$500 Ruger Mini 14 is it a Piece of Shit?

welcome back to gun and shot TV this is Chris and Tara as we talked about the mini-14 I've been catching a lot of heat because I set out like a mini 14 I think it's a light handy weapon it gives you pretty much everything you need without a lot of extra junk I like the form factor I like the action I like the look of it I like I just I think it's a neat gun I'm not saying it's the best gun in the world but I'm saying that I like it and then a lot of people are also blown up about the whole I said ar-15s aren't my favorite gun I didn't say they're bad they just said they're not my favorite I really like the mini 14 and I'm gonna try and make a video and explain why that is but it's not just because I like the mini 14 it's not just because Ruger is a good company it's a few different things and like I said the form factor is a big part of it but we didn't just start with the mini 14 we actually started way back of carbine first successful carbines was the Winchester model 94 and this came out in 1894 it's chambered 3030 Winchester I've done a video about pre and post 64 Winchester's this was designed by John Moses Browning and also designed the 1911 the browning machine gun ba are pretty much every you know 1892 Winchester 1900 or 1890 Winchester pardon me he designed pretty much all the guns at the turn of the century that became huge guns they were pretty much browning designs and I think he really knew what he was doing I don't know if he had a designer's eye or if he was you know a student of ergonomics before it existed but he knew how to make a gun that was handy easy to carry pointed well you know it just feels good in the hand you know if you've never tried an 1892 or in 1894 Winchester you know borrow one from a friend give it a shot or if you find one just buy I guarantee you're going to like this gun now this was you know a pretty popular weapon all the way up to the 50 and this carbine form factor it's just so convenient it's easy to use and everything but you've got a couple drawbacks it loads through the loading gate on the side here and it's lever-action so you know that limits it to have a rifle power cartridge you know the 3030 is okay but it's kind of long so you're only getting about I think it's seven in the mag and one in the chamber so eight shots not not the most firepower but these are really common all the way like I said up through the 50s you know hunters ranchers people have them in in bakwin or their truck or you know take them in their trunk of their car or you'd see people with them on their horse they were just really popular handy guns just general all-purpose you know Knockaround guns so like I said this is a little bit of a limited platform and as time went on you know things change by World War two the need for a semi-automatic battle rifle was a pretty big deal so this is actually a 50s m1 garand now this flyer is a full-sized 3006 cartridge holds eight rounds in the magazine in a and block clip that goes in the mag now this is a also a pretty handy decent rifle like it points pretty well choose pretty well it's not terribly heavy but it is a full sized heavy you know recoils heavy it's a battle rifle so during World War two there was another rifle that was designed that also became pretty popular this was the m1 carbine this was designed by a guy named carbine Williams it was this F game he was actually I think was convicted of like murder and during his time in prison he worked and like a machine shop and designed a couple different guns I don't know that he necessarily straight-up designed the m1 carbine I think he did some contribution to the design I think there was a whole lot of people that were involved with it and I think he also designed like a floating chamber for simulating full-sized recoil for machine guns and 1911 pistols like the Colt aces with the floating chamber that was his design anyways he scaled down he and other people scaled down the rotating bolt system where this bolt comes and rotates a vm1 grant now this is scaled down to 30 carbine which is essentially a stress ball pistol round so it's not as powerful as a full-sized battle rifle round and in fact it's it's not even like an intermediate round it's more like 357 Magnum and it's okay but it doesn't really have the range or the ballistics of even an inner MIDI intermediate cartridge so these became very very popular after the war when they were surplus I know my dad got one of them when he was a kid at the hardware store for 15 bucks out of a barrel they had a barrel full of them and 15 bucks you pick your own he picked just a standard m1 carbine they had jungle carbines as well for $15 but he didn't like the looks of the jungle one so he went with the plain ones so I thought that was kind of neat but uh these became so popular in that same carbine ranch rifle roll I mean during the war soldiers love these because they were great to carry and work pretty well and after the war they they just really took over where that winchester 94 kind of had that role now like I said the problem is it's limited with with the cartridge and the power and everything the army did make a couple different forms of this too they made this is an m1 they made an m2 that was a fully automatic version of the m1 and they also made an m3 carbine which was this monstrosity with a world war two era night sight which is interesting but I think I'd rather have a modern night sight given the choice after the Korean War the military was looking for for a more updated full-sized battle rifle the brass still thought that they wanted a big heavy thirty-aught-six caliber 38 308 caliber weapon now they did design something called an m14 I don't actually have one of those you can find them commercially as an m1 a it is essentially an m1 garand with a box magazine there's some other minor tweaks but you know essentially that's what it is it's still full-sized heavy battle rifle and those worked but once again a munitions heavy recoils heavy and it's just hard to send out a fully loaded squad of guys carrying those because now they're carrying so much an extra weight from that rifle now we're on to the mini 14 the mini 14 was designed by Ruger as kind of a scaled-down intermediate platform to fire two to three as you can see this is the 30 caliber m1 carbine and the mini 14 they're about the same platform the only real difference is this one's a little bit bigger to handle two to three and it's a little bit heavier obviously and it's got the two to three intermediate cartridge one thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is you know Ruger hired a guy named James L Sulc L James Sullivan who had worked on the m16 he and Ruger were the ones that designed the mini-14 and you know allows you to think the carbine platform where the mini-14 was stupid or was just a scaled-down m14 that's true but years later the army kind of realized the utility of this platform and they came up with their own carbine by scaling down the m16 to make the m4 carbine which was essentially a continuation of the m1 carbine that went m2 m3 and then the m4 it's coming a little bit closer you can see it's got the same rotating bolt action as the m1 garand it does have a bolt hold-open which you can circumvent by pushing down on the magazine follower there it's also got a manual lock for the bolt hold-open if you want to lock and open without a magazine and you can push that down it stays open other than that it's I mean it's a it's a pretty simple just gas piston design where the operating rod takes force from the bullets as they travel through the barrel once the bullets pass the gas pushes out through a little gas port that pushed it back on the piston makes the operating rod open the bolt and that's pretty much it it has a very similar action to an m1 grand how the the action all comes out in one piece and it's pretty easy to take apart and clean I really like it I think it's a handy neat platform it gives you a lot of stuff that you do need without a lot of stuff you don't come in a little bit closer the rifle is pretty simple now to load it you're going to take your magazines it kind of rocks in like kay and there's a little lip at the front here where it's got a hole and then there's a little pin in the receiver so you're going to put the mag up so it catches that pin and then you're going to push it back until it locks in I'll show you how that looks from the side I'm going to push it in here locks in and then obviously if there's rounds in there you pull back on the opera and we'll fly forward now your safety is just this tab here pull it back and now it's in engage you cannot pull the trigger push it forward and now the safety is disengaged so going back to the title of the video a lot of people are wondering how I got this mini-14 for five hundred dollars well I went down gun broker for quite a while because I got this I think it was a few years ago now probably four or five years ago and I wanted the stainless in the wood I thought that was a neat combination they had stopped making it so I was stuck looking on gun broker I was thinking I'd find one use well I found one that was new in box for 500 bucks all it was missing was the scope ring the manual and the magazine so I figured 500 bucks is a pretty good deal I took it and I figured once I got it I'll call roofers so I called Ruger and I said look I'm missing the manual you're going to send that to me for free I know that but I was interested in wondering if I could get a better price on the Rings in the magazine if I bought them together right from you guys because they're missing out of the box so the lady was really nice she said well you know let me see only checking on the Andrew see if there's something I can do for you because we're - mainly the manual anyway and I said you know I understand I'll pay for him I'm not you know not trying to get anything for free or anything but she said well let me look into it so - three days later I hadn't heard back from her I figured you know they'd send me a letter with a price quote or something I went out to the mail and I had a big pouch with free magazine free scope rings and the manual so Ruger customer service hooked me up on that I don't think I would have got it for 500 bucks if it had those in the box but either way it was a pretty good price if you troll gun broker you can occasionally find some pretty good deals on Buy Now stuff so you can see that two different guns here's the AR built and here's the 14 just give me an idea the scale now they both feel about the same way to me but obviously I'll need to weigh him when I do an actual comparison but I want to give you an idea of where I was talking as far as the form factor and how you know how it how it's the carbine form factor I think is a little bit neater in the mini 14 therefore they're both good guns I'm not trying to pick one side or the other say one is better just personal preference remain Lee but I know people are going to flip out about it so I figured I'd hold them up compare them a little bit I'll get to a video where I actually do a more in-depth comparison with some more stuff but for right now I'm going to take the mini down to the range and shoot some targets so if you learned a little bit more about the mini 14 in this video you may not love it you may not agree with my opinions but let's face it they're my opinions and as usual is a fun day to get off the range and and shoot some stuff and want to take out some stuff from the collection and have a little show-and-tell we're gonna chat TV this is Chris thanks for watching have a great day

Channel: Gun&ShotTV

Views: 1,590,601

Keywords: mini 14, mini-14, ruger, ar15, m4, .223, range, firearm, firearms, carbine, rifle, 5.56, shooting

Id: XV5Wm42puGE

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2016