Robinson Armament Co. is a hunting and archery brand founded in Utah in 1994. It is headquartered in North Salt Lake, Utah.
In October 1999 the Robinson Armament website led with good news: M96 rifles were leaving its factory weekly. The same page offered an interview with Mr. Kalashnikov. The company had started as an importer of Russian VEPR rifles, and the M96 Expeditionary Rifle was its first gun of its own. Patterned loosely on the Stoner 63, it could be switched from a magazine that feeds from the bottom to one that feeds from the top.
Alex Robinson grew up shooting in the Salt Lake Valley foothills and started tinkering with an M1 carbine at 11, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. He registered the company in Utah in 1994 as ZDF Import/Export, and he still runs it. The M96 cost too much to build and was dropped after a six-year run. Its replacement, the XCR, was designed in 2004 and has been sold since 2006.
In 2009 the Tribune found 15 employees in a concrete warehouse, shipping thousands of XCRs a year to collectors and police. The company is privately held and still based in North Salt Lake. Owners can buy kits that switch an XCR to another cartridge, which is how one rifle becomes a standing order for parts.
The Robinson XCR-L Micro weighs 5.3 pounds unloaded, about 2.2 pounds less than the standard XCR-L.
