"No," I replied yet again, "I haven't seen MagPul's new rifle." My interest, however, was peaked. Everyone I was bumping into at SHOT Show was commenting on this new boomstick. Whatever it was, it had created quite a buzz in the air.

MagPul Industries shook up the industry at SHOT Show by introducing a new fighting rifle dubbed the Masada.

Glancing at my floor directory map, I located MagPul Industries' booth in the Law Enforcement section and set my course. When I arrived I had to fight my way through a crowd of people to get inside. Man, the place was packed.

Looking around, I finally saw what all the hub-bub was about. MagPul, a company known for manufacturing innovative AR accessories, had cowboyed up and designed a fighting rifle of its own. Better still, the company had gone from concept to firing prototype in only four months.

To be blunt, the continuing proliferation of AR-type rifles from ever more U.S. manufacturers is a symptom of the cancer infecting American firearm companies. Rather than demonstrating any technical expertise by developing a weapon of its own, these companies instead persist in assembling components of a 40-plus-year-old ArmaLite design. Then, with their name thoughtfully scrolled on the lower by the true manufacturer, they market it to the masses. Such rampant stagnation and lack of vision has led to American troops being issued Italian-designed pistols and Belgian-designed Squad Autos and GPMGs while our Special Forces are receiving German HK 416 and Belgian FN SCAR rifles.

So it was with some interest that I pawed over MagPul's new Masada rifle. Masada? Yes, Masada. Although MagPul Industries is not Jewish-owned or Israeli-backed, it considers the Jewish defenders of Masada in 72 A.D. to have defined the nature of controlling one's own destiny through their act of defiance to the Roman X Legion.

Me? Well, I think it's a pretty snappy, in-your-face name considering we're going to be fighting radical Muslim extremists for the foreseeable future.

The rifle itself? Well, it's kind of an in-your-face design, too. It didn't take me very long to see that there was a reason for all the hub-bub. Although currently in prototype form only, it's very obvious that the design has a lot of potential.

Officially known as the Masada Adaptive Combat Weapon System, MagPul states, "[It] is rapidly reconfigurable for length, caliber, magazine compatibility, stock type and fire-control setup. Core features include a gas-piston operating system, tool-less quick-change barrel system, multi-adjustable folding stock and integrated storage."

Yeah, say that five times fast.

Pawing it over, you can see some FN SCAR, HK G36, XM8 and good ol' American AR-15 and AR-180 influences. There's a reason for this. MagPul's design team (consisting of Richard Fitzpatrick, Mike Mayberry, Eric and Brian Nakyama and Drake Clark) drew off other designs to produce their idea of a lightweight, user-friendly 5.56mm fighting rifle.

The heart of the rifle is an AR-180-type bolt-carrier assembly. This captured unit utilizes an eight-lug rotating bolt with a spring-loaded firing pin. The bolt-carrier assembly drops into a 7000-series aluminum upper receiver, which is extruded in a closed-box profile for durability. Inside the upper, the bolt carrier rides on heat-treated hardened-steel rails. Bolted and pinned to the front of the receiver is a steel alloy barrel trunnion.