HI - CALIBRE
By D.S. O'Reilly and Eric 'The Sarge' Matherson
It was such a beautiful day for shooting.  In the company truck and out to the Mohessy reservoir, Free Cal, were The Sarge and myself.  The Sarge was having trouble, along with the rest of the San Fran  SOF team getting to the hidden beer fridge in the closet, what for all the weapons we'd been given to test out, complimentary gifts and all that.   In the back of the truck these were in crates, along with a stack of watermelons, a few standard targets, and a piece of personal armour ceramic plating we'd been given to rate.
Colt Equalizer

The first gun that the Sarge wanted to try out was the Colt Equalizer.  This weapon's been out on the market for a little time, but it hasn't seen too many sales yet, and is only really starting to be sold in any real quantities outside of Colt's own security forces.  The Sarge had a chuckle when he was told the rifle was meant for police...with its slim design, low mounted scope and short barrel, the weapon is made for concealability, something Sarge didn't think Police and federal sharp shooters really needed.  This weapon would probably see much more work as the poor man's sniper rifle, and with corporate security on the sly.

The weapon tested well, however one of the major drawbacks is the size of the round.  .223 long calibre is a good choice, but for a sniper rifle it lacks some stopping power, compared to the .303 and larger calibres.  The Sarge had some trouble with the scope, low mounted for concealability, it was a little hard to get his shoulder and chin in the right way to get a good eyeball through the glass.  However, Sarge reminded me that most snipers these days had eye mags and smartlinks, anyway.  The rifle comes with integral Mk I link.  The penetration of the .223 round was quite good, punching through the armour plate, but it came up a bit short on the watermelon test, not causing enough damage to be a real man stopper with much less that a head or neck shot.

It's other, rather glaring drawback of this platform is that the calibre and the shorter barrel make for a rather lacking effective range.  The bullet really starts to drop after about 450 metres, maxing out around 600 m, pitifully short for a true sniper rifle.  Its pretty pricey, too, at four thousand plus extras for the special scope, it may not be everyone's piece of cake.  However, its obvious concealment and the fact it doesn't come under the same controls as the SM-3 or the Barret Sniper rifle make it a bit easier to get your hands on one.  It's concealable, but doesn't break down...the advantage of that though is that its tougher under combat situations, and more sturdy.
MicroUzi

IMI (Israeli Military Industries), the people who brought the original and ever present Uzi into the marketplace, have really outdone themselves this time.  They've put together a fantastic package in the microuzi.  It's small, slips into the small of your back like it was ergonomically designed, is easier to hide than most pistols, and still chambers the same rounds as its larger brother, the uzi III.  This means that the man stopping power and tissue damage are quite comparable to most pistols and submachine guns on the market. 
The microuzi lacks some penetration due to its tiny size, and the round doesn't have as high a muzzle velocity as the Uzi III or even the Crusader or Skorpion machine pistols, so it doesn't work so well against hardened targets.  However, it looks just like an Uzi (just smaller) and IMI have managed to get the patented sound of the Uzi to come from the Microuzi when firing.  With 20 rounds of ammunition, it runs a little light on ammunition, but for its size you could probably take two.  A steal at a grand, and available everywhere.

Sarge just likes them because they're cute, like baby Uzis, although he does note the absence of a fire rate selector.  But why would you purchase an uzi for single shots, anyway?
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