[ FNC at the Range ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am out here at the range today courtesy of Morphy's with an FNC.
This was originally imported into the US as a semi-auto sporting rifle,
and prior to 1986 it was re-manufactured as a full-auto machine gun.
Registered, transferable under the NFA, ... and fully transferable in the US.
And so as a result we have a chance to take a look at shooting an FNC
both in its semi-auto guise,
which let's be honest is where it would be used most of the time in practical service,
but we can also try out the 3 round burst, and the full-auto feature.
So let's dig right into it.
These use M16 pattern magazines.
They were originally supplied with their own magazines, which do not have a bolt hold open.
So M16 mags will interchange just fine, but the gun does not lock open when it's empty.
And this is semi-auto.
What can I say? It's a 5.56 rifle, it's very comfortable,
it's very controllable, it's nice and accurate.
It's everything that you would want from a semi-auto service rifle.
It is perhaps a little bit heavy, compared to what we would expect
with some of the AR platform guns today.
It's not set up for modern optics, because it just came in kind of under the wire
before that was a standard thing.
I should say actually, I did a full video on the background of these rifles yesterday.
So if you haven't seen that, probably worth checking it out.
Now, how about a 3 round burst?
3 round burst works fine. Frankly, I'm not a huge fan of 3 round limited burst.
I think it has some applications,
but not for someone who's got some time to practice with a machine gun.
If you can practice with it, a 3 round burst is easy enough to do on full-auto.
There is an argument to be made for having it limited for highly stressful situations.
But I'm out here at the range having a good time, it's not particularly stressful.
So I'm going to flip this over to proper full-auto.
And there you go, even right-handed as a lefty, really pretty easy to control.
The rate of fire is relatively low, not super low by, say, submachine gun standards.
But compared to some of the other 5.56 rifles out there, this is a nice sedate firing gun.
And that makes it nice and controllable. I don't really want a super-high rate of fire.
I don't want 800 or 900 rounds a minute out of a 5.56 rifle.
Leave that for something that's either on a mount as a light or general purpose machine gun,
or a submachine gun where, yeah, it's a high rate of fire, but it's a smaller projectile,
and it's something that can be more easily controlled.
I rather like this rate of fire for this kind of gun.
And I think I am now out of ammo. Yep.
Like I said, the FNC does not lock open when it's empty.
I do want to point out there is an adjustable gas system on the FNC right here.
That's adverse, that's normal.
I talked about this in yesterday's video about the history of the FNC,
and I said this wasn't going to get hot, and it doesn't get nearly as hot as the gas block.
But this actually is getting a little toasty after a couple of magazines
fired off in pretty short succession.
So honestly, it's not quite as cool to the touch as I was anticipating it would be.
But still a very good idea, because ... I can hold onto this thing
where I don't really want to do that with the gas block right now.
The FNC is a fantastic example of late-Cold War era NATO rifle technology.
The 5.56 NATO cartridge has been adopted as standard for the whole of the Alliance,
but we're not in the age of the ubiquitous, universal M16 yet.
We don't have ubiquitous optical sights on everything.
This is kind of the last of the black, iron-sighted, Cold War rifles, and that's pretty cool.
The fact that it's a very nice rifle to shoot at the same time is just gravy.
So I'm going to leave this on full-auto, empty out the last magazine.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Again a big thanks to Morphy's
for giving me the ... opportunity to come out here and do some shooting with this.
Thanks for watching.
Well, that's slightly embarrassing.
Don't use GI mags people.
Alright, you want to know my proof that that's the mag and not the gun?
There's what happened to the magazine.
Don't use GI mags. There's a reason everyone went to Magpul, and that's it.