June 14, 2011
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.
|
June 09, 2011
I recently picked up a gun that establishes just how small a true functional automatic pistol can be made. In fact, this tiny Bernardelli pistol is a fine example of the gunmaker's craft.
|
June 01, 2011
At the NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Pittsburgh, a great many members stopped me to say hello and chat for a few minutes. This is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. Conversations of this sort are fun, develop new gun information and provide a lot of data on what shooters might really want to read about. But I fear that some of those who approached me may have come away with a wrong idea about my responses to their questions that was not a reflection of any kind of bad attitude on my part. The truth is I have a pretty severe hearing loss and I may have not understood correctly, if I heard at all. It is also an entry to one of my pet rants—the need for effective hearing protection for anyone involved in the shooting sports.
|
May 25, 2011
There appears to be a modern misuse of gun terms in magazine articles, on the web and even conversationally that is causing some problems. In some quarters, it has become popular to describe certain objects incorrectly, because some folks regard this as kind of cute. It's akin to saying “ain't” when you really mean “am not.” What do you load into a modern handgun? Is it a bullet or a cartridge? It is probably a cartridge, but if that's true, the cartridge contains a bullet. Confused?
|
May 16, 2011
Trigger-cocking is a term first used in the Frontier era and almost never used today. It describes a form of trigger action where pressure on the trigger cocks a hammer from the down position all the way through to full tension and release to fire. Modern terminology for this system is double action.
|
May 04, 2011
NRA members have their choice of either American Rifleman, American Hunter or America’s 1st Freedom as a benefit with their membership. All are fine books, but those of you who opt for the legendary first-ever gun magazine—American Rifleman—got a special treat in November.
|
May 03, 2011
I stumbled onto a new website not long ago. The author was doing a pretty good job of evaluating the usefulness of a number of handguns that appealed to him. With an open-mind approach, he was shooting the subject pistols and revolvers in a number of different exercises, including accuracy at 25 yards and controlled pairs at 7 yards. Since I have been doing pretty much the same thing for more than 25 years, I appreciate the effort that goes into doing this, but I sometimes wonder about the precision of the information I have developed and reported over the years.
|
April 20, 2011
I’m sure you are aware that Colt Firearms has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Army to produce a new service pistol chambered for a rimless .45 caliber cartridge.
|
April 14, 2011
Thumbrest is a term associated with handgun grips. Usually it refers to revolvers, but some automatic pistols also have grips that include a thumbrest. Typically, a thumbrest is a carved or molded ledge of material in the top left side of the grip (for a right-handed shooter). When a shooter acquires a grip on his or her gun, the thumb rests on this ledge in a comfortably natural manner.
|
April 05, 2011
I understand the reasons why this cartridge was originally designed. But I can't begin to understand why the round took the form that it did. It's called the 5.5 mm Velo Dog and it was designed in France before the 19th Century rolled over into the 20th. Imagine a straight-sided revolver cartridge case about the length of a .38 Spl., with a typical, but rather wide rim. The bullet was a .22, actually measuring about .225 inches in diameter and weighing (I think) about 30 to 35 grains. Fired from several brands of compact French, Belgian or German revolvers, the 5.5 mm Velo Dog delivered performance much like a rimfire .22 Long (not Long Rifle). Bicyclists of that Victorian era were apparently so troubled by pursuing dogs that this cartridge and the guns that fired it were the result. They just couldn't forgive Woofy and his canine indiscretions. And that's where the name came from: “Velo” is an abbreviated form of the French word for bicycle, so it is literally “bicyclist's dog gun.” In view of the annual billions of dollars currently spent on dogs, dog food and dog care, it's hard to envision a time when we deliberately produced a specialized gun/cartridge combo with which to shoot them. But it happened.
|
|
|
|
|
