Fouling Shots

Each year, SHOT Show starts off with a bang outdoors and outside Las Vegas with Industry Day at the Range for invited media (e.g., yours truly), hosted at the expansive Boulder Rifle and Pistol Club shooting range in Boulder City, Nevada. Two years ago, a new, family-owned company in Charleston, Utah, brought a unique, scaled-down AR-15 chambered in 22 Long Rifle, designed and intended for training youngsters in the safe handling of the modern sporting rifle. The diminutive firearm encored at SHOT 2024, but the company had changed its name and now instead markets the little gun as a survival rifle.

The youth rifle had succumbed to the non compos mentis of wrong-headed politics.

Mountain Billy Gun Labs’ GOAT-15 mirrors a typical AR-15, with three notable differences: its chambering, size dimensions and a special additional safety selector – known as a Tamper Resistant Cap – located on the right-hand side of the receiver. The function of the Tamper-Resistant Cap is to provide control of the safety selector switch on the rifle’s left-hand side to an instructor seated on the right side of the rifle and the shooter. It provides an additional layer of safety against unintentional discharge by a new shooter under the instruction of an adult, as adult finger strength is required to disengage the Tamper-Resistant cap and permit the shooter to move the safety selector switch from “Safe” to “Fire.”

But braying anti-civil rights groups and politicians opposed to teaching youngsters firearms safety and marksmanship skills latched onto the little 22 as being aimed at attracting youth which, somehow, has recently become illegal for firearm manufacturers and websites but not for violent Hollywood movies and video games. Under threat of litigation, the company elected to change its approach, hence the name change to Mountain Billy Gun Labs and marketing the GOAT-15 as a survival rifle instead of a youth rifle.

Weighing in at just under three pounds and spanning 28 inches with the collapsible buttstock collapsed (31 inches, extended), the GOAT-15 is about two-thirds the size of a modern sporting rifle. The light weight is a function of the mostly polymer construction of the receiver, forend, Picatinny rail, buttstock, pistol grip and magazine, all of which are made of the same material. The only metal is where it’s absolutely needed, in the barrel, bolt, trigger group, controls and fasteners, all of which are steel.

Controls are exactly where you find them on an AR-15, but reduced in size. The muzzle is threaded for a suppressor or brake, the foreend sports M-LOK slots all the way around, and the full-length Picatinny rail permits a choice of sighting apparatus. Two-piece threaded hammer and trigger pins are actually superior to those on milspec AR-15s. Takedown pins, too, are thread-captured. Pulling the rear takedown pin allows withdrawing the bolt à la the AR-15s bolt carrier group (BCG) for simple disassembly and cleaning.

Among survival rifles, every designer believes he’s come up with a better mousetrap, but the genre is defined by only a few attributes: light weight, small size, enough power for effective foraging and perhaps a modicum of self-defense. Probably the first survival rifle was actually the shotguns stowed by a few Luftwaffe pilots somewhere in their ME-109s over Northern Africa during World War II. During that war, the US military issued 45 ACP shotshells to some aircrews for foraging use in their M1911A1 pistols. The Cold War prompted refined development of survival rifles that folded or partially disassembled and sometimes featured both a rifle and a shotgun barrel or full-auto firing. At least one design fits snugly into a fighter pilot’s ejection seat pan.

The GOAT-15 has all three attributes of a survival rifle, though with a fixed 16¼ -inch barrel, one could argue it’s a bit lengthy. Balancing that, neither the barrel’s accuracy or return-to-zero suffer from being dismantled and reassembled, as with other designs. For stowage in more limited space, I suppose the upper and lower receivers could be separated. Another positive, the GOAT-15 is flat-sided, as it doesn’t have a forward assist (or “jam assist,” as a retired Army Ranger friend calls it) or other significant protrusions, abetting flat stowage. Its size and (lack of) weight make the Goat-15 eminently packable when strapped to the outside of a backpack.

If you’ve ever actually tested a survival rifle for accuracy, you discovered that size does matter. So does a forearm. Those attributes of reduced size and weight are not aids to accurate shooting, nor is the lack of a forearm, which seems to be a dispensable item among survival rifle designers. In the forearm and accuracy departments, the GOAT-15 leaves other survival rifles behind, though it still takes some getting used when shooting a shrunken AR-15 – but it’s fun.

Mounted with a 3-9x Vortex Crossfire II scope for accuracy testing from the bench, the GOAT-15 produced some impressive 4-shot groups at 25 yards with hunting ammunition, including some one-hole groups. However, at eight pounds, the trigger is quite heavy, which I blame for consistently throwing one shot in five well outside the group. Mountain Billy Gun Labs is working on a better aftermarket drop-in trigger, as no AR-15 trigger will fit.

Even with the flyers, the little rifle is minute-of-bunny accurate at close range, should foraging become the order of the day, survival situation or not. A feathery carry, the GOAT-15 is a candidate for what Townsend Whelen called “woods loafing.” Plinker? Absolutely. If you know someone with a physical disability that limits them from enjoying shooting a heavier rifle, the GOAT-15 might be a good option to consider.

GOAT-15 rifles are available directly from Mountain Billy Gun Labs (www.mtnbilly.com) in Utah for $469.99. The rifle includes proprietary five-round and single-shot magazines, one each, with 10-round mags available soon.