Big 3 East Event in Daytona Florida

Hey guys, welcome back. So today we're in Daytona, Florida on vacation. Bike week's going on, but I don't really ride motorcycles. I like to shoot guns. I'm out here hanging out with some of my friends from Shotgun News and Guns and Ammo. We got a lot of cool stuff in store for you guys. So let's get started. The Big 3 event is a gathering of gun writers and various manufacturers and importers. The event is designed not just to give large companies a voice in front of the gun writers for publications such as Guns and Ammo and Shotgun News, but also to give inventors and smaller companies a chance to get their products in front of the gun writers. The gun writers get a chance to inspect and use new products, then ask questions about those products, and even offer feedback for improvements or changes. Currently the Big 3 event is held in two places. In the fall it's held in Kansas, and in the spring it's held in Florida. The Kansas event is simply called the Big 3 event, and in Florida it's called the Big 3 East event. The event is held just outside of Daytona, Florida and is designed to give a second form to companies that might not be able to make it out to the Big 3 event held in Kansas. The Big 3 East event is held in a rural area with ample shooting facilities that allow for long range and short range shooting. We didn't just take a look at the cool gear, we used it. One of the more interesting things that we did was to take an old Saab convertible and use it for penetration tests using calibers such as 6.5 Grendel and .50 Beowulf. This is Wolf's 6.5 Grendel, 120 grain, multi-purpose tactical, and what we're going to do is we're going to shoot behind the door in the blank space that hasn't been shot up, and we're the front seat, and then exit out through the opposite side door. Now, we'll see what we've got here. Okay, and I spaced those shots out, okay, to give extra space so that each individual round will have to go through stuff. Now, we'll see how that 120 grain, it's actually an open tip match style bullet, but it's actually not a match projectile. We'll see how that performs. Okay, now we went through, tore the snot out of that seat, okay. If you look over here, we've got penetration, full penetration here, and you can see we chewed the seat all apart. The 6.5 Grendel penetrated the door, seats, and then came to rest at the lower passenger side dash, striking the passenger side door pillar, where it came to an abrupt stop. We had a chance to fire various weapons, but one of my favorites was the Fab Defense K-PAS imported and sold by the Mako Group. The K-PAS allows the operator to quickly mount their pistol to a carbine chassis, which then increases the range and controllability of the weapon. The K-PAS is smaller and lighter than the Mini Uzi and allows for the attachment of a wide variety of accessories and sights using the standard 1913 style rail. Using this system doesn't require any permanent modifications to your Glock or SIG Sauer pistol. The Mako Group not only brought out weapons and accessories, but they also brought out Garrett machine. Garrett is a former IDF soldier and a member of the highly elite Dov Devon unit. Dov Devon means poison cherry in Hebrew. It means they're on top, or the top of the military hierarchy. In other words, they're the best. Dov Devon's mission was to go undercover into militant areas of the West Bank, identify and eliminate threats. Garrett has a master's degree in counterterrorism and national security. He also served as a bodyguard for the Israeli Ministry of Defense and is a master of Krav Maga, the highly effective Israeli martial art. Garrett also appeared on season one, episode six of the Discovery Channel's One Man Army television show. I'm here with Garrett from Mako Defense. Mako Defense is the training division of the Mako Group. We featured some of the Mako Group's products in some of our previous videos. What Garrett is going to show us is some of the Israeli methods for disarming an armed assailant. This is some Krav Maga type hand-to-hand combat. Garrett, would you like to show us what you have? Sure. We'll go through a few typical scenarios. The first typical scenario is the person is holding the gun, pointing it to your center mass. They're telling you, whatever it is, give me your money, get in the car, I'm going to kill you. First thing you want to do is you want to put your hands up because that's natural play. Humble. Oh God, please don't kill me, please don't kill me. Move the gun out of the way. Smash, smash. Notice I push the gun down and to the side. Grab the gun, snap it out of his hand, smash him in the face with it a few times. Make distance, slap, rack, fire to center mass with distance. In another scenario, if he has the gun, for example, here to my side type of thing, he came up to me at the ATM, whatever it is, it doesn't make a difference if he puts it here or if it ends up over here. The technique I'm going to use is exactly the same. First thing I'm going to do is get off the line of fire, trap the gun against my body, smash him with an elbow in the face, grab the weapon, break it out, smash, smash. Make distance, slap, rack, fire to center mass from distance. In another technique, he has the weapon to my head, he has it to the side of my head. He's holding it there. Again, I'm going to put my hands up. The best case scenario, best case scenario, you always want to revert back to what you know. You always want to revert back to what you know. Very typical disarming from the head region. I'm going to do this in two different ways, two options. One option is, oh God, please don't kill me, please don't kill me, to here, snap the gun out of his hand, kick, slap, rack to fire. In another case, if that's not possible, if that's not possible and the weapon's here, the first thing I'm going to do is to get off the line of fire and trap the weapon is I'm going to do this, get off the line of fire. Once I get over here, now again, if this gun goes off right now, if the gun goes off right now, it's going to blow out my eardrum, for sure, but it's not going to kill me, it's not going to kill me. His focus is going to be the weapon. I have to reset his mind, smash, smash, reach over, grab the weapon, cranking it out of his hand. I'm going to make distance, slap, rack, fire to center mass. Principle of Krav Maga is we always respond to aggression with greater aggression. We always respond to violence with greater violence. Anytime you're disarming a weapon, you must strike. Strike hard, strike fast, strike aggressively, disturbing central nervous system, getting him off balance, resetting his mind. So he has that flinch response, that's your open window to disarm the weapon. As soon as you have the weapon in your position, you need to take over control and dominate. One of the hottest rifle imports this year was on hand at the Big 3 East event, the Malat Vepr. I recently reviewed the 7.62x54R Vepr and found it to be an outstanding rifle. The Big 3 East event, I was able to see all of the Vepr offerings, including the 5.45x39, the 7.62x39, 308, and 54R variants. The Vepr is being imported by Wolf Performance Arms and Ammunition. The Vepr is the highest quality AK on the U.S. market. It features a 1.5mm thick receiver, an RPK style trunnion for rigidity and strength, and a heavier chrome-lined barrel than your standard AK variant. Not only is the barrel chrome-lined, so is the gas block all the way back to the front trunnion on the rifle, a feature not often found on other AKs on the market. Wolf Performance Ammunition is one of the largest importers of Russian-manufactured ammo. They import both traditional steel-cased ammo, as well as reloadable high-quality brass-cased ammunition. Their offerings range from .22 Long Rifle all the way up to .300 Win Mag and 12-gauge shotgun shells. One of the main reasons the Big 3 event was started was to give small entrepreneurs and inventors a venue to get their products in front of some of the biggest names in the gun-riding community. One small business in attendance was Jacksonville, Florida's UW Gear. UW Gear manufactures equipment specifically designed for the prepared citizen. Our gear is focused specifically towards the armed citizen, the prepared citizen, that sort of market. Not so much military and law enforcement, though we make it of enough quality that it could be used for those purposes. One of the things that is specific to our gear that sets us apart is the closure system on our mag pouches. Now, each mag pouch is made for the magazines that it's designed to hold, 5.56 AR mags, 5.45 AK mags, and 7.62 AK mags. We don't do them a one-size-fits-all. We prefer to tailor it to each magazine so it gives a better fit and a little better function. Our closure system on our flaps, we've eliminated any Velcro, buckles, snaps, any kind of closure system so it's completely silent. There's nothing to break, nothing to wear out, nothing to go bad, but it's easy to manipulate and open and close without any noise or hassle. The retention on the magazine pouches is excellent in that I've got fully loaded 30-round 5.45 mags here, three of them in the pouch. As you can see, magazines aren't coming out of the rig, but just as simply you can open it and access the magazine. The other system that we did was we narrowed it down to a three-mag profile just to keep it simple, low-bulk, low-weight, and something that's easy for the armed citizen to grab and throw on in a hurry. This is our Minuteman chest rig, this is our bandolier, we're also doing individual mag pouches with our flap system on it, so keep an eye on the website and we'll be getting more stuff up as we bring it out. Bushnell's Tactical Division was on hand to showcase some of their high-end tactical scopes, which are gaining in popularity in military and civilian long-range shooting circles. They also brought out some laser rangefinders, which are integrated into binoculars, which were quite impressive. They also had on hand Bushnell's tactical tripod that can be used to mount sniper rifles or spotting scopes. Another ballistic test we conducted against the Saab Convertible was to see how much damage a 300-grain .50 caliber Beowulf round would cause to the engine after being fired through the front quarter panel of the car. Another small business that was on hand was Savvy Sniper. Savvy Sniper makes a line of well-thought-out slings made from the highest quality materials. The slings are all handmade in Ohio and are available in a number of different colors. They also offer custom sling-making services for those who have special requirements. Here at Savvy Sniper, we sew all of our slings with 1-inch mil-spec tubular nylon, 4,200-pound breaking strength. We try to use all high-component pieces, parts, whether you're running quick disconnects or HK snap hooks. We try to build slings to fit your rifle. Most of our design works on a quick-adjust buckle. One finger, one thumb opens it up, it stops, it doesn't come open. And the other big feature with our slings is a two-point to single-point design. Now, this particular sling is set up in a QD version, which most guys know you can't use a QD to run into single-point. All we do is simply pull this little sleeve back. We have an HK snap hook hidden there, and we can bring it over and lock it into single-point. Bring it back and adjust it. Our sling is high and running. We have a quick-disconnect buckle built in the sling. It's a Nexus military-grade buckle, 300-pound breaking strength. So you can jet your rifle, we can roll the sling back, back into two-point, and lock the bungee down. We put an 11-inch piece of elastic in the sling, sew it down, double-stitch it so it only stretches eight inches, and then you're on the breaking strength webbing. Some of the other features that we've started doing here at Savvy Sniper is building slings with Cobra buckles. We had a lot of requests from some of our SF guys to build an all-metal, truly bomber sling that won't fall apart under any conditions. We use all-steel metal loop locks, Austrian Alpine tri-glides, 9KN breaking strength, as well as the buckle, which still is quick-disconnect, double-side release. So any pressure on the buckle, it won't break. And our standard snap hook sling, which snap hooks clip in, clip to the rear, the same quick adjust, and then it's as quick as rolling it off and clipping it in a single-point. Same as the sling before, you're clipping it back in. And we try to feature all the military colors, whether it's coyote, foliage, OD green and black. They're all built by me, handmade in Ohio, and we've tried to turn out some pretty good products. So hopefully you check us out at SavvySniper.com. Ballistic testing didn't stop with the Saab convertible. Two Sappy ballistic plates were made available for us to test using various calibers. Both plates were military contract level 4 strike plates. The first Sappy plate was hit with an AR-10 chambered in .308 using military ball from a distance of 100 yards. The bullet was stopped cold by the plate. No signs of penetration were found. The good news is that while the wearer might have been a little bit bruised, they would have survived the hit. The second Sappy plate was hit with a 7.62x54R military ball round fired by David Fortier. We have a Vepr in 7.62x54R with a 148 grain full metal jacket from Wolf Performance Ammunition and Arms. We are going to be shooting a level 4 Sappy plate at 100 yards, and we're going to see what effect the 148 grain FMJ has on it. And we're going to do it old school with iron sight. This is the test I was most interested in. This is a caliber our troops are most likely to face on the battlefield as it's a popular choice for enemy snipers. Again, the Sappy plate stopped the 54 round cold. Coming up on it. Ow. So that's a 148 grain FMJ from a Wolf 7.62x54R. Muzzle velocity is approximately 2,830 feet per second from this 24 inch barrel. And you can see that although we have some deformation on the back of the plate, there is no penetration. Next we fired 10 rounds of M855 Green Tip 5.56mm ammo from an M4 rifle into the same plate that took a hit from the 7.62x54R. This is the same ammo that is commonly issued to our troops in the field. These shots were taken from 50 yards. Okay, what we got is, we got basically 10 rounds with the penetrator coming in and doing it. As you can tell, although there may be blunt force trauma going through for the continued hits to go up on it, which the soft armor is going to absorb most of that, you're looking at there's no penetration to go through it. It destroyed the ceramic inside, but there's no penetration as far as completely going through it. That's 10 rounds with the penetrator. None of them went through. So this guy right here is still alive walking around. He's not happy, but he's still alive walking around. Another interesting item we got some trigger time with was a system that allowed users to manipulate AK magazines in and out of the rifle much like you would in an AR-15. The device requires no modification to the host AK rifle and can be removed without tools. The magazines used for the prototype were slightly modified TAPCO magazines. To release the magazine, you simply push the mag release button like on an AR-15. The mag drops clear of the rifle. You insert a new magazine and go. No rocking of the magazine is required. Garrett from Mako Defense demonstrated how he could induce fatigue, then run 20 yards, draw his pistol, load it, and then hit a hostage taker in the head from a distance of seven yards using a one-handed hold on the weapon. Okay. Took me 2.3 seconds. So that was 72-pound kettlebell, 10 American-style, as they're called, overhead swings. Jumped down, ran about, I guess, 20 meters, came to the firing line. Firing line is seven meters from my target, hostage-style target on steel. Draw, charge, point, one hand, one bullet to the terrorist head, 2.3 seconds. I hope you guys enjoyed this inside look at the Big 3 event East. We had a great time out here this week. We got to talk to some really interesting industry folks, tested out some new weapons, some new ammo. We did some tests with different calibers of ammunition against a car, some deflection tests against glass, even some SAPI plate tests with various calibers. A good time was had by all. I hope you guys enjoyed the video. If you have any questions about this video, you can ask those questions on our Facebook page. You can find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com forward slash military arms. Thanks for watching, everybody, and thanks for those subs.