Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.
I must say, this year’s birthday was a bountiful one. I am exceptionally pleased that I managed to parlay the birthday gifties so that I finally ‘finished’ my Uzi.
Three things I wanted for the Uzi. I mean, other than a third choice on the selector.
- Rails
- Light
- Vertical foregrip
For a gun design thats been around fifty years, there is an absolute dearth of Uzi rail systems out there. Oh, you can buy the usual handguards that someone then bolted a section of rail onto…thats easy to find. And, for most situations, that’s really about all you need. But I wanted to run a light and a VFG. So…first things first. Let’s get some rails. I wound up with this: Mako Tactical Rail System for Uzi
. It’s nice enough…fits, seems to do the trick…but not worth more than $100 in my opinion. Nonetheless, if you’re going to need more than one section of rail you don’t have too many choices in Uzi rail systems.
So,,,now we’ve got rails. Lets throw a VFG on. I went with the Magpul MOE RVG Grip, Black
…mostly because it was fairly inexpensive while being of good quality. Once I had the rail system mounted and the VFG attached it was a very convenient package to handle. More importantly, I could grip the VFG with my left hand and remove my right hand from the pistol grip and still keep control of the gun. Also, it seemed a more natural presentation of the gun than with the palm flat underneath the regular handguard.
So, that left the tactical light..which is where it gets interesting. I tried pulling the old Streamlight M3 off my Glock and putting it on the Uzi. A little snug on the rail, but not bad. Trouble is, its an old model..incandescent/Xenon. I’m trying to switch over to LED lights for the increased durability and battery run-time. So, I pulled the Scout 
light off the AR and tried it. Very nice! And it was right around that point that a buddy of mine who was in town visiting came by and gifted me with a truly awesome weapon light… a Streamlight 69230 TLR-2s Rail Mounted Strobing Tactical Light with Laser Sight and Rail Locating Keys
that we had looked at the previous day at a local gun shop. After we had split up for the day he went back and picked it up for me as a birthday gift. How awesome was that? Well, can’t let an awesome piece of gear like that go to waste…so onto the Uzi it went. Sweet Crom, I may have created the ultimate home defense gun. The light is bright and intense, the strobe effect is suitably disorienting to the target and the cute little red dot on the target conveys a nice sense confidence when you point it down a darkened hallway at that shadowy figure that wasnt supposed to be there. I was vacillating about whether to SBR this thing and this has convinced me that I absolutely need to.
Speaking of birthdays, the vast portion of gifties this year wound up being, naturally enough, preparedness-related….so I got plenty of fodder for some product reviews which will be forthcoming over the next couple weeks. Some really cool stuff. Man, I wish birthdays came more than once a year.
