Last week, I was in Kansas at the Flint Oak Hunting Club meeting with some representatives from Bushnell, Uncle Mike’s, Final Approach, Butler Creek and others. I was there to get an early look at some of the new products coming out over the next few months, though we also had opportunities to bust clays and pheasants.

The high capacity automatic pistol is now an accepted necessity in the 21st Century gun culture. While it is most commonly done in 9 mm Luger, the double-wide pistol may or may not be a necessity in the real world. That's an opinion, so we had better take a deeper look at the virtues and vices associated with this class of gun. The advantages of a high capacity magazine should be obvious, but are best summarized in Wayne Novak's words: “the reload is in the gun.” Sure, there is a great potential for misuse in a seemingly endless supply of ammunition, but the answer to that one lies in good training. It doesn't make sense for the traditionalist to condemn the pistol's capacity for potential misuse when the gun doesn't have anything to do with the way it's used. In my view, the problems associated with this class of pistol are the physical characteristics that are by-products of those two columns of cartridges.

Quite often, I end up in discussions about both home- and self-defense with friends and even strangers because of where I work. This is obviously not a problem as these are passions of mine. Well, not long ago, I was discussing self-defense tactics with a friend and I asked him about his home-defense plan. The basic idea was: What would you do if?

Dave was waiting for me at The Citadel Gun & Safe shop in Las Vegas where I’d called to see if they had a Picatinny rail fore-end for a mid-length Bravo Company AR. Dave checked his inventory and allowed that, yes, by golly, he does have a Yankee Hill fore-end in stock.