TNW Firearms: Heritage, Innovation and Protecting the Troops from IEDs

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 12/23/20 | F Jardim

[w1n1]

How Tim Bero went from making floppy disks to manufacturing semiauto .50-caliber machineguns, helping save Humvee crews' lives in the Second Gulf War and now, Multi-Caliber Survival Rifles, Pistols, and more.
TNW Firearms first made a name for itself among American shooters 20 years ago in a really big way with a really big gun. That gun was a semi-automatic, full-size replica of the military M2 HB .50-caliber heavy machinegun, a weapon that's seen continuous use in all theaters of war from the 1930s to the present.
That sexy belt-fed beast, known affectionately as the Ma Deuce in military circles, weighs a hefty 83 pounds without the tripod. By the way, even Arnold Schwarzenegger can’t fire one unless it's on some sort of solid mounting.

The Vernonia, Oregon-based company's founder and president, Tim Bero, never expected their semiauto Ma Deuce to set industry sales records, and it didn't. A full-auto M2 HB is a National Firearms Act-controlled machinegun, which puts it out of reach of most shooters in cost and registration requirements.
TNW's semiauto M2 costs about a quarter of the full-auto gun with no more ownership restrictions than a 20-gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun. TNW put the dream of owning and shooting this historic M2 HB in reach – sort of. If you already had its massive M3 tripod – a thousand-dollar item in itself – you still needed to get a supply of links, a belting tool to load the ammunition in the links, and the ammo itself. Military surplus .50 BMG generally costs $2.50 a round on the low end.

Realistically, the TNW M2 HB was a luxury item. But when has the reality of beer pockets ever stopped anyone from dreaming of indulging their champagne tastes? With the M2 HB, the reputation that TNW rather quickly established was that they were willing and able to make dreams come true for historic military weapons enthusiasts within a relatively new niche of the firearms industry: convenient-to-own, semiautomatic copies of famous machineguns. It wasn't a big niche, but TNW got into it early and did such a high-quality job in engineering and manufacturing that their German MG34, Finnish Suomi and Russian PPSh-41 semiautos had no rivals.

The company's focus abruptly shifted during the Second Gulf War, when American losses to IED, or improvised explosive device, ambushes began rising in alarming numbers. Unable to beat our troops in a face-to-face fight, the enemy turned to remote detonated roadside bombs and the U.S. Department of Defense asked private industry for an immediate solution to protect vehicle-mounted troops.
Working with a team of other companies and supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, TNW took on a concept of bolt-together transparent armor with integrated gun mounts. TNW did extensive research and development work to create a field-installed transparent armor kit used to protect Humvees and turn the workhorse 5-ton cargo truck into a formidable convoy escort, bristling with .50-caliber machineguns like a World War II Flying Fortress on wheels.

With that life-saving military project completed, Tim Bero again turned the company back to the civilian market and a new life-saving mission that culminated in 2009, when TNW introduced a completely new firearm of Bero's own design and inspired by his love of history and aviation. The idea began with the dual-caliber M6 Aircrew Survival Weapon that was standard Air Force issue from the early 1950s to the early 1970s.

Chambered in .22 Hornet and .410 gauge, the M6 was light, compact and adequate for small game foraging, but nearly useless for self-defense or large game Bero set out to take the concept of the go-anywhere, compact, lightweight, multicaliber survival gun to its limit. In 2013, and with five new patents, TNW introduced their Aero Survival Rifle (ASR) and soon afterward, a pistol version. Small enough to pack behind the car seat, but capable of taking any game animal, including a bear, the versatile ASR was also a formidable self-defense carbine. In my interview with Bero, I found his path to the firearms industry especially relevant to our present times. Read the rest of TNW Firearms.

[SACK UP]

I have one in 357 sig and soon a 10mm. It was slamming rounds into the bottom of the feed ramp. They sent me a shipping label. Within 2 days of them receiving it was on its way back to me. Mag dumped a 50 round drum with no failures. Good company.