To learn more, visit https://www.emptyshell.us/xm556-microgun/.
Overview
We all know the famous GE M134 Minigun from the movie “Predator,” right? My first thought was “mini, minigun” as I looked over the XM556 Microgun from Empty Shell Defense. This is a .556 version of the 7.62mm six-barreled, rotating machine-guns build by General Electric then sold to General Dynamics and perfected by Dillon Aero.
The guys at Empty Shell Defense have taken the approach that now is a great time to rethink the XM214 Microgun from General Electric. This was the scaled down .556 version of the M134 minigun.
The XM556 Microgun is am impressive 5.56mm full auto gun that we found at SHOT Show 2017.
Specs
- Chambering: 5.56mm
- Barrel: 10 or 16 inch
- OA Length: 22 inches
- Weight: 16 pounds
- Fire Mode: Full Auto
- Rate of Fire: 3,000 to 6,000 RPM
- Feed System: M-27 linked ammo belt
The XM556 is an electric minigun that is chambered for the 5.56mm cartridge. Image courtesy of the manufacturer.
Impression
I must say that I like Empty Shell Defense’s take on the whole thing. The parts are not just a smaller version of the original M134, but were re designed from the ground up over a two-and-a-half-year period by one guy with no training, no college, just a GED. This re design centers around a new style bolt to eliminates the know issues with the M134 bolt. In this makeover, he removed 11lbs and 5” in overall all length to make this a one-man gun. They tell me that there are over a dozen patents pending on the XM556.
This defensive suppression weapon is meant to stand in place of anywhere high suppressive fire is needed without the weight or footprint of the larger less man portable guns can fit. The gun will run off 12 or 24 DC Volts. The rate of fire is 2000-4000 rounds per minute based on the voltage supplied to the gun. It will work with some mounts and accessories designed for the M134.
Pricing & Availability
This is currently only being offered to military and law enforcement. I did ask about a hand crank model and was told we have a lot of ideas in the works. I don’t know how yet, but I will get a turn on one of these guns!
To learn more, visit https://www.emptyshell.us/xm556-microgun/.
Hmmmm … wonder if I mount one on the hood of my pick-up it’ll encourage the left-lane-huggers on the interstate to move over … ?
Law Enforcement ??? i’m all for the police but this has no business being in the hands of law enforcement !!!
Why shouldn’t Law Enforcement have it? Hell I hope it comes with a car charger!
when the cops come to take your guns do you want them carrying a few of those ?
why shouldn’t law enforcement have these ? do want them carrying these when they come for your guns ? i sure as hell dont ! only big government progressives would think this is ok for cops to have , what if the next president in power wants to take your guns , do you want them toting these things HELL NO ! but hey you’re the smart one good luck with keeping your guns when they come for them when a socialist like sanders wins the election next time cuz you people left the cops carry these .
“Shall not be infringed”. LEOs, and private citizens for that matter, should be able to have any arms the military has
Yes sir, 💯 percent…
do you want the cops carrying those when they come for your guns i dont ? i didn’t say anything about private citizens owning them i don’t want cops to have them !
I concur, this is clearly militarization. I support giving our law enforcement all the tools, but this ain’t one of them.
Golly Gee If they come to take away your guns they will send APC\’s or call in an airstrike if you thank your that big of a bad as ! LOL, I know they will have to take it from your COLD DEAD HANDS but they will take it if they want it ! Bet some dumber than Dumb thanks the government doesn\’t already have them ! This is nothing but a gun dealer post sample toy . Since there only 12 nontransferable out there , Last one sold for 400,000 !
Way Cool! I’d sure like to… Swap!!! Damn! Somebody pass the Deet. The grammar fairies are starting to swarm.
Maybe we could cut the author some slack. Perhaps he is tired from hiking around 14 miles of aisles at Shot Show, trying to find the best firearms that would capture our interest. Could be that he is out in Las Vegas, away from his regular editor. Did you understand the concepts/ideas he put forth? Yeah, so did I. How ’bout some tolerance
I’ve lived long enough to have met illiterate geniuses, idiot savants, geniuses with learning disorders, a six year old autistic child who could disassemble, and reassemble a watch. Think of the college professors who can’t change a flat tire.
There will always be greater and lessor men than yourself… in many different areas/subjects/disciplines.
In 1860, most people considered their home state to be sovereign over federal rule! It is true that the south was fighting over states rights and it is also true that their would not have been a war if there had not been slavery! Many of the “states rights” issues were over “property” rights and slaves were considered property! It is also true that there were slaves in the north as well when the war began, so slavery “itself” was not the only reason for the war!
Many people do not know that Lincoln called Robert E. Lee to a meeting at the White House before the “official” start of the civil war and offered him command of the union army! Lee asked for time to consider the offer and resigned his commission to West Point the next day and sent a letter to Lincoln declining the offer as he could “never raise his sword against his native Virginia! If you have this information as a basis for most “Southern” soldiers, it is easier to understand why they joined the southern confederacy to fight the union! They were loyal to their state, not the union, and were joining to fight the “invasion” of the union forces coming to take over their state! The north was very “Vindictive” over Lee’s decision to be an advisor to Jefferson Davis and the army of Virginia. He did not take command of the army of Virginia for quite a while after the war started, however, he was a valuable advisor! After the first battle of “Bull Run” at Manassas junction (Virginia), the union casualties were taken back to Washington, DC and buried in Lee’s front yard (actually his wife’s family’s front yard) to prevent him from ever moving back to live in the house! That property today is known as Arlington National cemetery!
Phalanx for libtard anti trump rioters
Should call it the termite.
Use it as a poor man’s gau8 in a ultralight.
I NEED that, in the trunk of my car, on a remote control hydraulic mount, for tailgaters. LOL.
forward mounted along side the motorcycle for left lane loiterers….
LOVE IT I’D LIKE ONE TOO WITH JUST BLANKS TO SCARE THE HELL OUT OF TAIL GATERS
The class three machine gun law will never be repealed. There is too many legal machine gun owners with loads of investment money poured into their hobby to allow this to happen. The license might be done away with but no way machine gun owners are going to allow class three guns made after 1986 be allowed to be for sale to the general public. Thousands of class three owners will lose their big time investments in what they now own and plenty of these owners have lots of them. I know of one individual who owns around 20 legal machine guns. Now suppressor laws will probably go through passing without much grip from current owners. The politics of these multi class three rich gun owners will most definitely stop it. Some will loose hundreds of thousands of dollars.
These will be used on drones and robots and fixed applications remotely fired. Coming soon to a war.
That’s Flem, formerly of red jacket firearms. Made famous by discoverys show Sons of Guns.
All this did was piss me off. I didn’t even smile. Civilians should be able to own these with no federal interference, and this guy parades it in front of us like it’s candy or a fun toy. It wasn’t funny in any way, shape of form
President Trump, please sign a law that overturns the 1986 new machine gun ban, it would be a start
Congressmen.. are you listening? Please begin to restore the 2nd Amendment
Next, the 1968 and 1934 Gun Control Acts. We’re praying for you, and counting on you
I would like to see it made to fit in a lunch box with scilencers.
“This re design centers around a new style bolt to eliminates the know issues with the M134 bolt.”
Guys, you don’t have to pay an editor…just read what you’ve typed before you put it on the internet! Just read it over once!
A .556 minigun? How did they manage to make a fifty caliber minigun and reduce the weight by 11 lbs? Quite a feat of engineering!
Not a 50 cal.5.56 cal ar-15 rounds !!
It’s not .556, it’s a 5.56mm, it’s an M16 round. Same thing as .223. It’s not a 50 cal, it’s a 22 cal.
Joke.
Ted and Roosevelt Smith’s heads.
First, this is the coolest gun neither I nor law enforcement will never need but would love to have for its sheer awesomeness. It’s also incredible that it was designed by a single person with nothing but an inferred innate talent.
On the other side: An amusing article but was there any editing on it before it was published!? Normally I hold comments like this and send them directly to the author but since that avenue was not available, so far as I could find, I will leave them here.
Under the gun or not, pun intended, the article had some major editing flaws. Writing for a living I am sensitive to how poor worrying/editing make both the writer and the publication look. Did anyone else notice?
“This defensive suppression weapon is meant to stand in place of anywhere high suppressive fire is needed without the weight or footprint of the larger less man portable guns can fit.”
There are at least 4 grammatical errors in this sentence. There was one earlier in the article that had some errors but I can’t go back and copy it.
Then, there is the section on, “Pricing and Availability” with no pricing. If you are going to use a boilerplate, then put in the pricing. Whether we can buy it or not, we would love to know how much that bad boy is @ list price. Otherwise, just call it, “Availability”.
Thank you for pointing out these errors! In this age of e-everything it is a shame that “professionals” are either (a) clueless to grammar, syntax, spelling, tec…or (b) they just don’t care. Either way it’s a bad thing. The erosion of our language is something that truly concerns this old-timer. Thanks again!
Perfect.
That’s what matters tto you? Not whether we can own these as the 2nd Amendment clearly states?
No wonder this country is in such bad shape. Wear your chains happily
You know, it’s ok to have concerns with more than one issue that plagues us at a time.
“No wonder this country is in such bad shape”???? Lack of retention of basic educational concepts helped get us here too. We shout about immigrants not learning English while we are generally unable to use it properly ourselves. No wonder leftists make fun of us.
It matters.
Yeah, we lucked out this time. One more grammatical error and it would have triggered world famine, nuclear reactors would have went into melt-down, Kim Jong-un would have launched ICBM down upon us.
He wasn’t writing the cure for cancer, or the nuclear launch code. Did he over-tax your poor brains trying to figure out what he was talking about. Sadly, Jon’s grammatical and spelling errors caught up with him last night in a Las Vegas hotel room, when he got up in the middle of the night and went to the fridge:
Little Jon went to get a drink,
But he will drink no more,
For what he marked as H2O,
Was H2SO4.
What an awesome little achievement. Who can afford to shoot this awesome thing though?
The people whose bank account is supported by our tax dollars. That is who can afford to shoot this thing.
At the slowest rate of fire (2000rpm), you would spend $720 after one minute of shooting the cheapest ammo on gunbot right now (.36 per round) and that doesn’t include shipping. Keep the trigger pressed for 5 minutes and you are out $3600. Up the voltage to 24v and it becomes $1440 and $7200 respectively.
Yep, and the end result will merely be a torso target rendered into roughly the same condition as putting it through a cross-cut shredder. If that’s what you get your kicks doing, Office Depot is your friend.
Wow, thanks for putting that into perspective!
anyone else notice Glen is “Fleming” from “Sons of Guns.” Glad to see he found work.
Can I get one in 22 cal ?? Then I could afford to have fun with it.
It is. .223 is 22 caliber.
All this begs the question, why shouldn’t it be sold to the public? It’s not “full auto”, it’s an electric Gatling Gun. I see no reason why the company wouldn’t immediately open it up for retail sales.
If it continues to fire as long as the trigger is depressed, then it is most definitely “full auto”- battery, solar, household current – makes no difference to the law.
I agree with the use of them on the border. South AND north! Yes, I think we need a wall on the north as well. And maybe one protecting us from Kalifornia, if they keep going the way they are. but yes, manned posts every so far apart on the border fence…..creates jobs….puts people to work. Make military service a 2 year requirement for todays youth….and use them to man these posts…..protect our country….get them vested in the country that gives them so much opportunity. And yes…..show them how to use these guns to defend our country.
Why in the name of GOD would the public need a weapon electric or hand crank like this? Oh yeah! I know, to kill PEOPLE
Why in the name of GOD would the public need [access to abortion clinics]? Oh yeah! I know, to kill [BABIES]
FIFY.
Because it’s our God given Right. No further explanation is required
As long as someone or they don’t kill the unconditional loving K-9s, cause we all know how wonderful people are especially towards each other.
This could offer plenty of applications – home defense, plinking, pest control – even hunting – as long as you don’t plan to eat what’s left of whatever you shoot. I admit it would be pricey, but it could also be used for brush clearing, trail blazing, etc.
Am I the only one that noticed the fool pointing the gun at his camera man? Doesn’t matter what type of weapon it is.
You may be the only one who cares.
Just try pointing a gun at me and you’ll find out I care. Your way of thinking makes shooting ranges dangerous places. I’ve had loaded guns pointed at me twice at ranges. even had two different men behind a gun counter point a gun at me.. I will never go in there again
“No training, no college, just a GED.” You think that is a selling point?
Did browning have college or a GED? Did Sam Colt?
Being self taught is nothing to be ashamed of.
Hey Gunsamerica video guy can you stop wiyh the hand waving? It is very distracting.
Don’t know that I’d have a use for this one, but if they make a .22 LR version, I might like that.
Then you would be singlehandedly responsible for starting another .22lr shortage!! lol
If you own guns, shoot, reload, or just like to go out plinking, you should probably know that the .223 caliber bullet and the .22 caliber bullet are virtually the same thing. The main difference is in the bullet weight, powder charge, casing size. Man oh man, sometimes these sites scare the hell out of me.
Well now that’s a Border Control Firearm if I’ve ever seen one! Just a thought!
I personally saw the results of the bigger version (20mm Vulcan) of this in Viet Nam, I can’t think of a more effective weapon for a large crowd of enemy personnel and equipment except may be napalm.
Great minds think alike
I commandeered an M134 minigun in 7.62×51, with an extra set of barrels, from a chopper pad in Cu Chi, Vietnam in ’71, and lugged it out to a firebase (Mace? can’t remember), where my unit, ( the 11th ACR, E Troop, was on a 3 day maintenance break) onboard a log bird. Our M113 APCs were equipped with a .50 cal. in the center, armored cupola and two M60s behind gunshields farther back. Whereupon, the Commo Sgt. and me, proceeded to install the minigun behind my M60 gunshield, by me taking a cutting torch to the armored shield, while the Sgt. wired the thing up for me. We then proceeded out the front entrance of the firebase to testfire, along with a large entourage of our fellow troops in tow. The Sgt. was the first and last to fire it. After a rip of 2 or 3 hundred rds., the minigun froze up solid, and just sat there smoking, totally burned up! We had to pull the minigun back out and scrap it. I went back out to RIF with a large gaping hole in my gunshield, (not good) until somebody found me a replacement shield. I had pictures of this albatross when I came home, but my first wife somehow ended up with my war pictures when we split up.
FAE works pretty well…
….or a BLM protest/riot…..
Or u can use it to teach those white supremacist a lesson.
Pure Silliness! Next Article . . .
Cool concept. But again a gun that us citizens will never to be able to own, even if we could afford the gun and ammo. Am I the only one who felt this shot show year kind of sucked? I am all for innovation but the show seemed bland I don’t know.
Neat… Too bad the government won’t trust anyone without a huge bank account to own one. (eye roll).
PS. You can thank the NRA for the NFA and GCA, they supported both.
Tom it seems no one knows that our gun rights were taken with the support of the anti constitution NRA . They have never met a REASONABLE gun law that they didn’t like. They were instituted to disolve our 2a rights period. They were some of the first fake news. When the government comes to confiscate your arms and they will just like all tyrants do, the NRA will rat out all of its members.
I question your ability to stay safely on your meds without supervision!
Agreed
I know it. I dumped the NRA after 30 years in the mid 90’s after they stuck their face in Clintoons buns and threw the machine gunners under the bus.
The NRA does more to protect the 2nd Amendment than any other group or organization in existence. Certainly they have been forced to compromise on occasion but those compromises were in the face of legislation that would have mandated registration, national licensing, and possibly confiscation and the elimination of the 2nd Amendment itself. Every year certain congressional members draft bills, or more often attachments to existing bills, that are aimed at a total disarmament of the American people. Rail against there ineffectiveness in defeating the 1986 machine gun ban, but don’t forget that the only reason the law didn’t completely eliminate private ownership of ALL fully automatic firearms was due to the efforts of the NRA and it’s membership. The NRA has worked to protect our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms with as few limitations as could possibly be managed against the powers that be who would love to see us all completely disarmed. Keeping pro 2nd Amendment candidates in office is one of the major accomplishments of the NRA. Most recently we saw the election of Donald Trump, with the help of organizations like the NRA. Despite the ridiculousness of Donald Trump I’m still glad he won the election because if it were up to Hillary Clinton we’d be well on our way to the same fate that has befallen the people of Australia.
I completely agree with BUURGA & Ed Sjolin that unless the local PD. has a team committed to truly Serve and Protect the public from the Feds? they have no use for this sweet machine. On the other hand it would be great to see it in the hands of 3 or 4 men in each company of our military patrols.
The police are not military. All civilians should be able to own Any Weapon our non military police can own / no exceptions.
Using a weapon that puts out 2000-4000 projectiles per minute would be injudicious for civilian use. In my State, full-auto weapons were converted to semi-auto after a bullet fired by an officer using an AR-15 (M-16) in full-auto mode, strayed and struck a woman a half a mile away taking one of her breasts off. (true story) The State Police was sued successfully, and the Colonel ordered all weapons to be converted to “Semi-Auto”.
The amount of time consuming training for necessary certification for a weapon such as this would be expensive make it more of a pipe dream than anything else.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the gun, and would to have one! However, in the real world of professional police work, this weapon doesn’t fit well in a day where everyone has a cell phone and recording the every move of the police. Can you see the evening news when an officer mows down hundreds of rioting college kids, or civil rights protesters with a weapon like this. The backlash would be tremendous and they’d want to take all guns from the police after that.
If I remember my arcane law correctly, it is perfectly legal to own a mini gun with no form 1 and no tax stamp. The trick here is that the law applies to fully automatic firearms operated by the discharge of the bullet. A mini gun, being powered by external electricity, does meet this criteria and is therefore not covered by the NFA.
Of course, it will take the ATF (and whatever other letters they have added this week) to “extend” the law (illegally) to cover this firearm. Can’t have citizens being able to match government firepower…..
Isn’t it neat that unelected commie burocrats can infringe upon your constitutions rights with inpunity? We don’t need no stinking congress or constitution. I wonder if ATF officers swear to uphold the constitution and if so are they required to be able to read or are they picked stupid enough not to comprehend? Or might they just be traitorous scum? Not a lot of good options .
It wasn’t originally as far as I can tell. But there was a ruling in 2004 by the ATF that replaced the 1955 ruling on it I guess. So they already did that. https://www.atf.gov/file/83561/download
Why not a WELDING machine gun using plasma low temperature? Shooting power is through a magnetic field with fast reversing polarity.
I can see the obvious advantages from a weight-to-pee bringing point of view but to call this a one man gun is stretching in my opinion. Any weapon that eats as voraciously as this one is reputed to do requires a lot of “food”. Unless it is set up in a static position, which makes the portability of the weapon inconsequential, the ammunition requirements in any determined action will require someone schlepping the bangs. This may seem argumentative but the applications for this beast will be limited, as I see very few scenarios that law enforcement in ANY city in the US would require this weapon and its attendant negatives. Overwhelming firepower can be achieved with much simpler tools.
What possible use could this be to ANY law enforcement agency? (at least in a democracy)
BUURGA, There are a lot of Law Enforcement agencies that would need this, be that for PSSD details, who are in high drug traffic cartel areas, or who participate in nuclear transportation with DOE
Good question. But I will say this…if the SHTF and some local PD has one, you can bet that the people will end up with it very fast. Just like in Georgia in the old Soviet Union where the people would storm the police stations and steal all the weapons and kill any law enforcer that resisted. You see…the ultimate power ALWAYS resides in the citizens. Piss them off enough and you’re in DEEP crap.
Would have come in handy in Berkley against Antifa.
In all seriousness, this really is not a practical weapon. Requires too much food and electricity to be hand carried, Too small of a caliber to be extremely effective against equipment….
Would be useful against smaller drones from a fixed position if weaponized drone use becomes widespread. Outside that.. I simply can not determine a gap this thing fills.
One in which the law enforcement agencies have been ordered to enforce a mass confiscation of the populance’s weapons.
Good question, but, of late, with the extreme difficulties so many of our electorate seem to be having coming to grips that they lost the election, the possibility that the civil authorities might have to suppress an armed insurrection doesn’t seem so far fetched any more. It happened once before when the Southern states were unable to get their heads around the election of 1860, although that uprising quickly became a problem for the military. Could happen again.
Where did you come up with that cockamamie “knowledge” about the reason the South rose up?
First off, the south defended itself. And it wasn’t over an election. It was over taxation without representation. Read “The South Was Right” by the Kennedy brothers and the many footnotes they have to back up their research. The modern day belief that it was over slavery is total nonsense. In totality there were very few white slave owners in the south vs non slave owners. The majority of the people that fought on the side of the south, including the “copperheads” were not slave owners. They were people who believed in STATES RIGHTS. After all the states created the union, not the other way around. The states could tell the ATF to go fly a kite and if they tried to enforce any of their bs within the boundaries arrest, try and cage any ATF agent that ignored them. I mean who would stop them? The feds are in reality a paper tiger. It’s the PEOPLE who go along with their crap that are the problem. The PEOPLE who have been indoctrinated in the gooberment school system to be good slaves are the ones that will say GUILTY because you broke that bullet button law in the great Communist Republic of Kalifornia.
Right! And I want my nuclear weapon. Gotta kill them liberals…..screw you
Yes, it was all about States Rights-the Rights to own slaves! Read any good book on the Civil War and you find a three class society in the South-rich property owners who owned the slaves, poor white farmers share cropping for the land owners or eking out a living on a small plot of their own and slaves. It is a wonder to me how bravely the majority of the Confederate armies fought for the benefit of the rich landowners. What a bill of goods the politicians (rich land owners) must have sold them. State Rights my arse!
Arse? I suspect that you have been reading the wrong books there in where? Australia? South Africa? No one in the USA uses ‘arse’. If you’re from Australia how is your right to keep and bear arms doing down there?
Well said … now let’s repeal the NFA and get back to being better armed than fedgov.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/repeal-nfa
A beautiful pipe dream that is unlikely to happen. We stand a much better chance of repealing or changing the Hughes Amendment (to the Gun Owner’s Protection Act) that outlawed civilian ownership of automatic firearms produced after early 1986.
I just shared with 31 groups and people on Facebook. If they each shared it with their groups and on and on we should have way more than 100,000 signatures in 30 days.
Depends on what you are up against – – – – not for every day, but a great tool in the inventory for that time when . . ..
… rabid herds of coyotes try to take over the earth.