By Iain Harrison

Has it really been almost two years since I first became involved with Top Shot? Time has flown. The cast of Season 1 had no idea what lay in store from them as they assembled in a business hotel near LAX to go through the casting process for a show that most of us thought, secretly, had no chance of getting off the ground.  Sometimes, it’s great to be proved wrong.

Regardless of intention, there are times when carrying a handgun for self-defense is difficult, if not impossible. This might be because you’re somewhere it is illegal to carry, or because it is too much of a hassle. I didn’t carry my Kimber with me to SHOT Show, which was a difficult decision, but even without it, I still considered myself safe because I also practice unarmed defense.

After determining there would be little in the way of actual survival skills portrayed and absolutely no cannibalism on “Survivor,” I had little interest in reality television. But while I am still unlikely to voluntarily watch the “Real Housewives of Anywhere,” and could not give a whit about Snooky’s angst or what a Kardasian does or does not wear, I have changed my mind. And that’s because reality television has changed to include things that interest me and those like me.

Famed English gunmaker John Rigby & Co. has weathered a driving storm of controversy the past few years, tossed from one owner to the next amid lawsuits, a bankruptcy and even a second “John Rigby” firm claiming to be the original, but it’s all in the past now that a Dallas-based pair of investors have bought the storied brand.

When the automatic pistol was a fresh new concept, designers of that time faced the same problem that modern designers also face—feeding. Since the slide and breech face of a pistol are directly behind the chamber end of the barrel, the pistol magazine has to be below and behind the chamber. A round of ammunition must come off the top end of a magazine, slide up a feed ramp and enter the chamber. At the same time, the rear end of the cartridge must clear the magazine feed lips and pivot upwards so the rim slides under the hook of the extractor. It is a complex series of mechanical functions that must happen in sequence or a serious malfunction will ensue. Many things can go wrong and any of them constitute a bottleneck in the feeding cycle. Curiously enough, designers of yesteryear worked out those problem bottlenecks with the help of yet another bottleneck. This one, however, was in the cartridge, not the gun and it was a shape, not a problem.