One of those odd guns that has always caught my fancy is the Merwin, Hulbert revolver and one of its more intriguing feature has recently got me “what-if-ing” again. The Merwins are a series of handsome revolvers made during the Frontier era in three sizes and several calibers. Known for their unusual twist-and-pull system of selective ejection, the Merwins were a popular gun in their day, selling slightly behind Colt, S&W and Remington wheelguns.

Passing by the desk where packages come into American Rifleman, I spied a small box from Fountain Valley, Calif.—the home of SureFire. Usually such packages contain a new variation on the firm’s superlative flashlights; I initially paid little heed to the box. But the grin on Shooting Illustrated’s Executive Editor Adam Heggenstaller’s face told me that “it”—or rather “they”—had arrived, as he has one, too. It’s the SureFire MAG5-60, a high-capacity magazine that fits the AR-style platform and provides 60-round capacity reliably out of a single magazine. SureFire’s Ron Canfield assured us these magazines were off the first production line.

Rows and rows of perfect pyramids run down the frontstrap of your pistol, all of them aligned with the precision of 8th & I Marines on Parade. It looks sharp, but it is also practical for assisting in handling the gun under stress. When your hands are wet with sweat, water, grease, mud or even blood, and you still need to shoot, those little pyramids bite into the skin of your hand and give you a solid grip on that life-saving tool.