The CMMG Mk47 AKM Mutant Personal Defense Weapon

I want to talk about the new CMMG Mk47 Mutant rifle. Now, from where you're looking, this probably looks a lot like a typical AR-15 type rifle, until I pick it up and you look a little more closely. And especially when I put this magazine into the gun. Once I stick that magazine in the gun, it becomes really obvious that this isn't your typical AR-15. And in fact, this is a truly unique, from the ground up rifle, that's built to be a hybrid between the AR and the AK platforms.

And you can see the way the magazine goes in, and of course the signature curved magazine indicates that 7.62x39 round is what this rifle is going to fire. Now, traditionally, the AK-47 is something that people either love or hate. Here in the US, of course, it isn't the primary rifle that we normally see, but it has gone through phases of popularity. And one of the main reasons that it's become popular, from time to time, is because of the 30 caliber round. Now the 30 caliber, 7.62x39 round has been in use for many decades.

And it's a very well-proven round. It's about the equivalent of a US 30-30 cartridge. And there's a lot of interest lately in stepping up from an AR-15 typical 5.56 or the 2.23 round, to a 30 caliber round. And we've seen a lot of different options come and go. We've seen the 300 Whisper back in the day.

We've seen the 6.5 and 6.8 more recently. And of course the 300 Blackout has become relatively popular but none of those calibers are nearly as ubiquitous as the 7.62x39. The reason that we don't see a lot of AR-15 type firearms in the 7.62x39, that are reliable, are twofold. First, it's the straight-walled magazine. The straight-walled magazine that typically comes with an AR-15, doesn't play well with the 7.62x39 round.

This round just doesn't feed well, unless you put it into one of these curved magazines. And of course the way these magazines integrate with the rifle is very different from the standard AR magazine well, so you end up with those feeding issues. The other reason has to do with the bolt of the AR. I'm going to go ahead and pop the bolt out of this Mutant and take a look at the bolt face. And in fact, take a look at the whole bolt structure and bolt size.

If we look at these rounds in great detail we're going to see some differences. The differences between the 30 caliber round and the 2.23 round, obviously in bullet size, there's a dramatic difference. The bullet size is really, really hugely different here. And we're talking about twice as much weight of the typical 5.56 round, to the typical 7.62x39 round. That means more downrange energy, and of course, more potential for penetration, things like that.

We also, you see different behavior from the larger heavier bullets, where we can start using split-core technology and things like that in a hollow point, versus the 2.23 round which, traditionally, in the ball configuration will start to tumble and crack, or in the hollow point, or ballistic tip, will basically disintegrate when it hits that target. So we see that difference in the bullet size. We also see a dramatic difference in the size of the bases of the round. Now, what happens when you take a normal AR-15 bolt face and you machine away enough of this material, you lose structural integrity to accommodate the base of the 30 caliber bullet, which again is much larger than the base of that 5.56 bullet. So when you do that, what you're going to see, and again, you can look online, you can see, that this is something that's plagued the 7.62x39 AR conversions, is the lack of structural integrity of the bolt face means that we have a lot of failures here.

So that problem is caused by the fact that we're trying to take an AR-15 bolt and accommodate a 30 caliber round. Well, one of the other things that we could do in the past, is we could think about taking something the size of an AR-10, which is obviously a way-overbuilt size upper and lower receiver, for that 30 caliber round, that 7.62x39. Well, this is a very heavy gun. It's very overbuilt because it's designed for the .308, which is the 7.62x59 round. When we compare that to the smaller, 7.62x39 we see that we're really getting a lot less energy, and we have a lot less need for a big bulky rifle like that.

So what CMMG did, was they started with the AR-10 bolt and bolt carrier group, and they decided to put that into a brand new, upper and lower receiver for their Mk47 Mutant to accommodate this 30 caliber round. Now, right away, the person that this is most going to attract, in terms of a consumer, is somebody that really likes the AR system, but really wants a common, easy to find, relatively inexpensive and proven 30 caliber round. And that's what the 7.62x39 is. So what we have is an AR, in terms of the aesthetics, we have an AR in terms of the way you integrate with the gun. And we have about half AR and half AK in terms of the manipulation, the operation of the gun.

So when I say the integration is all AR, what I'm talking about here is the grip, I'm talking about the stock, the buffer tube, and you can put any stock you want on here, obviously, the rail, the fore-end, you can put any configuration out here, various barrel lengths, various rail lengths, various rail configurations. There are three different models available from CMMG, at launch. This is the lowest price, this is the entry-level model. And what this Mk47 does is allow you to be using your integration just like you would in AR. So if this gun were loaded, all I'm going to do is I'm going to run the safety, just like an AR, bring it up to a shooting position, and I'm going to fire it just exactly like an AR in that home defense situation, even in a hunting situation.

Obviously, hunting with a 30 caliber round is going to be a lot better than hunting with the 2.23/5.56 round. And in some places that 2.23 isn't even legal to hunt with. So that's a couple of different things that are going to happen here. But, as soon as we get into loading the gun, unloading the gun, or dealing with malfunctions, that's when we really see the hybrid nature of the AK-47 as a combo AR-AK, because what I'm going to do is go ahead and put my glasses on, because I am about to go hot. And we're going to take a look at loading this rifle, which again, so far has behaved very much like an AR.

When I take this magazine and lock the front end and rock it backwards, get that AK-signature, curved magazine in there, now I have to come up and run the charging handle. And this is where going to an aftermarket latch is really gonna behoove you. The one thing that's unique about, one of the things that's unique about this gun, is that the charging handle is about halfway between the AR length and the AR-10 length. So you're not going to be able to take a drop-in, oversized, charging handle and just put it into the gun, but you can drift the pin out and change the latch. So there are aftermarket latches that are available that I would definitely suggest for this gun, because we need to run the charging handle.

Now that I've got the gun hot and loaded again, we're back to using it just like we would use an AR. So I'm going to go ahead and stage this spare magazine in my back pocket. I'm going to come up, fire my shots. And now, as soon as I can get that click, because with the AK we don't have a bolt lock, we don't have a bolt-hold open, I'm going to come up, touch that trigger guard, run forward to strip the old magazine, set the new magazine, come up, run the charging handle, and I can get back into shooting. And now, again, it becomes an AR.

I'm running that safety with my strong side thumb, putting the gun back into my ready position. So that hybrid nature of the AR and the AK really starts to show itself when it comes to loading and reloading the gun. Of course, if I had any malfunction situations, I'd run this very much like an AK as well. Now, a lot of people will look at this, especially the AR lovers, and they'll say, "Well, wait a minute, why doesn't the bolt lock open? Why isn't there a bolt lock-back or a bolt release, a bolt-catch on this gun?" Well, the way the AK magazines work, it's really not feasible for this platform, unless they were going to spend a lot more money and a lot more time engineering it.

The idea was to come up with a rifle that competed in the markets with other comparable AR-15s. This isn't a very light rifle. It's not a five pound rifle. It's on a five and a half pound rifle, but it's also not nearly as heavy as something like an AR-10. So what we've got is a seven pound rifle, obviously unloaded, which is certainly reasonable.

A couple of years ago, that would have been the norm, a seven pound rifle. But we're shooting a 30 caliber round. So we're getting more bang for our buck and more bang for the weight, at this reasonably priced, and obviously CMMG, high quality, very reliable rifle. This is the Mk47. It's a hybrid AR-AK.

And I think it's going to appeal to a lot of people, not only the AR people looking for 30 calibers, but also some of the AK diehards that might want an American made, American manufactured, and built from the ground up, to be 7.62x39 rifle that integrates with an AR system, that has the grip, that has the stock, that has the rails, it allows that modularity, of course, any siting. You have any optic option that you want. Kudos to CMMG for spending the time and spending the money, honestly, to build this from scratch, as a purpose-built AR that shoots that 30 caliber round. Now I'm excited to have it on the market. I'm looking forward to shooting it more, probably taking it hunting and getting some more personal experience with it, as well as hearing what other people are doing with it.

I have no doubt that this is going to be pressed into use in a home defense capacity. We're probably going to see it as a patrol rifle, in some law-enforcement hands. And of course, we're going to see a lot of people hunting hogs, and maybe even deer with it as well.