Gun Review: J67 Bullpup Smooth Is Fast

[su_heading size=”30″]Jard’s J67 Bullpup Carbine Comes With Uncommon Features • GUN REVIEW J67[/su_heading]

Review And Photographs By Oleg Volk

[su_dropcap style=”light” size=”5″]D[/su_dropcap]ean Van Marel of Jard, Inc. designed the J67 bullpup to be simple and inexpensive. Based loosely on Sten and Sterling submachinegun features, this odd-looking bullpup folded from aluminum sheets is quite different in actual use. At 7 pounds, it hearkens back to the age when pistol-caliber guns were sometimes front-line infantry weapons. Unlike Sten and Sterling, J67 ejects down behind the magazine and the controls are ambidextrous. The safety lever is modeled on M1 Garand, and Marel chose Glock magazines, common and available in various calibers, as the standard. In my experience, the Glock magazines worked perfectly, but aftermarket magazines wouldn’t lock into the magazine well at first. The mag-release lever has to be manually pushed forward the first time on each new aftermarket magazines, such as those from ETS Group and Magpul, but then the mags worked fine. Designed with a mag catch on both sides of the well, the J67 works only with Gen4-compliant magazines.

THE ACTION is straight blowback, but delivers less recoil than most .22 rifles. The trick is a relatively heavy – 18.8 ounce – bolt and substantial over travel past the magazine on each cycle. The same layout gives Keltec RDB and Ultimax 100 their low recoil, as well. Overall construction is extremely simple, and takedown is easy: Back out and remove the thumbscrew in front of the action, pull the lower back to separate it from the upper, pull the captured recoil-spring assembly and drop the bolt out of the back of the upper. That’s it for field stripping!

THE CARBINE’S OVERALL LENGTH is 26¼ inches, which includes the 16¾-inch barrel, and the muzzle is optionally threaded for a flash hider or sound suppressor. The carbine would work well suppressed, as the vents gas well away from the shooter. I shot 150 rounds of various ammunition and had zero stoppages of any kind. Moreover – and very unusually for 9mm carbines – the J67 shot all kinds of bullet weights and types well. Everything from Liberty 50-grain hypervelocity loads screaming at 2,550 feet per second to Federal 147-grain subsonic JHP fed, fired, extracted and printed between 2 and 3 minute of angle. Since the J67 is not a target rifle, I did my testing prone without a bipod: multiple five-shot strings of the same load grouped variously between 2 and 3MOA due to the marksman’s limitations. For a 9mm Luger long gun with a nontarget scope, that’s very respectable. It offers an excellent single-stage trigger – a Jard specialty – that helps with practical accuracy. Although each load shot tiny groups, the difference between impact centers of different loads could exceed 4MOA, so zeroing for a specific cartridge is recommended for long-range use.

AS REMARKABLE as the accuracy was for the variety of loads the J67 digested – ball, frangibles, hollow points, the highly sculptured G2 Rip – they all ran fine. All of the spent the brass collected right under the gun too. The ejection port is far enough forward that conventional marksmanship position with a shooter’s left hand under the buttplate works fine. Since I didn’t like the look of the corrugated metal buttplate, I originally put a Hi-Viz gel recoil pad on it. I shouldn’t have bothered, as the felt recoil, even without the pad, is negligible – easily less than with a semiauto .22 rifle. The length of pull is already fairly long at 14¾ inches, and one enhancement I do recommend is a neoprene cheekpad for use in cold weather. The heat endurance is good: I felt no appreciable change in temperature of the forend or the receiver after 150 rounds fired over half an hour. I deliberately photographed the action without cleaning it: very little junk goes into the receiver, and there’s lots of room for particles to settle should running dirty be required.

The nonreciprocating charging handles felt a little gritty at the start of the stroke, and could use more surface area for comfort, but it’s a minor gripe. Jard plans to offer larger charging handles as options. I would have liked some form of manual or automatic bolt hold-open, both for administrative chamber checks and to know when to reload. The absence of felt recoil or any hesitation during feeding makes it hard to feel when the gun runs dry. Fortunately, in serious use, that would only happen every 33 shots. While the carbine ships with a 17-round Magpul magazine, extended magazines make sense for the ease of handling as well as the higher capacity. I found that the safety lever flag would sometimes get activated when pushed against a bag in prone, but a stronger spring is available on request.

THE GUN MIGHT LOOK rough but it balances beautifully, and may run effectively with one hand. Because of its reliability with hypervelocity ammunition, the J67 has a pretty good aimed range. I ran with a 5x Primary Arms scope and a red-dot for closer ranges. At very close distances, Viridian X5L light/laser provides another aiming option with less bore offset than the topmounted red dot.

.IN SUMMARY, the J67 is a reliable and capable carbine that’s fun to use. Excellent practical accuracy and imperceptible recoil make it a contender in recreational and hunting applications. Excellent reliability and suppressor compatibility make it viable for self defense. At $899 list price, it’s not as inexpensive as intended, but the performance justifies the price and then some! The only serious competitor to it in low recoil and accuracy is the more expensive Sig MPX. To learn more, go to jardinc.com/jard-j67. ASJ