Apparently IWI wasn’t aware of how popular bullpup rifles are in the United States.

According to a report from last month, the Israeli company IWI hoped to sell 6,000 civilian version Tavor rifles in the USA in one year. As of March, they had sold 15,000 in just 9 months.

According to IsraelDefense.com, the popularity caught IWI off guard,

According to Uri Amit, “We really intended to sell only 6,000 Tavor rifles in the USA in 2013. In reality, the number of rifles we sold was more than twice as high. The rifle was embraced with tremendous enthusiasm by the gun buffs and soon thereafter major articles began to appear in the American arms magazines. People uploaded clips showing live fire sessions to YouTube and reported that the rifle remained very accurate even after having fired a thousand rounds. Sales started immediately following the terrorist attack during the Boston Marathon in April 2013. People simply emptied the shelves. You can say, to some degree, that the US arms market was actually waiting for the Tavor rifle.”

The fact that it is not a “conventional format” rifle, one that is easy to get used to, did it make the market entry more difficult to accomplish?

“That is correct. Our greatest accomplishment is the fact that the Tavor rifle dominated a segment of the primary market for AR-15 rifles, despite the fact that its center of gravity is way to the rear and it does not belong in the category of such rifles as the M19. It is a firearm you can attach to your shoulder and fire like a machinegun even with one hand, while opening a car door or window. It is a stick of sorts that weighs only 7 kilograms instead of 12 kilograms, which is fairly standard for machine guns. The American public loved it very much…”

According to Uri Amit, the distribution of the Tavor rifle is expanding not just in the USA.

“Generally, 90% of our sales are intended for export, and that applies to the entire range of firearms we manufacture. The IDF are introducing the Tavor rifle into more and more units, but most of our sales take place overseas.”

Of course, to many of us in the US market, the success isn’t too surprising. IWI is producing a seemingly well built, reliable rifle that is actually shorter than many AR-15′s that are registered as short barrel rifles with the ATF.

Many Americans see bullpup designs as a way to have a compact rifle without having to go through the trouble of obtaining a tax stamp for a SBR.

CLARK KENT @ AMERICAS FREEDOM FIGHTERS

 

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