By Cary Kieffer:

This morning I want to go over a recent impulse purchase of mine. I was at a local sporting goods store and picked up a 22 LR clone of an FN SCAR. It was on sale for 399$ and I thought what the heck, it looks fun and I have only handled the SCAR, never fired one. I’m not trying to say I’m going to judge a real SCAR on this but I was curious of how the ergonomics are compared to an M-4. It should give me an idea of how the style handles.

scar clone right

The thing says “ISSC” for the company, it’s called the “modern sporting rifle” and I’m assuming imported by a company in Reno, Nevada as it says that too. It is made in Germany and I’m only guessing on this but I’d say they make the GSG 5’s as well as the internals look just the same. Essentially its the same action and barrel enclosed in a “SCAR” looking chassis, just like the action enclosed in an HK MP-5 chassis for the GSG’s. So same gun just different looks.

The features: This thing has a lot of them. Lets start at the butt-stock and move forward. The stock has an adjustable cheek piece. I needed a riser rail to use a sight with it all the way down, I can’t imagine who’s head is small enough to need to use that. The stock folds to the right and locks folded. The button took some real pushing on to loosen up but works alright now. The stock is adjustable for length of pull and has 3 positions.

Moving forward to the receiver it has a trapdoor pistol grip and an ambi-safety. I have a hard time using the safety quickly. It’s just not that easy to flip for me quickly to fire, who cares its a 22. I hope that a real SCAR doesn’t have this issue though. There’s an ambi-mag release and shell deflector but no bolt release. You use the charging handle for that. The trigger is fairly light single action but mushy feeling, again who cares, it works. She has a full size 22 round mag that actually holds 24 rounds?? Not sure why but it does, so do the GSG’s. Additionally the charging handle can be placed in one of 6 positions around the rifle, 3 on each side. Put it where you like it, I have mine in the middle left spot.

scar left side

The things has a ton of rail space, the whole top of the rifle almost and plenty of rail on the sides and bottom. You can bolt the kitchen sink to it as there’s enough room. The real barrel is enclosed in a “real” looking shroud with a nice muzzle break on it. It looks like the real thing, also there’s like 6 places to attach slings around the rifle.

My set up: I used a Bushnell red dot which I had to put up on a Rock River Arms riser as I could not see the dot. It just sat to low and my face was to high on the stock, no big deal really just a few extra ounces of weight. It came with iron sights (flip up) but with the riser they are no good so I just attached them forward of the riser so I wouldn’t lose them somehow. They are not there for use. I used a Command Arms beat up old forward grip I used in Iraq and an Ultrafire 501B flashlight on a pressure switch. So, red dot, light and forward grip. Good enough.

On too a real reason to have one of these, besides the fact that it’s fun and cheap to mess around with which I think is plenty enough reason. If you have a job where you use a SCAR or similar rifle or if you keep one around for home protection you can train, train, train all day long for pennies on the dollar. This would be a good choice for anybody who just wants to shoot volume for a heck of a lot less cash. Possibly a good money saving idea for security, military, police and contractors as well as any private civilian on a budget. Simply put 50 rounds of 22LR is what $3 ?? 20 rounds of cheap 5.56 is around $7. By the time you fire 1000 rounds you will have saved 290$ roughly on ammo. I’m sold. 🙂

Onto the shooting: It says HV (high velocity) right on the gun and they mean it. Don’t use anything slow, get 22 ammo with a bit of zip to it. Thunderbolts were ok if it was a new box, old thunderbolts not so much. American Eagle wouldn’t hardly work at all. Now load up with CCI stingers or Aguila Super Maximum and the thing hums right along fine. Its important to say that the chamber needs to be kept relatively clean. They included an angle chamber brush. Use it. Clean the chamber out every once in awhile while training and you’ll have a better experience. All in all with high speed cartridges it works pretty well.

scar group

Accuracy. Well it’s fine. I don’t know what some people expect but I feel I got what I paid for. Here’s an average group with the Aquila Super Maximum pictured. It’s not a rifle for Olympic ski shooters, it’s not supposed to be. It’s good enough for what it’s for. You could hunt any small game with it, rabbits or whatever or like I said before train, train and train some more.

I did want to touch on cleaning and dis-assembly, these folks in Germany seem to be totally in love with little screws and lots of nuts and bolts. All of which seem to want to shoot loose and are made from pot metal I think. You may want to go thru your rifle and do a complete tear down and reassembly using some loctite. I did. Be warned these guys love little pieces. It’s not quite the nightmare that a GSG5 is to tear apart but it’s got a few parts to it. Just be careful cause they all strip and tear up easily. Don’t force anything.

Summary: Well that was a pretty complete rundown I think, I like it. It works, it’s cheap and it shoots lots of cheap ammo with reasonable accuracy. You can dress her up a million different ways to suit yourself. You can save a ton of $$ on ammo and come out a better shooter on the other side of it. I think I got my 400$ worth here. Give one a try.

As always thanks for reading and happy shooting.

By: Cary Kieffer

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Cary Kieffer

USMC Infantry/Combat Veteran/MUESOC/Sniper School - Med Retired LEO w/ 8yrs on job before Iraq wounds caught up with me.

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