Springfield's NEW 9mm Pistol Caliber Carbine: The Victor 9 Review

Okay time for my usual bitch at the beginning of any video involving a new gun from a big manufacturer. Big gun companies send out a lot of copies of new guns to YouTubers and they make them all sign an NDA saying that they're going to release the video at whatever the date and time is right now. Sometimes you'll get a couple of assholes who will let it go a few hours early oops and nobody does anything about it they're just trying to get a leg up on views. 20 something reviews are all going to go live all at once and it pisses me out so much because some smooth-brained viewers assume that it means it was a huge paid ad campaign. Now I'm not saying that some people don't get paid I'm just saying I was not one of them. Speaking of we're viewer supported so we do need your help sign up and subscribe to our u-tron support us at the five dollar level or higher you're automatically entered to win one of four free guns given away every month by Top Gun Supply our sponsor all they do they don't give us money they just give away guns to you guys the rest of you are eligible to win other cool gear rules and details linked down below in the description. Today we've got a new Springfield product. Springfield can be hit or miss with me and I'm not picking on Springfield that's pretty much any large manufacturer from any industry. I would say that most Springfields I'm not too wild about for one reason or another but on the other hand they can also knock it out of the park sometimes. The Springfield Waypoint great example fantastic bolt action rifle the SA-35 I thought they did an excellent job with that high power clone they both stand out to me as being great firearms. The Hellion it might be the best 5.56 bullpup in the game right now even if it's technically an HS product product. Today we've got a new addition to the Springfield Saint line this is the Victor nine millimeter pistol caliber carbine. Is this a hit or a miss? Let's go over the details real quick. The Victor nine is a straight blowback nine millimeter AR-15 designed specifically to work with nine millimeter magazines. Straight blowback AR-9s are a dime a dozen these days there's no mechanical delay device in them say like HK's roller delay or CMMG's radial delay that delay the blowback and also tend to reduce recoil. You don't even get a hydraulic buffer to reduce recoil like in B&T's PCC's. So what does the Victor say it does around here? Well Springfield has a good mag pattern going its way although this is a hot take so bear with me of course when you're talking PCC's that's the first question what mags does it take? More specifically people will say but does it take Glock mags? The Victor accepts Colt pattern 32 round stick magazines. Some of you are going to be happy some of you are going to be pissed and at a very rare development none of you are wrong. Sure we all love Glock mags we have tons of them they're cheap they're reliable easy to find match your sidearm on the other hand not only do Colt pattern stick mags look better in my opinion but that 90 degree magazine to receiver aesthetic works better on forward magazine wells ergonomically than trying to insert an angled magazine into a hole a few inches in front of your dominant hand. If you want more info on that check out the video that I did on the Beretta PMX this was a factor with Beretta choosing to use straight magazines in their new PCC that uses a forward magazine well the PMX versus the angled magazine they used in the fist to fist reloading Storm carbine. But possibly the biggest perk of dedicated SMG mags is that they're usually double stack double feed meaning that they're much easier to load than Glock mags you just stack rounds one on top of the other like an AR-15 magazine right instead of having to depress the top round and slide the next round in like you would do with a Glock mag. All things considered I slightly favor SMG dedicated magazines but like Miller Lite or Franzia Crisp White you can't go long either way. As a side note one thing tricky about Colt mags they've been making them for a long time a lot of manufacturers a lot of old magazines out there so sometimes reliability can be spotty if you get crappy mags. Springfield packages the victor with metal form magazines which were 100% reliable during my testing of about 500 rounds in my experience metal form magazines are the gold standard for Colt patterns and they run about 30 bucks each for a 32 round magazine so they're cheap. Double check me on this but I'm pretty sure the original Colt SMG used metal form magazines. I found them for just 26 bucks from Gun Mag Warehouse I'd stock up on those link in the description if you want to find them. The victor comes with a great free-floated full-length M-LOK handguard that's just the right diameter where it's ergonomic and comfortable to shoot and to grip and control. It forgoes that full-length picatinny rail across the top here but I think that's the right decision a lot like the Aero S1 handguard if you're familiar with that it's got a thinner diameter through here you do give up that top rail but this is a PCC and you know what really are you going to need up here on a nine millimeter AR rifle plus you've got plenty of M-LOK for mounting whatever other accessories you might need I think this is a win all around. The barrel is a 16 inch melanided barrel which many consider to be superior to chrome lining these days. The victor comes with a break but it's threaded half by 28 easy to mount a suppressor this is important because many older nine mil carbines especially the Colt patterns are half by 36 to prevent Bubba from screwing a flash hider from his 223 AR-15 on the tip of his AR-9. Lawyers ruin literally everything in this country almost as bad as YouTubers in my opinion. Another plus is that it comes with a nickel boron coated flat trigger feels good pretty crisp trigger weight is about five and a half pounds. Flip-up aluminum sights are included these are of unknown origin I'm always skeptical of included no brand iron sights but these seem like they're actually not bad especially for being free you know packaged and they're probably better than the polymer flip-ups that people go out and buy when they get a rifle with no sights. Another plus B5 furniture B5 grip B5 SOPMOD style stock plus the oversized trigger guard which is pretty cool I like B5 style furniture so this is yet another plus for me in fact as I'm talking through this I'm kind of thinking that there's very little if anything to add to this gun if you buy it maybe a sling and a red dot like I've got here it comes with good accessories right out of the gate and you don't need to buy anything to go to the range right after the FFL. Speaking of running it how did it so run actually the victor ran really well bear in mind Ryan and I only shot about a half case of ammo through it I didn't clean it I didn't lube it before I shot it I'm not vouching for the longevity of it but out-of-the-box performance and reliability was actually fantastic we ran steel ammo brass case ammo even some high velocity hot four and nine millimeter ammo we even fired Ventura Munitions tracer nine millimeter ammo which was funny as hell you shoot like this red blob it allows us to LARP as stormtroopers get some of that tracer ammo support the guys at Ventura Munitions it's really really really really annoying whenever you get a crappy poorly tuned AR9 and you shoot it and it's got more recoil than like your 5.56 AR plus bolt bounce but whatever Springfield did with the Victor it seems to work really well it comes with this strange forward break it reminds me of the hate break from Maxim Defenses nine millimeter carbines but whatever Springfield's doing it seems to work the trigger is not match grade by any means but they put in a crisp nickel boron coated trigger that's better than what you get in most more expensive AR-15s I mean the shooting experience was pleasant it was easy to get hits on target I actually really enjoyed it now the bad news one 16 inch barrels only maybe right now manufacturers are wary of the future legality of braces they don't want to invest like a million dollars into turning out nine inch barrel versions of this just to find out that they're like illegal a few weeks later so you know I guess I'll give Springfield the benefit of the doubt on this one second MSRP is $12.99 which sounds high but let's see what happens with street price it's really not like there are any nine millimeter PCCs in this range that are comparable like prices are going through the roof SIG MPXs CMMG Banshees B&T GHM9s they're $1,500 or more nowadays so the Springfield at $12.99 might see like a $9.99 street price $10.99 which might not be bad I own no AR-9s I probably won't because I really like the Gucci specific 9mm PCCs the B&Ts the 3MP5s I have the P90 I like stuff like that but it's just my personal preference if you're looking to get a 9mm PCC if you want something that follows the AR pattern this seems like a good option I mean what if this does street at $9.99 or something I mean the 16 inch Palmetto State Armory is $7.99 with basic bitch furniture no sights Glock mag compatible which could be a plus or minus depending on how you look at it it's got a standard GI trigger standard muzzle device and people will know you're poor I'm not sure that there's much competition here because there aren't any big name competitors in this price range making AR-9s it's either more expensive or like a smaller boutique manufacturer or it's crap honestly I think the main competition here is the outstanding I thought at least Ruger PC carbine but that's not an AR-9 so all said and done on paper it's a promising carbine yes at its heart it's just a straight blowback AR-9 but I approve of the Colt stick mag feature and I like everything that it comes with good accessories you could hypothetically just buy the damn thing and run it depending on street price this could be maybe one of the better AR-9 options for the money but time will tell and I'm sure other big box manufacturers like Ruger and Smith & Wesson are probably eyeballing this segment of the market too guys thanks again to Top Gun Supply your online shooting sports superstore I don't know if they're carrying these but do me a favor and at least check them out because they support us as does Ventura Munitions I mentioned that traceram I swear to god it actually really is fun to shoot so go pick some of that up but thank you as usual for watching love you guys take care