North Carolina-based Bear Creek Arsenal has become a firearms innovator, from modern sporting rifles chambered in belted magnum cartridges to the company’s own striker-fired handgun design. Its latest offerings are AR-15-style rifles and handguns chambered in 9 mm Luger using a patent-pending design that dispenses with the traditional AR receiver extension and buffer system.
Bear Creek’s bufferless 9 mm firearms have many of the features of the company’s conventional AR-15s, yet use an innovative action design.
Bear Creek’s bufferless 9 mm firearms share many features of the company’s traditional pistol-caliber models. Handguards are free-floating and have Picatinny rail sections on the top and M-Lok slots on the sides and bottom. Barrels are an M4 contour with a 1:10″ twist. The action is blowback-operated, and upper and lower receivers are machined from billet. Magazine wells are compatible with Glock-pattern 9 mm pistol magazines.
The bufferless design allows for a compact overall size and the ability to attach a folding stock to the rifle.
Where the design steps away from the traditional AR-15 form is that the recoil spring is contained within the bolt-carrier group inside the receiver. This allows for a more compact design and, in the case of rifles, a folding stock can be used. The bufferless design has a Picatinny rail section machined into the rear of the lower receiver for attaching accessories.
Bufferless 9 mm pistols will be offered in three different barrel lengths. The 10.5″ model is pictured.
Handguns will be offered with 4.5″, 7.5″ and 10.5″ barrels and use Bear Creek’s Gen 2 reciprocating right-side charging-handle system. Sixteen-inch barreled rifles have a reciprocating left-side charging handle and are supplied without a stock so that the customer can use the design of their choice.
The Bear Creek bufferless 9 mm rifle has a MSRP of $516, and the 10.5″ pistol version is $469.
