A DIFFERENT KIND OF AUSTRIAN PERFECTION

Strasser’s RS14 Straight-Pull Renews Our Enthusiasm for All Things Ballistic

- Iain Harrison

Getting paid to travel the world and shoot guns is pretty much the definition of a privileged existence. But once you’ve analyzed the latest striker-fired 9mm handgun (again) and yet another AR that’s claimed by the manufacturer to offer something that no one else does, just like every other company out there, well things start getting a little same-y. We know, first-world problems ...

Then something comes along to kick you in the nuts, slapping you with the realization that yes, you could be back swinging a hammer for a living and daydreaming about the weekend when you get to shoot your favorite guns. As you’ve probably noticed, we’re not big into hunting rifles here at RECOIL. Over on the CARNIVORE side of the house, well that’s their bread and butter, but in this publication a bolt gun had better be pretty damn exceptional if it graces these pages.

This is one of those exceptional, nutkicking guns, and every time you delve a little bit deeper, it delivers another love tap.

MORE THAN SKIN DEEP

There are some things in the firearms realm the Europeans do a bit differently, and some of those are objectively superb. Of course, there are glaring examples where good ol’ ’Murican engineering and manufacturing outclasses anything coming out of that continent (G36 and L85 anyone?), but there are other cases where we’d struggle to match them. Hailing from the corner of the globe that in 1898 set the standard of what a bolt gun should be, Strasser is a comparative newcomer, but one that started with a clean sheet of paper.