Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island Auction
Company taking a look at some of the guns that they're
going to be selling in their upcoming
February of 2017 Regional Auction.
And today we're taking a look at something that's
actually not forgotten at all - yet.
In fact these are still available brand-new on the commercial market.
But there was one here, and it's a gun that I've been curious about and I wanted to take a look at it.
So I am going to drag you along to take a look at it with me.
This is a Benelli MR1, and it is ... Benelli's entry into the tactical black rifle market.
But it's different than a lot of things in many ways.
First off most obviously, well I guess not necessarily obviously,
but first off it's not an AR-15.
Which may not sound like a big deal, but that's actually kind of surprisingly rare.
In fact, it's not an AR-18 either.
And by not being either of those all of a sudden, OK, my interest has been piqued.
Someone actually created, at least to some extent, a novel and new independent design here.
So it turns out what Benelli did in fact do is they basically took the gas system
from their M4 Super 90 shotgun and adapted it into a .223 self-loading rifle.
And instead of using an AR style of bolt they have a triangular bolt,
a three lug triangular rotating bolt, which is I think a pretty cool idea.
There have been a handful of other rifles that did that,
most notably the Leader T2, also the Barrett M82 uses a three lug triangular bolt.
It gives you really all the advantages of a rotating bolt.
But with larger locking lugs they are easier to machine,
and easier to clean as well at the user's end.
So, that all kind of makes me interested.
The handling looks a little unusual for a black rifle,
but that's largely because it doesn't look just straight like an AR-15.
One thing I should point out here since this is an auction listing and all.
This rifle ... comes with this little 5 round magazine,
which I think looks kind of stupid in the gun.
So I put in a 20 rounder instead, the 20 rounder doesn't actually come with the gun.
At any rate, why don't we pull this thing apart,
and let's take a look at those interesting internals.
A quick tour of the controls on the Benelli, nothing super crazy going on here.
We do have a cross-bolt safety, so that's fire, that safe.
Very familiar to shotgun shooters.
We have a bolt release, ... actually this is the most unusual part.
It's back here in front of the trigger guard.
So when I lock the bolt open,
in order to drop it, I actually grab this lever and pull it down. That releases the bolt.
And then we have an ambidextrous magazine release, located on both sides of the receiver.
Disassembly is pretty simple, we're going to start by removing
the muzzle nut here from the end of the gun.
It's loud, it makes a lot of clicking noises.
There we go, once that's off we can set it aside
and then pull the plastic handguard off the front. A little judicious wiggling there.
There we go, handguard comes off.
Note that the spring detent on the handguard
is actually a tool to remove the front of the gas system.
And we do have to remove the front of the gas system in order to get the bolt out.
So we'll continue on with that.
So what I can do is put that pin in this hole.
Open it up.
Until it gets to the point where it's loose enough to do by hand.
It's kind of weird that they have this big spring on the front there.
As far as I can tell, that's just to prevent this plug from unthreading while you're firing.
So now that we have the gas plug removed,
we can separate the upper and lower assemblies, and then we can take the bolt out.
So I'm just going to slide this whole thing forward.
... The upper assembly is kind of in a track on the lower,
and then the gas system is together here.
So here we go.
Helps to hold the bolt back.
And there we go.
We'll take the bolt out next. To do that we're going to bring the bolt all the way back.
There's a little cutout so you can pull the bolt handle out.
And the bolt assembly comes out.
Now this is one of those designs where you have this
whole nesting egg thing involved in disassembly.
At this point I want to take the bolt head off.
In order to do that I have to take out the cam pin.
In order to take out cam pin I have to take out the firing pin.
And the firing pin is held in place by the firing-pin retaining pin.
So we're going to start with this.
There are a number of elements as we go through here, especially on the bolt assembly,
that kind of point out that this is not intended to be a military rifle.
For one thing this cam pin is blind.
On a military-style gun you would normally have it accessible from the opposite side,
you could take a cartridge tip or a tool to push that pin out.
In this case it has a little O-ring that tensions it in place,
and I'm just going to gently lift up underneath with a screwdriver.
There we go. Now there is a firing pin spring, so that'll fly out if you don't hold onto it.
Got the pin out, and then we can take out the firing pin,
and the firing pin spring.
With the firing pin out, now I can remove the cam pin.
So we're going to line it up with this hole in the bottom of the bolt carrier.
Pop it out, cam pin comes out.
Then at last we can take the bolt out the front.
So as I had mentioned, this is not in fact an AR-15 bolt, it is a triangular three-lug bolt.
This ... more squared-off lug on the bottom is what picks up cartridges from the magazine.
We have our extractor, and a plunger ejector there.
This works much like an AR-15 or AR-18 rotating bolt,
but a different design to the bolt head, and one that I think actually makes a lot of sense.
Now looking at the gas system, this thing is actually a lot simpler than what it looks like.
It looks very impressive: it's actually just a gas block.
So the outside here is a machined cylinder,
and we're going to have a specific gas seal fit in that, a nice close fit.
And then there's a gas port right here that taps gas off the barrel into the ... cylinder.
That gas port actually interestingly hits on this divider,
which is going to split the gas and use it, I guess, to more evenly fill up the piston here.
And then we have kind of a three part system where this is actually just a guide rod.
This is our actual gas piston.
It's going to ride on top of this, and it's going to ride inside this guy.
So when you fire, this is going to get pushed backwards.
It is in turn then going to push back this block.
This block has these two ears that line up with these little connecting rods, right here.
When the system cycles you can see these two ears hit these two rods,
which are going to push the bolt back ...
just like that.
And lastly, these two gas piston pieces are removable.
There's a little rubber O-ring there that's going to put some pressure on them.
There's that one, and that one.
Now you can see this really just is a guide rod.
We have gas sealing rings up here where the gas piston is actually moving,
and a smooth fit back there where the connecting piece is.
This is hammer fired, actually got a pretty lightweight sort of low-profile hammer there.
You can see our bolt release is connected to that lever right there.
Safety is cross-bolt, there's nothing for me to show you there.
These two hooks are over-travel preventers,
these stop the magazine when it's fully inserted.
So without something like that, it becomes possible to push the magazine
further in than it's supposed to go.
At which point it will interfere with the bolt, and the gun just won't work.
So it's important to have some sort of over-travel stop.
Now the other over-travel stop on the AR-15 is this pressed out tab
on the magazine just under the magazine catch hole. That hits the magazine release.
Apparently Benelli thought it was important, or relevant, or useful,
to have an additional stop on the front of the magazine.
Kind of like a FAL or some other guns, the recoil spring is actually here in the stock.
The bolt carrier has this tail coming off the back
that is going to connect into that little silver round plug.
That's the end cap on the mainspring.
So as the bolt moves back and forward,
this tail is going to push against the mainspring down into the stock.
There you have it, one stripped down Benelli MR1.
Remarkably and impressively, not an AR-15.
So the question is ... why is Benelli even marketing this? What's the purpose? What's the goal?
Now Benelli is owned by Beretta Holding.
And Beretta already makes the standard Italian military rifle, the ARX series.
So it wouldn't make any sense for Benelli to try and compete
with Beretta for that market in Italy,
and ... not really for any other international contracts.
Because there really isn't anything that the MR1 does that the ARX doesn't do already.
Honestly, there's nothing that this does that the AR-15 doesn't do, practically speaking.
And it's also worth noting that this rifle isn't being sold in a military configuration anyway.
It's only being sold in this civilian guise.
For example, the magazine well goes a little bit lower
so it's not compatible with every AR-15 magazine out there,
including things like PMAGs, which a lot of militaries are starting to use.
It doesn't have a threaded muzzle, it doesn't have a muzzle device.
If it were being specifically intended for the military and really tactical markets,
you'd obviously have to have the ability to have
53 hundred different types of muzzle device on it.
The sights are kind of civilianised.
You don't have the option to ... cover the entire receiver in rails.
So this really is being marketed more on the sporting side of things.
And I think what's going on is that Benelli has decided there's a lucrative market opportunity
for people who do not have AR-15s and don't want AR-15s.
But they're kind of looking at everyone around them who's into firearms and going,
"Well, they bought an AR, and they bought an AR, and they bought an AR.
I don't understand what the deal is with the AR-15, I don't like it for whatever reason.
But, well maybe I ought to get a semi-auto .223 rifle as well,
because ... they are very universally useful rifles, they can do a lot of different things.
But again, I just don't like the AR-15 for some reason."
And these are people, presumably Benelli expects, who have Benelli shotguns.
And they're used to the quality, and the handling,
and the feel of the Benelli shotgun, they have a relationship with Benelli.
And if Benelli can be there to offer them a black 5.56 rifle,
they'd be interested in it because it's not an AR-15.
Not that it does anything substantially differently,
it's just for whatever reason, I think the ... intended market for this
are people who have a somewhat irrational dislike for the AR-15.
I don't think this is intended to do anything that the AR doesn't do
because I don't think it does.
But that doesn't mean it's a bad rifle, it just means Benelli, I think, has seen
an opening in the market where they can squeeze in and take a little slice for themselves.
If you are one of those people who doesn't like the AR-15,
but does want to have a tactical black 5.56 rifle,
well, consider taking a look at the link in the description text below.
That will take you to Rock Island's catalogue page for this particular one.
You can see their pictures and description, and their price estimate.
And you can place a bid for it online through their website,
or over the phone, or live here at the auction in Rock Island.
Thanks for watching.
[Continued ...]
Sorry, I forgot to mention this during the video,
because, well, it wasn't really relevant to what I was talking about.
But for some reason somebody has removed all the internals
from the rear iron sight of this Benelli.
So if you do decide to buy this one
you're either going to need to get some replacement parts for that,
or just ignore it and mount an optical sight.