RONI Carbine Conversion

I was recently asked to give my thoughts on a RONI pistol-carbine conversion and come up with a course curriculum for a police department. Not knowing much about it, I was intrigued by the concept. You take your issued pistol, put it inside the conversion kit and in a couple quick seconds you have a shoulder fired, pistol caliber carbine. Why not?? The kit allows you to add red dot optics, flashlights, lasers, and or anything else that you feel would mission essential equipment to a standard 1913 pica tinny rail system. 

I started out by zeroing at 25 yards and shot it at 7, 10, 25, 50 and 100. I was curious with the height of the Eotech and the fact that it's still your pistol, how the gun would perform at the various distances. The gun performed well. As you can see, there was not much change. Even at 100 yards, there was only a 4 to 6 inch drop. I'm ok with that. If your looking to get M4 performance out of this system, it's not going to happen. You have to remember, this is still a pistol.

 I would say the max effective range of this system is around 100 yards. So the biggest disadvantage with this system is the ability to be effective over 100 yards. I tried to engage steel at 200 yards and could do it, however I don't believe under combat conditions this would be an option. I'd rather have a rifle.

Manipulations with this conversion such as "ready ups", slide lock reloads, tactical reloads, malfunctions and multiple targets are easy to achieve because it's the same as your pistol. So this type of setup does not require to much change in the training module. This in turn can keep cost down for departments. 

During my time with the RONI, I experimented with different scenarios that an operator might find themselves faced with. For example, one handed shooting/reloading, malfunctions, shooting from the

sling, close quarters battle, fighting from inside a vehicle, shooting on the move and at distance. I was truly impressed with it's performance. There was increased speed with first shot on target, target transitions, increased accuracy at distance, and better consistency of hits while shooting on the move. I believe a lot of this is due to the red dot that was added to the system. 

This style of weaponry definitely adds to the tool box and you will see them implemented more. Looking online, the cost of the unit is around $400. (that does not include the ATF tax stamp because you have just made a short barrel rifle out of your pistol.) That's not bad for what your getting. The ability to add all the fixing's to a shoulder fired weapon, isn't this why we all buy AR-15's. Honestly, this would be my second choice for home defense. Nothing beats a shotgun !!

I definitely think the pros out weigh the cons on this weapon system and would recommend it. What has been your experience with these conversion kits? What information do you have to share? Please post if you have comments to contribute…

Be sure to check out this video where I run just a few quick drills !!