It’s a rare day when the incoherent ramblings of a fuddy old polymer-pistol hating youtuber turn out to be true (lol). Just the other day, TheYankeeMarshal released a video where he recalls a recent email exchange he had with the great folks from Arsenal who have been selling the highly praised Strike One.
Our contact from the International Firearm Corporation has informed us:
“I wanted to reach out to you since you are familiar with the Strike One pistol. Unfortunately ,the power guys that own Arsenal Firearms of Italy are changing the game and they will no longer be manufacturing the Strike One as we all know and love it. There is word that there will not be any form manufactured in Italy. There is talk of creating something similar in another country but no final decisions have been made and we don’t know if that will happen at all. There was talk of the “STRYK” at Shot Show and they were supposedly making some big debut but they purchased those guns from us and tricked them out again to display at Shot….they aren’t being manufactured at all right now. There has also been talk of the STRYK A and STRYK B but again, nothing has been finalized as far as we can tell.
They have put info out that the price will be lower than the Strike One, but they don’t even know where and if they are making it….so when they put the info out….our sales decreased because people want to wait on a compact version that might not ever even exist. This has forced us into a “close out” position and we are selling the Strike One at around $750 which is much lower than the original MSRP of around $869.”
In a follow-up email, they say that they are currently working with many other European companies and, we will be importing other firearms…but nothing as revolutionary and amazing as the Strike One.
So, clearly, something happened behind the scenes at Arsenal and the final results have yet to be known. At SHOT Show, it was being inferred that Arsenal was going to be working with Salient Arms, a company best known for their highly customized Glocks (and at least one Hi-Point), to come out with the next generation of ‘STRYK’ pistols. Salient must have started their customization of the new model with the aggressive use of Y’s in the name, excluding the few examples at SHOT Show, that’s as far as the concept has gotten.
The Strike One made waves through the US gun community by using an unusual, yet effective, recoil system, low bore axis, and faster cyclic rate (supposedly). It has been highly regarded by many reviewers and eccentric youtubers, yet it’s high price and lack of a compact model may be partially responsible for not being widely adopted. It was also thought that the Strike One would be the newly issued side arm of the Russian military, but aside from a few special forces being spotted with them, it was not adopted.
It looks like Arsenal is going to do their best to clear out inventory by ‘slashing’ prices, it will be interesting to see what happens. On one hand, the Strike One’s are a rare bird that is high performance and highly spoken of, but on the other hand, there will be no more support for them. So if your gun breaks, you might not be able to get it repaired.
Here at We Like Shooting, we sincerely hope that whatever issues that have befallen Arsenal and this line of firearms gets resolved. Aaron really likes his, but it’s getting lonely and needs a little brother…or two.
