FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE WITH LOVE?

While the term Virtus dates at least 600 years before the birth of Christ as a way of describing the virtues of Rome’s fighting men, it feels like it took the 7.62 x 39mm version of SIG’s namesake MCX Virtus nearly as long to reach the market.

But, it’s arrived. And, like Horatius at the bridge, the MCX x39 earns the heroic Virtus commendation by standing tall amid an onslaught of thousands … of rounds … of mostly garbage ammo, that is.

LOOKING BACK

This isn’t SIG’s first rodeo building a modular platform with the ubiquitous Russian cartridge in mind. It’s hard to ignore the company’s redheaded stepchild, the SIG556xi and its stillborn AK magazine compatible variant. Yet, leave out the misguided attempt to capture the nobility of SIG’s SG 550 series rifles in a U.S.-made package and concentrate on the configurable nature of the rifle, and you might see parallels in the company’s vision for the MCX platform.

While the SIG556 was midway through its product