While browsing the exhibitors at the NRA Annual Meeting in Houston last month on the lookout for new guns, we saw a glimpse into a potential future of projectile arms with the Coil Accelerator.

Marketed out of the North Shore Sports Club in Illinois of all places, the CA-09 is in low-rate production. In a nutshell, the makers claim it is the first-ever commercially viable electric-powered Coil Accelerator. The basic overview is that it uses onboard electromagnetic coils-- kind of like a rail gun but without a sliding armature-- to quietly pull nickel-plated iron disks at an adjustable rate of fire. It is fed from 50-round magazines and can fire about 700 times on a single charge.

 

CA-09 Coil Accelerator
The 7-pound CA-09 isn't a firearm according to current ATF regs, and after a one-hour charge can run single shots, five-round bursts, or full-auto out to a maximum range of about 40 feet, all without that annoying and liberty-crushing NFA red tape.
CA-09 Coil Accelerator
At maximum velocity, the reusuable 275-grain disks can hit 140 fps, which translates to an anemic 11.96 ft./lbs. of energy, about a tenth of what a standard velocity .22LR produces. (Photo: Paul Peterson/Guns.com)

 

Still, it is pretty cool, even for its $1,600 price tag. When the tech matures in a couple of years to drop that price and raise that velocity, things could get super interesting, especially when you toss in concepts like 3-D printing and file sharing. As it is, the CA-09 is already less than half the ask of the 15-pound Arcflash Labs GR-1 Anvil, which has been billed as the world’s first handheld Gauss rifle.

Cue the Dylan song, folks.

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