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Arsenal Firearms recently shook up the shooting world with the introduction of the “Second Century” pistol, the world’s first double-barreled M1911 pistol. The gun, made in Italy, is really two M1911s built on a common frame, with a shared slide assembly and a single wide hammer. It fires two synchronized rounds with every pull of the trigger—one from the right barrel and one from the left.
November 27, 2012
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Ever fired a matchlock? While I have handled them, no one has ever let me shoot one of these 16th century guns. For the next season of “American Rifleman Television” we are doing a four-part feature series on the development of firearms from the discovery of gunpowder to today. For that series, we borrowed a matchlock musket from Dale Shinn in California. A replica, it is an authentic copy of the kind of matchlocks used during the founding of the American colonies in Jamestown and Plymouth.
November 20, 2012
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So if “LOCK” and “LOAD” is part of only military high-power rifle range work, how did it enter the general shooter’s lexicon? I remember telling Boy Scouts to “LOCK AND LOAD, ONE ROUND OF AMMUNITION” more than two decades ago when I ran the rifle range at the Goshen Scout Reservation’s Camp Bowman, even though going back through my training materials only the command “LOAD” should have been given by the book at the time.
October 17, 2012
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There is a clear demonstration of what the student was asked to do as part of the Rapid Fire exercise in the 1942 U.S. War Dept. Training Film (T.F. 7 1094) “Rifle Marksmanship with the M1 Rifle –Preparatory Training.” Going from standing to prone, on the command “LOCK, SIMULATE LOAD,” the student retracts the M1’s bolt, depresses the follower to simulate the loading of an en-bloc clip, the bolt travels forward to simulate the loading of a round in the chamber and then the shooter’s right index finger presses the safety rearward to the “on” position. Both acts are done in one smooth motion, but clearly the rifle was loaded before the safety was engaged. The commands “READY ON THE RIGHT, READY ON THE LEFT, READY ON THE FIRING LINE” ring out, at which point the shooter disengages the safety. The range officer then says “TARGETS UP,” and the shooter drops from standing to prone and begins to engage the targets with dry-firing.
October 15, 2012
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There have been dozens of letters and e-mails on the topic of “Lock and Load.” While we cannot say what individual range commands were on every military and civilian range for nearly a century, we can rely on the printed War Dept. and Dept. of the Army sources.
October 10, 2012
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The “Tommy Gun” is one of the most iconic firearms in American history. But what is it about the Thompson? Stephen Hunter, a bestselling novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for, of all things, the Washington Post, is a pretty serious and savvy gun guy, and he summed up much of the Thompson’s appeal in a March 22, 2004, article on the Exhibit at the National Firearms Museum.
September 21, 2012
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While working on the September issue (available in mid August), which includes a story by Rick Hacker on “Sequels: Replica Guns of the Hollywood West,” American Rifleman’s Associate Art Director David Labrozzi brought an article to my attention that he found while working on an unrelated project.
July 31, 2012
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A Kimber Model 84L and a Kimber Model 8400 Caprivi were the author’s choices for the adventure of a lifetime.
July 19, 2012
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In doing some research for the “From the Editor” for the September issue, I spent some time looking at William Batterman Ruger’s first contribution to American Rifleman, and no it wasn’t his “.22 Ruger Pistol” that made its debut in a September 1949 advertisement, nor was it Technical Editor Julian S. Hatcher’s extremely favorable review of “two production-line samples of the .22 Ruger” that ran in November 1949.
July 18, 2012
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There were some delays as the network jockeyed the season premiere time slot, but American Rifleman Field Editor Bruce N. Canfield will make his debut as the firearms expert tonight at 10:30 p.m. Eastern on History’s “Cajun Pawn Stars,” which is filmed at Jimmy “Big Daddy” DeRamus’ Silver Dollar Pawn & Jewelry in Alexandra, La. The show airing tonight has Bruce sizing up a Model 1918 Browning Automatic Rifle brought into Silver Dollar. DeRamus not only has an FFL, but a machine gun dealer’s license, too.
June 04, 2012
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Sometimes even the busiest days are pretty fun. We are finishing the July issue of American Rifleman after coming off an intense week of filming the third quarter of “American Rifleman Television.” We on the magazine staff already have full-time jobs, but we put in some pretty intense weeks on television production. But sometimes there is a lot of fun buried in that intensity.
May 14, 2012
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This is the view through the “American Rifleman Television” remote camera as we fired the most impressive gun of the season for the third quarter of 2012. Thanks to Jim Supica, Phil Schreier, Doug Wicklund and Matt Sharpe of the National Firearms Museum, I can now say I have shot what I regard as undoubtedly the coolest 18th century gun extant. The Nock Volley Gun is one of the most unusual service firearms of the Napoleonic era. It was a flintlock with seven barrels, one central barrel with six more surrounding the latter, sort of like a pepperbox. The difference, of course, is that all seven barrels fire at once with the Nock—it only happens to the extremely unlucky (or careless) with a Pepperbox. Think of a Nock as a deliberate chain fire waiting to happen.
May 02, 2012
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What's Going On with Gun Sales?
April 03, 2012
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Late last year I was fortunate enough to visit Ruger’s factory in Newport, N.H., and get a preview of what the American gunmaker had in the pipeline for 2012. Ruger doesn’t like to release information on its new firearms until the guns are already in production and ready to ship to distributors. That way, if you hear about a new Ruger and want one, it is not like trying to order a unicorn from your local gun shop.
March 28, 2012
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In 2010 Donald Trump, Jr., and his brother Eric Trump went on safari in Zimbabwe. Photos from the safari were obtained without permission and posted online. The hunt included elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard and crocodile. The images drew the expected vitriol from anti-hunting extremists, such as PETA and other organizations that want to ban all hunting, regardless of where it is or who is doing it. In response to those attacks Don tweeted, “I’m a hunter, for that I make no apologies.”
March 27, 2012
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