This week on Rifle Roundup, we’re looking at the new Springfield Armory Kuna 9mm large format pistol, with an Aimpoint Duty RDS red dot sight and an Armageddon Gear Single Point sling.
Springfield Armory Kuna 9mm Pistol: MSRP $999
Let’s journey overseas for a moment to the country of Croatia, specifically to the offices of HS Produkt, the largest gun manufacturer in that small European country. The Croatian government found itself in need of something to replace its aging stocks of submachine guns, and HS Produkt created a modern take on the small, fully automatic pistol-caliber firearm to fill that need. The company also realized that the large-format pistol market was starting to heat up again in the United States, and thus created a 9mm semi-automatic version of that military-spec firearm for sale in this country. And with that, the Kuna arrived on our shores.
There is a lot to like about this little gun. Inside the receiver, there is a modified roller-delayed blowback action which creates significantly less recoil than direct blowback guns of a similar size. The controls are fully ambidextrous and mimic those of an AR-15. There is a reversible, non-reciprocating folding charging handle at the front of the gun, and the 6-inch barrel comes with a muzzle brake, but users can replace that brake with a suppressor if they so choose. The handguard is plastered with M-Lok slots on the sides and bottom, while up top, there is a section of Picatinny rail for mounting more sights or an optic.
Speaking of sights, the Kuna has a nifty hybrid folding iron sight system. The sights on this gun, when folded, give you a conventional front post/rear notch sight picture, but when popped up, they provide a true post/peep sight sighting system like you’d find on a long gun. The trigger has a flat face and breaks at about four pounds, according to my Lyman trigger gauge. At the rear, there is a short section of vertically mounted Picatinny rail which allows you to add a pistol stabilizing brace or some other accessory (more about that later). If there is a downside to the Kuna, it’s that it uses a proprietary magazine system, rather than an MP5, Glock or similar family of magazines. The good news is, spare 30-round magazines are priced at $25 dollars as I type this, making them less expensive than the magazines for many concealed carry pistols with smaller capacities.
Aimpoint Duty RDS Red Dot Sight: MSRP $499
A duty-grade firearm like the Springfield Armory Kuna demands a duty-grade optic, which is why we added an Aimpoint Duty RDS to this gun. At first glance, the list of features for this optic is quite short. It’s just a 2-MOA dot. You can’t select from one of 55 different reticles. There’s no solar recharge, and you can have it in any color you want, as long as it’s black.
Then you start to poke around the specifications and features, and you find out it’s really light, a nice feature on a lightweight large-format pistol like the Kuna. It has a three-year battery life, and that’s three years of normal usage, not some low-power, night vision-only setting. It’s submersible in up to 80 feet of water. I’m pretty certain that I’m not submersible to that standard, so I won’t have to worry about any raindrops that might hit this optic while I’m at the range.
This is why people choose Aimpoint over other options: When you optic has to work, 100 percent of the time, Aimpoint is usually at the top of the list, and the Duty RDS is another example of why this is so.
Armageddon Gear Single-Point Sling: MSRP $54.95
Yes, there is a version of the Springfield Armory Kuna that ships with a pistol brace. No, that is not the version we’re talking about today. Instead, we’re going old-school, and using an Armageddon Gear single-point sling that’s attached to the back of our Kuna.
This method of controlling recoil dates back to how Britain’s Special Air Service commandos used their short-barrelled MP5’s, and it works well to this day. When using a single-point sling to control recoil, the gun is thrust out to the full extent of the sling, and that tension stabilizes the gun and allows for faster follow-up shots than shooting without the sling.
Most single-point slings have a long section of bungee material built into them which is meant to soak up some of the weight of carrying a full-size AR-15 with this sort of sling. However, the Armageddon Gear sling has less of this springy material than many other single point slings, which means the gun is more firmly supported by the sling at full extension, which makes this particular single point sling ideal for this sort of use, as it has less give than many other single point slings.
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