It's not April, right?

 All the news I've been hearing in the gun world recently is making me check the calendar to see if it's April 1st or something, because there's been some straight-up bizarre announcements by some gun companies.  The roundup of odd stuff I've heard includes:

A military actually uses the Ruger Mini14 as a service rifle

A new cartridge that is less powerful than .380ACP, so no one will likely care

A new bullpup conversion AKM that nobody wants or asked for

Kalashnikov USA is releasing more new guns that are NOT the AK-74 or AK-12

Beretta USA is snubbing their nose at just about all major events

But the one that takes the cake is that SIG USA is releasing their new NGSW MCX-SPEAR commercially to the public. If you aren't familiar with it, it's the SIG offering to the Army's Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) trials to replace the incredibly long lived M16/M4 platforms.

Way cooler looking that the bullpup configured competitor's weapon, but it still gets a big "Meh" from me. 

On the one hand, it makes sense since it's basically an upper that is compatible with the standard (.308) AR lower receiver.  On the other hand, I wonder if this means they already know they've lost the program, as generally most companies don't care about meager civilian sales when tooling up for a huge government contract. I also forgot to mention that they are releasing it in a variety of calibers including the new one for the Army tests, 277 SIG Fury (6.8 x 51mm). Which is confusing, as I don't remember it being listed as a SAAMI cartridge and the Army generally doesn't like it's latest and greatest to be available commercially. Stuff to think about.