SHOT Show: New Guns from Chiappa

I popped by the Chiappa booth at SHOT Show last week and was pretty darn excited by two new guns and one oldie, that has perhaps really come into its own. The 9mm “subgun” in the lead photo is the Chiappa CBR-9 Black Rhino, and it looks and feels like a pretty well-thought-out PDW.

Due to the fact that Chiappa is made in Italy, and with our current U.S. DOJ/ATF importation laws and such, the Black Rhino is only being imported right now in pistol format as seen above.

I hope it does well enough, once it begins shipping here, that a U.S.-based accessories company or two begin making stocks or attachment adapters for the Black Rhino, because its collapsing stock mechanism is pretty sweet.

As you can see in this post’s lead photo, which features the stock fully collapsed (main pic) and extended (inset), it rides on two rails that slide up through metal claws on the receiver. A simple button on the bottom locks and unlocks. It looked and felt fairly stout and I love how it collapses all the way.

The forward-mounted charging handle can be switched between left and right sides.

It’s sleek when it flips down under its own spring tension, but when flipped out there’s a lot more area to grab than most, similar charging handle designs.

Fiber optic iron sights are built into the full-length top Picatinny rail.

Takedown was very simple and can be done without tools. Spring-loaded levers are simply pressed to release their lock on whatever components they’re holding in place. It all made sense.

Perhaps with the sole exception being the thumb safety. It’s AR-style and located where you’d expect front-to-rear, but it’s a lot higher up. It’s reachable if you have long fingers but I’ll have to take it to the range eventually to see what it’s like in practice by me and other shooters.

The layout of the other controls made sense to me, with ambi bolt controls up where the support hand can easily get to them.

I do like how all of the accessory rails can be installed or removed as the shooter desires. The muzzle device and barrel retention system are also very novel, and at least the muzzle device can be very easily removed or timed by hand.

The Chiappa Black Rhino has been in the works for a few years and I’m definitely interested in giving it a test drive. But I sure hope someone makes a stock, or a stock/brace adapter!

I apologize, I forget what the intended U.S. MSRP is on the Black Rhino. As soon as they’re available, though, TTAG will have one in for review and we’ll get all the details out at that time.

In other news, they’ve also launched the Little Badger Take Down Xtreme, which breaks in half like an over-under shotgun and fits inside its own, water resistant, floating tube.

There she is, fully assembled and ready to rock. Well, at least to survive. Which is the point of this extremely lightweight, minimalist, single-shot, hammer-fired survival rifle.

Picatinny rail for optics and accessories, fairly decent ghost ring style rear sight with fiber optic front, threaded muzzle. Surprisingly decent trigger!

With that dial rotated white/white, the gun is locked together and you can break the action open, which causes its manual extractor to extend and pull the case out of the chamber so you can grab it.

In order to take the barrel assembly off the frame and stock assembly, rotate that dial to white/red and now when you break the action open the barrel can be lifted off the frame.

Fold the shoulder stock up, turn the halves around, and they actually nest together pretty nicely and click or overlap in a couple of specific spots, which I now forget.

They can then be stored in their screw top plastic tube. It’ll float even if you have boxes of ammo and a suppressor in there.

MSRP is $280. I dig it. I was perhaps most impressed by the decent trigger pull.

On the “oldie” front, the Chiappa Rhino revolvers have absolutely become smoother, tighter, and more refined. In the past we’ve given the bottom-cylinder-firing, slab-sided-cylinder revolvers a bit of a hard time for being a little rough around the edges.

They feel really nice now. Chiappa’s folks told me about improvements they’ve made in every step of the process in taking a Rhino from raw material to unique revolver in your local gun shop, and from what I saw and felt at SHOT Show it’s paying off.

One interesting model in the booth was a double action only bullseye target shooting style revolver. My first though was, “What? That doesn’t really make sense,” as yours probably was. But what they’ve done with the trigger was really interesting.

It’s a legitimate two-stage trigger as you might see in a lot of precision rifles, though the first stage is certainly heavier. Basically, you go through the smooth and even trigger pull until it hits a very clear and very solid wall. At that point it’s reliably staged right up on the second stage, and applying another half-pound or so of pressure against that firm wall results in a crisp and clean break.

Interesting for sure, pretty cool, and it seems to work. I’m still not 100 percent sure of the “why” aspect of it, but I could see it being handier for target shooting than manually cocking a hammer between every single-action shot.

Stay tuned…reviews to come.