by Christian D. Orr
Even if you don’t know the Austrian-made Steyr AUG bullpup-styile assault rifle by name, if you’re a fan of the original film in the Die Hard film franchise, then you’ll at least recognize the AUG by sight, as it’s the fearsome-looking weapon wielded by Karl [the late great Alexander Godunov , the crazed terrorist with the long flowing blond locks, in his ultimately unsuccessful attempts to kill NYPD Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis; still alive, but medically retired from acting now due to dementia).
I first saw that classic action-adventure blockbuster on the big screen back in the summer of 1988, in-between my 7th and 8th grade year (it was the first movie I was ever able to convince my Dad to take me to see a second). Needless to say, the movie as a whole and the AUG in particular left a lasting impression on me.
Fast-forward 37 years to the spring of 2025 (damn, I’m getting’ old), and I finally got to fire the Steyr (I’m a poet and I do know it), and in full-auto no less. Did it live up to the anticipation and turn out to be as much fun as it looked in the movie? Well, hold that thought…
Steyr AUG Initial History and Specifications (In Brief)
One of the ironies about the AUG being made famous to Hollywood audiences by a fictitious terrorist villain is that in real life it’s been used far, far more often by the good guys; you know, the ones trained to *kill*terrorists, not *be* terrorists. In fact, it’s the longtime standard-issue rifle of both the Austrian Army and the Australian Army (the latter blokes officially refer to it as the F88). For good measure, roughly 30 other nations’ armed forces, including the Irish Army Ranger Wing, the Philippine Army Scout Ranger Regiment, Croatian Special Forces, and Romanian Special Operations Forces.
Chambered for the same 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge (derived from the .223 Remington) as the ubiquitous M16/AR-15/M4 series, the Steyr AUG (Armee-Universal-Gewehr, i.e., ”army universal rifle”) was designed in 1977 and went into production the following year (cue the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack), manufactured by the Austrian company Steyr-Daimler-Puch, now known as Steyr Arms GmbH & Co KG, headquartered in the eponymous city in Upper Austria; meanwhile, the company’s American subsidiary, Steyr USA, is located in Bessemer, Alabama.
The weapon became the first truly successful bullpup-style small arm (meaning a firearm with action and magazine fixed behind the trigger), proving itself battlefield reliable in at least eight different conflicts, including the Persian Gulf War, the Iraq War, the Papua Conflict, and the Militias-Comando Vermelho Conflict.
Specifications and vital stats of the AUG include:
- Barrell Length: 20 inches
- Overall Length: 31.1 inches
- Weight: 7.9 lbs.
- Cyclic Rate of Fire: 680 to 750 rounds per minute
- Muzzle Velocity: 3,182 feet per second
- Maximum Effective Range: 980 feet
- Maximum Range: 8,900 feet
- Magazine Capacity: 30 or 42 rounds
That Goshdarn Bleepity-Blankin’ Progressive Trigger
Now then, about that cyclic rate of fire, if you want to fire the AUG in full-auto mode, you have to deal with this so-called “progressive trigger,” which was a totally new concept for me in spite of my 36 years of shooting experience. As The Full 9 website explains the concept:
“Another weird and unusual feature is the progressive trigger, whereby if you pull it half way you fire a single shot, then if you keep pulling the gun goes in to auto. Interesting way to reduce the number of controls on the gun but not so good under stress and duress; demonstrated by the fact that major adopters of AUGs including the Republic of Ireland and Australia opted for a version of the trigger that can lock out the automatic fire via a small button which can be pressed in if and when automatic is specifically desired.”
If only I’d read that article ahead of time. That said…
Range Report: Steyr AUG Shooting Impressions
Thanks to the superb selection of rental guns at the excellent XCAL indoor shooting range facility in Ashburn, Virginia, I finally made up for lost time back with the Steyr AUG on March 28, 2025, in a session I dubbed “Full-Auto Friday Fun” (FAFF, not to be confused with ‘FAFO,’ i.e. ‘Fuck Around and Find Out’).” The rental price for their AUG was $85.00 USD plus ammo.
Normally when I test-fire a small arm, I do so at multiple distances, namely 7 yards and either 15 or 25 yards…and sometimes even 50 yards (depending on the limitations of the individual range’s lane length). However, I make an exception when it comes to full-auto, limiting my testing to the 7-yard line (for what should hopefully be obvious reasons that I don’t need to ‘splain to my gun-savvy readers).
I purchased 50 rounds of ammo. To be ruefully honest I wasn’t paying attention to the specific brand, bullet weight, or configuration of the ammunition the range provided me, but if my senile memory serves me correctly, it was most likely PMC X-TAC 55-grain FMJ.
I started off with five rounds of “fam fire” semiauto head shots before switching to rock ‘n’ roll mode.
Now, mind you, I’ve fired more than my fair share of full-auto weapons, from the M1 Tommy Gun to the HK MP5 to the Uzi to the M249 to the M240B to AK-47 to the M16. And I gotta say that frickin’ progressive trigger made the Steyr *THE* most difficult of the bunch to keep my shots on target, even at a measly 7 yards—it was an absolute bear ! More like a regressive trigger IMHO! Or as my friend Miles Holmes—a veteran of the 2nd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment—put it: “Yeh [sic] you need about 6 months of practice to really master the trigger.”
The full-auto trigger on the AUG is so heavy and mushy it pulled a bunch of my shots either way too low or way off to the right; only four hits in the A-zone (none in the heart) with a bunch of non-vital hits and outright misses.
So then, that progressive trigger may be fine and dandy for area targets and/or taking out a group of bad guys in close quarter battle (CQB), but for a point target and/or an individual bad guy, eh, not so much. Sheeit, no wonder Karl could never hit John McClane with it, despite the former’s best spray-and-pray efforts.
But eh, at least I can say that I not only fired the “Karl” gun, but indeed got first-ever experience with a bullpup rifle in 36 years of shooting…the Steyr AUG has become one more firearm moved from the Bucket List to the “Been There, Done That, Got The (Proverbial) T-Shirt” List. So, I can still say I got my full money’s worth on the 85 bucks.
(NOTE: This article is based partially on an article originally published on April 14, 2025 on the author’s Patreon page, “The D’Orr-senal of Democracy.”)
Read the full article here
