The T36 (American G36 Clone thanks to Tommy Built Tactical) is one of those Holy Grail firearms for me. Has it been surpassed in ways by modern designs like the HK 433 or MCX SPEAR? Sure. I don’t care though. The FN SCAR 17 was my first ‘Holy Grail’ firearm several years ago, one I believed to be unobtainable for my meager mortal being.
Then I got one. It was everything I could want from it and lived up to all the hype (and moncher of poorly mounted or low quality optics) it is still my absolute favorite all around rifle. A close second is the, SCAR 16 which I didn’t actually want at all because I, like SOCOM, didn’t see great improvements on paper over any other quality 5.56 rifle. Then I shot one for awhile and decided I was both right and wrong. While the SCAR 16 doesn’t do anything terminally much better than even an M16A4 or M4A1 (caliber limitations are real) it was an amazingly soft shooting platform with a recoil impulse that was just right. I can run an AR, or a ______ 5.56 rifle and muscle it a little to behave how I want but two rifles stand alone as not needing me to do that. The SCAR 16, and more recently acquired Rifle Dynamics RD NATO. Both just stay put when I squeeze the trigger…
Anyway, back to ‘Grail Guns’. I’ve seemed to make a habit of picking up rifles that were always obscure objects of desire and adding them to inventory instead. I’ve got two major ones remaining, an MCX Virtus in FDE is the lesser one. I wouldn’t even consider it ‘Grail’ status, it is just a solid service grade carbine I don’t own an example of yet. But the real ‘Grail Gun’ is the T36.
Tommy Built has made getting hands on G36 clones eminently doable from the near pipe dream it once was back when you had to butcher an SL8 and rebuild it. And as Josh and Henry show above, it’s an accurate and effective system even before being brought up to modern specs for ancillary equipment. It has pop culture cred and its just damn cool. The G36 and AUG before it set the stage for ‘space-age’ looking modern rifle layouts (no, not you SA80/L85, you sucked until the A2/A3… still bad, just passably bad).
Anyway, thank you Josh and Henry, I know want a T36 badly… again.. and there’s some spare cash in my pocket… And maybe coronavirus checks… It counts as emergency equipment right?
