Hands-on with the Black Rain Norguard .308

Black Rain's Norguard, chambered in .308

Before I talk about my favorite gun from SHOT Show’s Media Day, I need to make a confession in order to set some context: I’m completely new to the AR platform. I grew up hunting, and until very recently, all of the guns that I own and shoot are classic hunting guns with wooden stocks.

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So to set the scene, my entire body was frozen (it was 23F on the thermometer, and probably below zero with the wind chill at the range), and the all-stainless, .308-chambered Black Rain Norguard that company president Justin Harvel handed me was to be the second AR-style rifle I’d ever shot. I then proceeded to put 8 out of 10 shots onto the small steel at 100 yards, and that was with me flinching a bit on the first two because I wasn’t sure what to expect from the gun. Yeah, the Trijicon scope helped (I’ll find out tomorrow exactly which model this gun had on it), and the AR-15 itself is legendary for being newb-friendly, but a lot of the credit has to go to Black Rain for making a .308 that’s this insanely shootable. The Norguard is a very accurate, fun-to-shoot, finely finished firearm, and the moment I got up from the bench I asked how soon I could get hold of one of these.

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Right now, Black Rain’s order queue is backed up until November, so it’ll be a while before I see one. However, another Black Rain rep that I talked to said that the company hand’t quite finalized its release schedule and plans for tackling the order backlog, so I may be able to get more color on availability later in the week. If I do, I’ll be sure to post an update.

I was also gratified to hear Harvel say that Black Rain isn’t jacking up prices to the moon in order to cash in on the current panic, and that any sky-high prices that people are seeing for his guns in the channel are the dealers’ fault. I think this is noble, and as someone who picked an epically bad time to get into black rifles, I certainly appreciate any efforts to keep costs down. But I’m also a capitalist who finds it hard to fault a manufacturer for charging what the market will bear, so if Harvel does decide to goose his prices up, I won’t hate him for it.