GSG StG 44 .22LR

Hey guys, welcome back. So today, I'm out here shooting my GSG STG44. The GSG STG44 is a rifle imported from Germany that's a really good replica of the original German World War II era Sturmgewehr, or assault rifle, or storm rifle. The STG44 originally chambered the 8mm Kurtz cartridge, but this one chambers .22 long rifle. It's a very faithful replica. I'm really excited to get my hands on it. I did see it at SHOT Show 2012. Let's take a closer look at this rifle. This is the K98 Mauser. At the beginning of hostilities during World War II, this was the standard German infantry rifle. This rifle chambers the 8mm Mauser, the 7.92x57 cartridge. This rifle carried through the war all the way to the end, but the Germans were very forward thinking. During the Second World War, some would argue that the Germans were very heavy with machine guns, meaning they had a lot of light machine guns in use, and they almost viewed the infantry rifle at the beginning of a war as a support weapon to machine guns like the MG34 and MG42. The Allies really didn't rely that heavily on machine guns. They relied more on infantry rifles like the M1 Garand, and they viewed the machine gun as a support weapon to riflemen. So it's kind of a different philosophy. But the Germans wanted to advance the rifle concept because they did a lot of studies and found that the average infantry engagement was between 100 and 200 meters. Rifles like this K98 Mauser were effective well past that, 1,000 meters or sometimes more. They found that the weapon was overpowered and fired too slowly for their blitzkrieg tactics, and that was the Lightning War, where they moved forward and advanced quickly and used overwhelming force and firepower to subdue the enemy. This rifle didn't fit very well into that role, and that's what brought about the STG-44's development. The STG-44, as the name implies, went into service in 1944. The rifle started development before that time period, however, by 1944 it was ready for field use. The rifle went through a number of different evolutionary changes, and it also wasn't supported by Hitler and the Third Reich in the beginning. It had a couple of different names because of that. It was known as the MP-43 and the MP-44, as well as the STG-44. The STG-44 is short or abbreviated for Sturmgewehr, and that means assault rifle in the English translation, or storm rifle in a literal translation, which supported, again, their blitzkrieg tactics of moving forward quickly. The STG-44, as I said, wasn't supported by Hitler. He only supported the development of machine pistols or submachine guns. He was not on board with this rifle in the early design stages. So the engineers disguised it as a machine pistol and called it the MP-43 and the MP-44, and when Hitler found out about it, actually got a demonstration of it and started to support it, that's when it became known as the STG-44. The STG-44 is considered one of the world's first assault rifles, or the first assault rifle. Some will argue that the Fedorov-Autovat from Russia was the actual first assault rifle. It came about in 1915, if you believe that. It had a lot of the same features as the STG-44. It used a smaller cartridge, the 6.5 Fedorov. It also fired from a 25-round detachable box magazine and would select fire. The only real difference, in terms of design principles, was that the Fedorov had a traditional wrist stock, but it also had a vertical forend grip that was made out of wood. It did not have a pistol grip. The STG-44 came about and it used different design—different manufacturing techniques, I should say. It used stamped receivers, a stamped end cap here on the buttstock. The buttstock, of course, is wood, has wood grip panel inserts here. But most notably, the rifle was stamped for quick and cheap production during the war. The Fedorov was still machined. So I'm kind of of the opinion that the STG-44 is really the grandfather of the modern assault rifle, but I also give the Fedorov credit. It was probably the first step in that direction. This rifle just completed that step. The rifle overall is about 11 pounds, the original STG-44 World War II. This .22 rifle weighs about 9.7 pounds, so it has the heft of the original STG-44. Again, this is .22 long rifle and not the 7.92x33mm Kurz round. So even as a .22, it's a heavy .22, but this rifle is also made out of mostly metal. Unlike the STG-44 of World War II, it uses cast metal for most of the receiver and the slower trigger group components. It does have some stampings here in the handguard. However, they've added weight to it, of course, with the wood stocks, the wood grips, to make it simulate the original STG-44. It's about a pound shy of what the original STG-44's weight was. The handling characteristics are very much the same. The magazine release is here. On this side of the rifle, it's just a push button. You push that button, the magazine drops out. The charging handle is right here, just as it was on the original STG-44. The fire control selector is right here. It's also interesting to note that when they cast this lower receiver, there's a cross-block push button here, which would be the selector lever for the full-auto version of this rifle, the original version. This button doesn't work. It's just solid cast into the lower receiver. It does have a trigger pull of about five and a half pounds. It's a very light, crisp trigger, although it does have quite a bit of travel. Again, the stocks are real wood. When you shoulder the rifle, you can actually smell that wood. It's really kind of cool. When you shoulder it, it balances well, albeit, again, it's just a little bit heavy. The sights are just like the original STG-44. You have an elevation and windage-adjustable rear sight. Now, the windage adjustment is not part of the original STG-44 design. They've added this to the .22 rifle because the front sight post, which has the same profile as the original STG-44, is solid cast and does not have a windage adjustment, so all of your windage and elevation has to be made back here on the rear sight. It's kind of an RPK-style rear sight, where you have a drum that you can turn, and it moves a blade left and right for windage. Just like an AK, or rifles that followed it, and even rifles that predated it, it has a slider, so you can pick your elevation. It's a lot of fun to shoot. The GSG STG-44 .22 has a 25-round polymer magazine. The magazine seems to be fairly well-constructed. It has this little slider on the side that you can use your thumb to pull it down so you can load rounds into it. I have noticed that you have to be careful loading rounds. If you pull the slider down too much as you're loading it, the nose of the bullet will fall down and it'll actually cause rounds to get in the magazine backwards, so you want to be careful when you're loading the magazine. Field stripping the STG-44 .22 is just like field stripping the original for the most part. The takedown is very, very similar. First you want to make sure that the weapon's clear. I have the bolt locked to the rear here. I'm taking a look inside. Now, this is one of the things I said I would talk a little bit more about later. You'll notice I'm pulling the charging handle to the rear. It does have a last-round hold open. As I pull the charging handle to the rear and let it go, it's not letting the bolt go home. There's a little lever in there that rises up because of a little tab here on the end of the magazine. When the gun's dry, it pushes that little lever up and blocks the bolt so it can't go home. If you're supposed to be able to put a magazine into the rifle, simply hit the charging lever and let it go, and it's supposed to chamber the next round from a fresh magazine. My rifle, no matter what I do, about 90% of the time the bolt won't go home when I do this, so I have to reach inside the ejection port and push down on that little lever so I can get the bolt to go home. It's kind of a problem with this rifle. I don't know if it persists on other rifles, but it is kind of annoying. It's one of the dings I have against it. So once I got the bolt home to take it apart, there's a pin here in the rear. This is exactly the same as the original rifle. If you guys remember, I did a video from a World War II reenactment earlier in the year, and I actually had a chance to get my hands on an original STG44, and I field-stripped it. I'll link to that video so you can see that rifle as compared to this one. So you push this pin out, and once you get the pin out, the buttstock will just pull off. Now just like the original, this lower trigger group will hinge down. You'll want to make sure that you capture the springs in the rear here, so I'm going to go ahead and put my thumb over it and swing that trigger group down. Now you'll notice the springs will want to pop out the rear. You'll take this piece out. This is a spring return for the charging handle. Take that out, and then the bolt will just slide out the rear of the rifle. There'll be one more polymer piece in here, kind of a spacer that you can take out, and then the bolt will just come right out of the rifle. You'll notice that the bolt on the rifle is very similar to .22 conversion kits for AR-15s. It looks very, very similar. It's a self-contained unit. The whole firing mechanism of the bolt and carrier is contained in this one unit. You can take the trigger group off if you would like, but it requires a wrench, and it's really not necessary. Here's your trigger group. You can access it easily for cleaning without removing it from the rifle. You'll also note here on the end, this would be the gas block for taking the piston out of the rifle on the original. This is just a simulated block cover. This doesn't come off. You can't unscrew it. You can pull the handguard off, which I'm not going to do right now. It just pops off. It's a friction fit. And that's it. That's all that's required to field strip the rifle. To put it back together, you just reverse the process. Let's do some shooting with the GSG STG44-22. Now, I do have my 25-round magazine, which you can see here. It inserts just like the original. Pop it in the magazine well. The magazine release is right here. It's a big button that you can easily hit with your thumb to remove the magazine. Again, just like the original. The charging handle's right here, and your fire control selector lever is right here. Now, this is kind of weird. It's reversed. Up is fire, and down is safe. So to go from safe to fire, you have to brush this lever up. To put it back on safe, you put it down. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that, because it's opposite of what I'm used to. So I have the weapon on safe. Grab the charging handle after you put the magazine in, and let it go home. Now the weapon's ready to fire. You move it to the fire position. Now, the other thing that you want to be careful of, that when you're using the rifle, is if you... I have a tendency to want to hold the rifle here, because the handguard is very narrow. If you do that, as this follower comes up, it hits your pinky, it can cause malfunctions. You'll want to hold it like this, or like this, but don't wrap your hand around the magazine. Sometimes I wrap my hand around the magazine, I can feel this touch my pinky, then you'll see me lift my fingers away, and so far I've not caused any malfunctions doing that. So the weapon's ready to fire. Put it on fire. Put it on the shoulder. As you can tell, of course, the rifle has very little recoil. None, really. So it shoots very smoothly. The accuracy's pretty good. We'll do a little bit of shooting at a target here in a minute. But overall, it's a lot of fun to shoot, despite the lack of recoil. It's about as close as I'll ever get to owning a real STG44. Again, the bolt locks open on the last round fired. It does have, just like the original, an ejection port cover, which hinges down and locks down. When you charge the weapon or fire that first round, it automatically flips itself open. Now let's see if I can get the bolt to go home. Again, I have to stick my finger in the ejection port, pull the bolt back, to get it to go home. It really is a pain in the rear. Don't like that at all. What I might wind up doing is grinding down that nub on the magazine so it just doesn't lock open on the last round fired. That I'm going to take a look inside the gun. It's kind of hard to get to that little lever and see if I can figure out what's hanging up. Got a target down at 50 yards. Let's see how this thing prints. Let's run downrange. We're downrange at 50 yards after firing a few rounds through the STG44-22. I am using these Chew-Doms. These are CCI Mini-Mags. They're 36-grain, high-velocity rounds. The rifle doesn't like standard velocity bulk ammunition. I've found that that will cause malfunctions. You'll definitely want to shoot things like Mini-Mags. These are relatively affordable. These are about $25 from my local gun shop, and it's 375 rounds. I've had no malfunctions with this ammunition whatsoever in the rifle. As you can see, it turns out pretty good performance. You're probably looking at maybe 1 1⁄2 inches or a little bit less. So the rifle shoots very well. The sights, you'll notice I was aiming here at the A. The sights are a little bit low, so it would seem that the rifle's probably zeroed at 100 yards. Unfortunately, you don't have any elevation adjustment in that front sight, so all the elevation has to be dialed in from the rear sight. Shooting at 50 yards, I have to run that rear sight up pretty high to get it close to center. But overall, I'm really impressed with the handling characteristics of the rifle, and it shoots quite well. Okay guys, it's time for some final thoughts on the GSG STG44 .22 Long Rifle. The rifle sells right now for $599. That is full MSRP. You can probably expect to pay a little bit less as the rifles kind of settle into the marketplace, maybe around $550 or so. When I saw these rifles at SHOT Show 2012, they were displayed with a wooden case or a wooden crate, and that's how the rifles are shipping. I was told then that only the first shipment of rifles would include that wooden case. This one did come with that wooden case. Future shipments probably won't include that wooden crate, so I don't know if that's true or not. If that's the case, you'll probably want to jump on one of these now and get that wooden crate. The price, I don't think, will go down if they start shipping them without that case. Inside, you'll find the rifle, cleaning kit, lock system, manual, goodies like that, but the box is definitely worth having. Overall, I'm happy with the purchase of the rifle. I do find a couple of quirks with the gun. The rear sight having to be so high to have it zero to 50 yards kind of bugs me, and also it definitely bugs me that the bolt hold is sticking on this rifle. I can't get it to chamber a new round when I insert a fresh magazine. I have to stick my finger in that ejection port. That definitely bugs me, but again, this is as close as I'll ever get to owning an original STG44, so I'm going to keep the gun and work with it. Hopefully, I can sort that out later. If you guys have any questions about this rifle, you can ask those questions on our Facebook page. You can find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com forward slash military arms. As always, everybody, thanks for watching. Thanks for the subs. We'll talk to you guys soon.