt long enough to let pressures drop to a safe level. The end result is less mass reciprocating with the action. This makes the gun exceptionally soft-shooting and smooth.
The gun sports a standard Pic rail mount in the back and a pivoting Strike Industries FSA pistol stabilizing brace. Such magnificent contrivances have revolutionized these big-boned handguns. Thanks to some fortuitous recent court rulings, they are also federally legal from sea to shining sea.
The muzzle comes adorned with a cool proprietary muzzle brake. It is threaded 1/2×28 for a sound suppressor should you have one handy. Of course, the roller-delayed action is perfect for suppressed operation.
The Kuna transfers as a large-framed handgun. The pistol stabilizing brace offers enhanced control and accuracy without any extraneous registration requirements. For the purist, it would be an easy enough thing to file a BATF Form 1, register the gun as a short-barreled rifle, and slap some sort of folding buttstock on it. However, the Kuna is pretty freaking awesome right out of the box. Nicely accessorized, the Kuna really is the optimized 9mm Para delivery system.
The gun is totally “gender neutral” and allows either left- or
right-handed shooters easy access to the M4-style controls.
Trigger Time
The Kuna is a simply magnificent shooter. Expect rifle-grade accuracy out to a football field. The gun feels like an MP5 while sporting a literally perfect firearm-to-flesh interface.
This is a superbly well-executed weapon. When equipped with a nice Trijicon red dot and a Streamlight TLR-8G light and laser, the Kuna plays like a ballistic symphony at close quarters, day or night. The gun maneuvers as well as a pistol while offering the placid comportment of a pistol-caliber carbine. The roller-delayed action is as smooth as it gets.
The Kuna naturally ate everything we fed it without a hiccup. That included a hodgepodge of blasting ball, jacketed hollowpoints, and relatively-lightweight 100-grain Black Hills HoneyBadger chaos capsules all randomly loaded into the same magazine. With a SilencerCo Spectre-9 in place on the snout, it didn’t even make much noise.
So, what is the ideal home or truck defense gun? Many have aspired to this coveted distinction. I would suggest the new Springfield Armory Kuna finally hits that mark. Lightweight, reliable, controllable and cool, the Kuna is indeed the ultimate home defense machine.
