Remington 7615P Pump Action 223 Patrol Rifle

Remington’s new pump action rifle 7615P is on the surface a great idea.  I am a fan of pump action when shooting, there is a feel to a pump action rifle that is similar to the working the lever action.   Every shot you squeeze off just flashes every action scene you ever saw John Wayne make, there is just a satisfaction in looking down at the target while cycling the action that doesn't seem to come from bolt actions.

When we start by reading over the Remington factories sales pitch of features one can easily see this rifle was a weak retread of old actions based on New California anti-gun legistlation.

 AR-15 style magazine - This was by far a great selling point.  Anyone who has ever tried to find ANY rifle magazine that wasn’t an AR-15 magazine knows what a chore, and sometimes impossible task, it can be.  So the AR-15 Magazines was by far a stroke of brilliance in selling this rifle. 

“Low profile” 10 round magazine – This is where it gets a little deep.  Low profile really means “unwanted”  Remington has a two tier agenda with supplying these one the other companies can’t give them away since the Brady bill sunset, so they were a bargain.  The other being California, Remington as a company has continued to bend over for California’s off the reservation laws.  I would bet that putting out a pump rifle is also part of a “No semi-automatic” pushing in Liberal states.  Not only do they waste resources catering to this extreme but then they actually give huge discounts to individual and units alike.  The sad part is these means that Remington is actually now spending marketing dollars on “anti-gun” idea’s become feasible and mainstream.  I don’t think it should be a companies goal to put itself out of business.  To put plainly if you shoot you know full well that this pump rifle is not going on a sandbag at a siloutte match and Remingtons low profile still sticks out to far to even be suitable for that rare lay down situation.  This is a shouldered weapon period and a 20 round mag is what every officer who has to carry one will have laying next to it.

Wilson Combat / XS Ghost rings sights  ???   I thought surely they meant to say peep sights, nope they meant what they said they put ghost ring sights on the rifle.   Anyone who has ever shot their AR-15 on the large peep at 200M knows just how hard it is to hit your target.   The large shotgun style opening of the Ghost ring sight makes this rifle hard to lollipop the target at any great distance with the speed required for Action shooting.  This is Remington’s idea of “Performance tuning” was obviously thought up by a marketing department and not by a shooter.        Since Remington meant for these to be Law Enforcement only guns  the large opening is great for low light situations, but I believe the reason they are on the rifle is get the Wilson name somewhere in the marketing of an otherwise stock Remington pump rifle.    

While fun to shoot the Remington 223 pump rifle was not a great shooter.  The fact is it would appear as if Remington has resolved itself to the failure of the gun industry as a whole and this product demonstrates it whole heartedly.  Its label as a “police” model doesn’t suit the type of quality anyone would expect in a duty weapon.   This rifle and its Semi-Automatic brother has always suffered from jams in high humidity low maintaince environment.  So police departments who are honest with themselves about rifles riding in cars for months on end may find the first shot being the only shot.  The rifles are a chore to clean and its super important to keep the chamber clean and dry as its usually a spec of rust that causes this style action to fail.

 It doesn’t have the capability to perform at any level in the practical shooting environment.  It’s slow to cycle and it gets HOT, very hot in the sun.  The stock barrel drifts when shooting rapidly shot to shot.  Remington has been aggressively marketing this rifle through the 5/11 challenge (Law enforcement version of USPSA) Again showing that no one at Remington really goes out to shoot.  Law Enforcement officers will often show up at a USPSA challenge somewhere but few stick around.  It becomes quite embarrassing to get done telling everyone you’re a cop then coming in at the bottom of the list of those days shooters.  So the rifle does well when it competes against itself and are supplied for free to law enforcement.

To produce a gun of this low quality as a sales leader in this industry and the failure of the gun industry becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  How easy is it to forecast the failure of sales when you build a product line no one wants, trash the profits of your dealer network for decades, and completely ignore the changes in market trends when developing a new product line.  I would caution the Law enforcement community to not be so helpful in helping sell this gun or as a penance for your actions you may actually have to depend on one.

Remington could be turned around in 3 years if they would only get someone who cares to lead from the top in that company.