Springfield Armory Saint 308 Pistol

If you've missed a dentist appointment due to the Lung March and need a field-expedient means to vibrate accumulated plaque from your teeth, then Springfield Armory may have you covered, fam.

We're familiar with 10.3 inch barrels and 308 ARs. Given the current ammo situation, combining the two concepts doesn't make a whole load of sense, but does ensure that you'll be the center of attention any time you go to the range. Building on their existing line of large-frame semi autos, Springfield introduces a pistol version, which sports a Mk18-length barrel and SB3 brace. Up front, there's a linear compensator which takes some of the edge off of its bark by directing gasses forward, but there's still no mistaking it for a 22 LR. Think Motorhead, rather than Billie Eilish.

The Components

Covering the barrel is an 11-inch long, eight-sided, free-float rail with plenty of M-Lok slots, most of which you'll want to cover with something more insulative than the aluminum beneath, as after a mag or two, this thing gets hot enough to raise blisters. For a couple of years now, the trend has been towards slimmer rails and, hopefully, now that we've got to the point that it's hard to slip a rolling paper between the barrel and fore end, hopefully the fashion pendulum will swing the other direction.

The pistol's trigger is the same nickel boron coated, flat faced version found on the rifle, which yields better than GI results, despite sharing the same basic architecture. The one on our test gun broke cleanly, right at 6 pounds, with around a 1/4 inch of reset.

On the Range

During our admittedly abbreviated range session, we shot SIG 150gr ball, as well as 168gr and 175gr match loads from Federal, and the Saint 308 seemed unfussy as its preferences for factory ammo. We also fed it some of our 110gr Nosler Varmageddon a handloads, which are a different kind of spicy meatball, and which typically produce 2 foot diameter fireballs out of a 16 inch pipe. These were harder to digest, leading us to believe the Saint's chamber is cut fairly tightly– on this example, at least.

Ejection of all rounds sampled was to the 2 o'clock position. The rifle version of this gun features an adjustable gas block, regulated by different sized inserts – although the pistol has the same gas block, no inserts arrived with our test specimen, leading us to believe the block is at its WFO position – given the scant inch or so between the gas port and muzzle, this makes sense as Springfield's customer service department probably won't hear from too many customers complaining that the gun is overgassed, but you can bet there'd be no end of bitching if it didn't run Russian steel cased shite. We lacked the time to test for accuracy, but hope to amend this report with test results in due course.

Real-world applications of a 10.3 inch barreled 308 are admittedly scarce. About the only scenario we could think of would be working in and around vehicles, where 5.56 lacks the ass to reliably punch through glass and sheetmetal, but .30 cal projectiles whistle straight through. But not every gun has to fit a predetermined tactical niche – sometimes we just want something to bring a smile to our face and a grimace from those around us.
And for that, the Saint 308 pistol works just fine.