Stick,

Just read the launcher review, which was up to your usual standards, and came away with a few questions; some admittedly better than others.

To begin with, I've always been of the mindset that a 40mm launcher was the infinitely more useful cousin of these 37mm offerings, while the latter were/are basically on par with an Airsoft alternative. Since I have no familiarity with their LE applications, I was ready to dismiss this launcher out of hand until I read your remarks. As a flare/gas/smoke platform, is there real utility here? I think the answer to that is a convincing yes, again, dependent upon one's larger situation.

Where I'm less well-informed is in this matter of available loadings, and/or the recipes for same. I believe that I would be safe in assuming that the 37mm crowd has worked up many lethal, as well as non-lethal, configurations -- and I would guess that the lethal variants put them at odds with NFA laws concerning Destructive Devices. If we confine our discussion to the non-lethal loads, then, it would seem that there are some legitimate points to be made.

One of the things that I've quietly wondered here is this: if there is an actual purpose for the stand-alone "chunker" model (as reviewed), would it be a stretch to suggest that an M4-mounted variant might also have some utility? I'm going to have to stick with LE applications for purposes of the question here, because I don't think this makes much sense in a typical civil/defensive situation. (Most of us don't keep a protective mask next to our bedroom carbine.) If so, then why wouldn't it make as much, or more, sense for an agency to just go with the original M79 or M203 in 40mm? The 37mm would seem to present fewer legal obstacles, but I'm not sure that is of any great concern to a letterhead purchaser.

Back to loadings. This one still leaves me scratching my head a bit. In part, it is because I'm not familiar with what's out there, and in part because I'm less than clear on the legal distinction between the 40mm rounds and the 37mm rounds -- aside from the obvious fact that the latter are generally considered "gas" rounds almost to the exclusion of anything else. Having seen guys go through the prohibitively expensive process of getting 40mm rounds for Title II M79s, I've generally taken the view that this is either a rich man's game, or pointless, or both. If the 37mm route offers some of those same advantages (albeit in non-lethal guise), without any of the legal hurdles, then I suppose that makes sense. The question is, are the 37mm loads widely available, and are they at all economical? You mentioned reloading possibilities, but this is all pretty foreign ground to me.

Finally, I'm a bit shaky on the legal classification of the reviewed launcher. Is it a Title I firearm, or something else entirely? Perhaps more to the point, does the typical LEO understand this distinction, or would a "gas gun" owner be subject to a lot of official scrutiny every time the launcher saw the light of day? If these are unlikely to be seen in private hands, or if that is in fact illegal, then the point is moot. I understand the underlying common sense issue in play here, in any case -- but I'm just not clear on (a) who has these, (b) who can have them, and (c) under what circumstances they can be legally used. While I think their tactical utility is much better suited to LE, I wouldn't rule something like this out for a post-Katrina type situation, even in private hands. (Thankfully, such a scenario seems very unlikely, even if we've walked that path once before.)

AC