While slumming around Instagram on Thursday, I found a story on Rossi's page where they have a new version of the Brawler. This time they are offering a 300 Blackout and a 5.56 chambering for the Brawler. When I saw the story, I popped over to the Rossi website and was even more surprised. The R95 lever action rifles now have a pistol version.
They are currently only offering the R95 pistol in the Triple Black flavor but they are starting off with 4 calibers. The .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum and .454 Casull make sense but what threw me off was the fourth caliber is .45-70. Each caliber comes with a 13 3/4 inch barrel that's threaded. They aren't fitting iron sights but are giving it a picatinny rail section for optics.
This announcement is pretty much hot off the press so they haven't fleshed out all the details on the website just yet.
While this idea of having a lever action pistol isn't new, what makes this offering special is the threaded barrel. This will be the first Mare's Leg category to feature a threaded barrel from the factory.
At this point, you are probably asking why these need to exist.
While I don't care for the aesthetics of the Triple Black personally, I'm sure there are a plethora of folks who are going to love this new offering. In fact, I'm seriously mulling over the idea of purchasing the .357 Magnum version as an SBR host.
I have talked about the utility of the .357 Magnum cartridge from a longer barrel and I suspect that the 13 inch barrel will be able to drive a 158 grain bullet to around the mid 1600 fps range. At those velocities, I expect that my favorite Remington HTP 158 grain SJHP would still perform well on deer sized game out to 125 yards. That would be around 10 yard reduction compared to the 16 barrel Marlin 1894. Jacketed soft points may fair better.
The R95 in .357 Mag is allegedly around 5 1/2 pounds which is lighter than my current 1894. Everything combined puts the R95 pistol into the running for the basis of my Light Carbine idea. The current Marlin 1894 Trapper is around 6 1/3 pounds so the pistol version is saving you almost 1 full pound. Once you put a real stock on it, that will be reduced. I figure the difference is around 1/2 a pound. The biggest difference will be the length of the rifle once fully built. By adding an aftermarket stock from Boyds and slimming and trimming the length of pull down of the stock, we can reduce the over all length to approximately 29 inches instead of the Trapper's 33 inches. Instead of a full size suppressor like the Primal, an AB Suppressors F-4 reduces the total length even more down by about 3 inches compared to my current built out. Basically, the new offering gives me the same basic capabilities while being shorter and lighter.
The Brawler fits similarly into this idea, the .300 BLK version is a 9 inch barrel. I believe the pistol grip uses the same interface as their single shot rifles. By paying registering a Brawler pistol, you can install a new Rossi folding stock on the pistol. This makes for an incredibly small packing rifle capable of taking whitetail at shorter distances. I don't have a use-case for the 5.56 variant other than fun.
Part of me wants to hold out for a Brawler in .357 Magnum to see what a person can do with that setup.
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