March 02, 2012
I overheard a gun store conversations the other day that set my mind to thinking about the process of getting all the shots into the center of the target. One guy was talking to an experienced gun salesman and complaining about the work of a well-known custom pistolsmith. The smith had done an accuracy job on a pistol by installing a premium barrel and meticulously fitting it to the frame and slide.
|
March 01, 2012
There has been a lot of discussion on AmericanRifleman.org about Jim Wilson’s Carrying in the Car story, which made me decide to share a few of my own tips for keeping safe behind the wheel.
|
February 29, 2012
By Iain Harrison
This week’s episode saw the welcome return of my friend Chris Reed to the fold, and I bet he got flashbacks as he walked up to the house. The competitors are shuttled around the property in blacked-out vans so that challenges in the process of construction are hidden from view until it’s time to go to work. So any time you get to see the process from the other side of the camera, it feels a little weird. The elimination challenge coach was 3-Gun phenomenon Taran Butler, and if you’ve never seen him run a Benelli, you’re missing one of the virtuoso performances of the practical shooting scene.
|
February 28, 2012
In regard to my Unarmed Defense blog, questions were asked about my thoughts about pepper spray, and why I was not carrying any when visiting Las Vegas for SHOT Show.
|
February 27, 2012
I live in the state of Nevada, a glorious place of open spaces and gun-friendly politicians. For a gun guy, you couldn't find a better place to live and work. Like all of the other states, Nevada does its best to maintain the streets and highways to be safe places for all Americans to use. That includes the signs that abound our roads, telling you where you are and other important things, like the distance to Las Vegas. Apparently, some citizens seem to feel that those signs are there for other reasons. Sadly some of these people have guns.
|
February 27, 2012
Southwick Associates releases its 2011 brand and market share results.
|
February 23, 2012
Food delivery drivers have statistically one of the 10 most dangerous jobs in America. Whether that weighed on the mind of a Papa John’s delivery driver when he obtained a concealed-carry permit isn’t clear, but he was glad he did when a man stuck a stolen pistol through his car window and said, “What you gonna do is drop off that money.” The driver drew a .38-cal.
|
February 22, 2012
By Mark Keefe
If you watched “Top Shot” last night, you got a glimpse of the greatest automatic rifle—notice I did not use the words “light machine gun”—of all time. That gun is the John Moses Browning-designed Model 1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. Browning actually created gas-operated self-loading firearms. Noticing the disturbance in the grass caused by the passing of a bullet out of the muzzle, Browning hooked a “flapper” onto the barrel of a lever-action that harnessed the expanding propellant gasses through a hole drilled in the barrel. He used the force of the gas to move a lever linked to the action to cycle it. That principal, what we call gas-operation, was applied to the Colt Machine Gun Browning designed in 1889, better known as the Model 1895, and later the Model 1914 called the “Potato Digger” and before eventually reaching the Browning Automatic Rifle.
|
February 21, 2012
American Rifleman Field Editor Bruce N. Canfield is one of the nation’s leading authorities and authors on American military arms. You may not know his name, but if you read a story about guns ranging from the 1861 Springfield to the Garand or M1 Carbine in American Rifleman over the past two decades, you know his work. A genteel, soft-spoken Southerner, Bruce seems an unlikely choice for reality television, but he is a part of the History Channel’s hottest new show. Bruce told me that for executive producers, two things are hot right now on television: guns and Louisiana (I’m sure Will Hayden from “Sons of Guns” would agree). Both are combined in “Cajun Pawn Stars,” which airs Monday nights on History, and is filmed at Jimmy “Big Daddy” DeRamus’ Silver Dollar Pawn & Jewelry in Alexandra, La.
|
February 17, 2012
A reader e-mailed with a question about the use and actual shape of feed ramps in modern pistols. He had apparently witnessed a catastrophic failure in a popular brand off semi-automatic pistol chambered for the 9 mm Luger cartridge. From this, he had begun to believe that certain types of so-called “unsupported” feed ramps were inherently unsafe and the use of supported ones would eliminate failures of this type. First of all, the use of some kind of feed ramp is virtually required in all pistols for efficient operation, with some feed ramps integral to the barrel and others in the receiver. Some manufacturers even build a feed ramp into the magazine. I genuinely believe that no maker (and certainly not the one the reader had named) would ever offer a pistol for sale that had a dangerous design flaw. There is simply too much at stake. The design of a particular feed ramp is developed to achieve efficient operation and not to cut corners.
|
|
|
|
|
