For more information about these and other Faxon Firearms products, check out the company website./track-link]
AR component specialist Faxon Firearms is now in the pistol-caliber carbine business with the new Bantam series. Chambered for 9mm Luger, the Bantam series includes complete firearms as well as upper assemblies.
Like all Faxon products the Bantam series is designed to deliver a competitively priced package with a full feature set, including a last-round bolt hold open, without cutting any corners.
For now Faxon offers two fully assembled firearms in the Bantam series, a carbine with a 16-inch barrel and a pistol with a 10.5-inch barrel, and two uppers based on the same patterns with the same 10.5- and 16-inch barrels.
Like a lot of newer AR-based pistol-caliber carbines the Bantam series is designed to work with Glock-pattern magazines and both the pistol and carbine models ship with Glock-pattern lowers and magazines.
The firearms and uppers come with Faxon’s Gen 2 9mm blowback bolt. This bolt uses a drop-in weight and is compatible with Glock-, Colt- and MP5-pattern magazines as well as standard AR trigger components including full-auto parts, and weighs under 15 ounces by itself w/ the drop-in weight.
Despite the heavy bolt the overall weight of the complete guns is pretty low. The 16-inch carbine weighs 6.2 pounds while the pistol version with the 10.5-inch barrel weighs just 5.7 pounds.
All of the Bantam parts at launch come with free-floating modular handguards with M-Lok slots on the sides and bottom with a full-length Picatinny rail on top. The handguards run the full length of the barrels stopping just short of the A2-style flash hiders.
The carbine and pistol models come with basic A2-style pistol grips. The pistol has an SB Tactical brace in place of the stock.
These are relatively inexpensive components for users to replace while still providing a base level of functionality out of the box. All of the parts are “optics-ready” and will need iron sights or other optics, which is standard for a lot of companies today.
That lets them price their uppers and carbines very competitively. The carbine is priced at $949 and the pistol $975. The uppers with bolts are just $535 for the 10.5-inch model and $550 for the 16-inch version.
Faxon has been making pistol-caliber barrels for ARs for a while now, and their barrels have an excellent reputation for accuracy and durability. The company’s probably best known for its clever and different barrel styles and profiles.
See Also: Faxon Firearms Introducing New Custom Pistols with Polymer80
In addition to the Bantam series, Faxon has two new and updated lines of barrels for AR-15-pattern rifles.
They have replaced their 14.5-inch barrels with permanently attached muzzle devices with 16-inch barrels with integral muzzle devices. The now entirely 1-piece barrels have the same overall length as a 14.5-inch barrel with a permanently attached muzzle device but count as 16-inch barrels in the eyes of the law.
These integral muzzle device barrels are offered in Faxon’s most popular profiles, Pencil and Gunner in 5.56 NATO and tapered in 9mm. All have either flash hider- or brake-style muzzles.
And just recently, Faxon added barrels with pinned low-profile gas blocks. Pinning gas blocks on barrels with smaller-diameter journals, like many Faxon barrels have, can be tricky. But it’s also a “bomb-proof” solution to fixing gas blocks.
All of Faxon’s new barrels run in the $179 to $249 price range.
For more information about these and other Faxon Firearms products, check out the company [track-link url="https://faxonfirearms.com/9mmpcc/" campaign="Faxon9mm" target="_blank"]website./track-link]