Somewhere back in the mid-1800, a wag stole a quote from poet Ralph Waldo Emerson and bastardized it into a phrase that has haunted business to this day.
“If you build a better mousetrap,” the wag wrote, “the world will beat a path to your door.”
The result of that particular homily is a landscape littered with shattered and abandoned “better” mousetraps and broke entrepreneurs wondering how they could have got it so wrong.
Let’s talk about this guy, the brand spanking new Ruger RXM, a 9mm striker-fire polymer-framed swing-for-the-fences attempt by Ruger to solidify its place in the most crowded — and most lucrative — firearms niche in the country, concealed carry/training/self-defense.
You want specs…we got specs:
- Caliber: 9mm
- Capacity: 15+1
- Grip Frame: Stealth Gray Magpul Enhanced Handgun Grip
- Optic Ready: Yes
- Front Sight: Tritium, Co-Witness Height
- Rear Sight: Steel Drift Adjustable
- Manual Safety: No
- Magazines Included: Two PMAG 15 GL9
- Overall Length: 7.15”
- Barrel Length: 4”
- Barrel Material: Alloy Steel
- Barrel Finish: Black FNC Nitride
- Slide Material: Through-Hardened Alloy Steel
- Slide Finish: Black FNC Nitride
- Slide Width: 1”
- Weight: 23.2 oz.
- Height: 5.31”
- Grooves: 6
- Twist: 1in10 RH
- Available in CA: No
- Available in MA: No
- Suggested Retail: $499.00
Here’s the dealeo…the RXM is a major collaboration by Ruger with industry giant Magpul, with Magpul providing the polymer frames and Ruger the gun parts of the gun. If you think the RXM looks like a Glock 19, I think you’ve pretty much got the feel of it.
The pix above is the RXM alongside a G19. According to the guys at Ruger, the RXM is pretty much 80% compatible with Gen 3 Glock parts. In fact, you might think of this guy as as a modernized version of the Glock Gen 3 G19, updated into the 21st Century and with some the things that have annoyed Glock owners for decades disappeared.
Here’s the big deal…the RXM features in Ruger’s words a “fire control insert” (FCI); think Sig FCU in the Sig 320 and 365. The FCI cradle is the serialized “gun” part of the gun that drops into the Magpul polymer grip frame.
The photo above is the FCI coming out of the frame after removing the 2 circled pins and the slide release (the square box). There’s a video from Ruger here. Even I can do it, without a Dremel.The whole process takes about 3 minutes. Ruger suggests that you use the slide to begin levering the FCI out of the grip frame…none of this is blunt trauma! I pushed the pins out using a small punch I keep on my desk. Removing the slide release is a bit of wiggle work, but the video explains it very well.
The advantage of this type of cradle construction is that the FCI can be easily removed, then inserted into a different color or different size.grip frame Magpul is currently offering only two grip frames for the RXM “Compact” (note the “Compact” designation), one ion gray and one in black, but I think that’s going to be changing very quickly.
Annoying things that send Glock owners screaming…let’s start with the big number one — the trigger. Polymer-framed striker-fired guns do not have to have triggers that suck. I mean, there’s no natural law or anything.
And to be fair, a lot of manufacturers have solved that problem…Shadow Systems on the high end and Stoeger on the low end come to mind…their triggers are very good out of the box.
RXM on the right; G19 on the left…fitting the FCI in the grip frame was a substantial engineering achievement.
But I would say the number one modification to Glocks and clones is to replace the trigger, and there are quite literally dozens of aftermarket triggers. As I mentioned in my podcast on the RXM, my choice for the trigger my uber-Glock is from Overwatch Precision, but I have used triggers from Apex Tactical, Glock Triggers Inc., and even the Glock Performance Trigger from Glock. I would say that the straight trigger on the RXM is as good as my Overwatch Precision trigger. In fact, it’s hard to tell them apart…crisp break; quick reset. Weight is about 4 pounds.
Can you put a custom trigger in the RXM? Well, we have a resounding “maybe” on that one. Reports are that Ruger tried a Timney Alpha trigger, much loved by competitors, and it didn’t quite fit. I would imagine the aftermarket trigger makers will remedy that as quickly as they can get their hands on guns.
ERGONOMICS: Heaven knows we’ve talked ergonomics to death in this industry, but you have to admit that after all these decades of AR and other long gun furniture, Magpul knows a thing or two about grips. And it shows in the RXM grip frame. Weighs about 3 ounces, features a superb grip texture (Magpul calls it their Trapezoidal Surface Projection, which sounds to me like a psychedelic rock band in San Francisco in 1967), an undercut under the trigger guard and a slightly larger beavertail, a modest magwell that, to me with my girlie-sized hands, is just enough for my pinkie to clamp down. There’s the ubiquitous rail, an extended mag release button, slightly raised slide release and much evidence of the precision Magpul is known for. There’s a cut-out for the serial number, which is on the FCI, on the right side of the grip frame. The backstop is straight. Different grip frames are listed on the Magpul website for $40.
And, yes, thankfully, gone are the finger grooves. Even Glock, in their Gen. 5s, realized that no one wanted them.
The gun “feels” good to me. In fact, after spending a couple of weeks with the RXM, my Glocks now feel slightly clunky. I feel like “feel” (didja get that?) is a wildly subjective criterion, but as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, no less than Col. Jeff Cooper, writing in The Art of the Rifle, said, “The greatest single asset of the personal rifle is that it be ‘friendly.’ This is a difficult quality to describe because it is essentially a subjective matter. Nonetheless, it is very important.” The same applies to handguns.
Moving on to the slide, it is contoured without looking like something P. Diddy dreamed up after a big night with the baby oil.
[Sidebar — Offensive Personal Comment: C’mon guys! Just because John Wick’s TTIs have more bronze and gold than a ’80’s era gangsta rapper’s grill doesn’t mean that all guns have to look that way! In the immortal words of Joe Biden, “Don’t.” Rant Mode Off!]
There are cocking serrations fore and aft. The sights, which are actually made of, you know, metal, are raised for a 1/3 co-witness on the optic. Front sight is a tritium nightlight, pretty impressive for a gun at this price point.
I’d like to rave for a moment about the optic cut. It is designed to allow a direct mount to the slide for RMR, RMSc and DPP through a clever system of small pins and a number of mounting holes, similar to what Springfield did recently with the Echelon Variable Interface System. My complaint with interchangeable plates is that that cause the optic and add an additional point of failure, not to mention something else to lose.
The barrel looks interchangeable with Glock, but I have’t tried it. Besides, Ruger is know fir their high-quality barrels. Shoot before you buy.
Magazines are Glock standard, which is a stroke of genius. As I have said many times, after the Apocalypse, you’ll still be able to get 9mm and Glock magazines at every remaining convenience store. Glock mags, both original and aftermarket, are cheap and plentiful. This is a Good Thing. A lot of otherwise promising handguns have crashed and burned on proprietary magazine expense and/or availability.
I haven’t done any comprehensive shooting with the RXM yet…as I mentioned on the podcast, I’m waiting for one of the enclosed emitter RCR dots from Trijicon so I’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. What I have done is take the RXM to the range with a pail of mixed Glock mags that somehow end up in the gun room. The mags — Glock standard, Magpul, KCI and a couple of other aftermarket brands — were loaded or partially loaded, with ammunition that included Armscor ball, Hornady Critical Defense and Critical Duty, a Fiocchi truncated cone 9 mm 124-gr — a bugaboo for a lot of my guns — some Wilson Combat match that I used during my time of shooting a G19 for USPA and IDPA competition, and some stuff that I have no idea what it is. All of it went bang (I was shooting at a fixed 15-yard Popper), all of the magazines worked. Regardless of the ammo, the hits looked good.
This is a good time to go back to our opening quote about the better mousetrap. If we listen to social media, which will ultimately result in some sort of brain damage, one would think that the firearms market is screaming for innovation, that better mousetrap.
In fact, or at least in my lived experience as Ivy League graduates are fond of saying, the opposite is true. The market for firearms is at its core very conservative (ahem, 1911, ahem) and slow to adopt newer technology. The biggest change in the market has been the growth of what we might think of as “ecosystems,” the growth of a massive aftermarket to support and augment a specific category of firearms.
I believe the beginning of this type of market was the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban from 1994 – 2004. The major players in the market stepped away from the market, but the market for AR-15 platform firearms didn’t. Instead, the market grew, and for a decade the demand was met by smaller companies who basically flew under the radar.
What the idiots in Washington failed to grasp was that the AR was designed to be the first modular gun…it was not crafted as much as assembled, something the smaller companies understood on a granular level. If the big companies wouldn’t/couldn’t sell you an AR, you could build your own.
In the first season of my flagship show, SHOOTING GALLERY, we showed our audience how to build your own legal AR, using parts from J&T Distributing, which became DoubleStar after the Ban subsetted.
And when the big players stepped back into the market in 2004, it was a very different market. Consumers had discovered that they could have it their way, have it their way, just like the burger commercial. The smaller companies, parts and accessories, were active participants in the market.
As I have written extensively, there has always been a “gadget driver” in the firearms market…Americans just plain like to build guns and have been doing it since there was an America. With a taste for modular, the next ecosystem to evolve was Glock. Unlike the 1911 (or revolvers, for that matter), Glocks could be assembled, modified easily.
Essentially, and to avoid more of my nerdy, wordy text, the aftermarket became as important as the gun that created it. You’ll note that Sig Sauer created and fueled the aftermarket for the P329 and and the P365, which helped rapidly increase the market for those guns.
The RXNM is Ruger’s third (or maybe forth, depending on how you count) run at the 9mm polymer-frame striker-fired market. The first was the SR9 series in 2007. I campaigned the SR9 in IDPA for a couple of years, and it was a good gun. But it clearly failed to take off. It was followed in 2015 by the Ruger American series, a well thought out, great shooting gun…I had one of the Competition versions for a while. The American also used the cradle fire control chassis, and my Competition had a wicked good trigger. But like the SR9, the gun didn’t catch on in large enough numbers to drive an aftermarket ecosystem.
What does it all mean? Well, with the RXM, Ruger has pulled a neat trick. It has stepped into an existing ecosystem and managed to expand that ecosystem by offering, first, an easy way to change grip frames; second, partnering with the best aftermarket companies in the business and, third, choosing to use one of the most common magazines on earth.
Smart…very smart.
