Paul Helinski

From the makers of the now famous DP-12, double barrel shotgun, comes a new gas gun on the familiar AR-15 looking platform. It will be called the SKO, and it takes what are now fairly common 1919 mags.

This new gun from Pedersoli, called the Howdah, is an almost exact looking replica of the Ithaca Auto & Burglar Gun, but the barrels are of course rifled, to comply with those same NFA regulations. It has a 3″ chamber, to accommodate magnum .410 shells, and it will also shoot .45 Colt.

I reviewed the first AK bump stock back in 2013, and I never got it to the point where I was comfortable, like with an AR. I found that the trigger pull is longer with an AK, and scratchy, and it just isn’t a fine tuned machine like even the worst AR trigger. This year SlideFire Solutions, the inventor of the slide stock, came up with a solution. They made the block out of aluminum, and included a buffer system inside.

The concept of the Handi-Racker is to assist the shooter in racking the slide, realizing the power of body weight, rather than hand and arm strength. You hold the Handi-Racker against the back of the slide and push down on the pistol, using a table or wall as a brace.

Most burglars aren’t that sophisticated, and many of them think that they can just drive a truck through the front door. That is why the first test on this case was to run at it with a 26,000 pound box truck. Then they continued with sledge hammers, cutting wheels, and when they brought it into the shop, dropped it from the top of a fork lift, all on video.

At first I was unsure as to how I was supposed to take seriously an optics company named Rudolph that had a reindeer on their SHOT Show booth. I mean really? But then I looked down the glass and was surprised to find that the scopes are nice. Poking and prodding, I discovered that Rudolph Optics are made in the same factory as a very popular Japanese scope manufacturer that I will not say here, and they sell for 20-30% less for about the same thing.

I love novelty guns as much as the next guy, but things seem to be changing for Heizer with this new PKO 45, and later this year, the PKO 9. Both guns have the standard Heizer look and feel, but instead of novelty, the stress seems to be on ergonomics and shootability.

One of my tasks for this year’s SHOT Show was to find interesting products that our GunsAmerica Stocking Dealers could carry in the store, or things to make their store more accessible and/or secure.
On the former, I found Lucky Shot USA. Several of the big box chains carry them already, and I think it is a slam dunk for anyone who has a retail establishment full of gun nuts.

Masterpiece Arms 65BA Chassis Rifle $3,150 (I can’t find other products on website) Serious shooters benefit most from small companies with design teams who are enthusiasts themselves. That is the case with Masterpiece Arms, and it is funny since they started making MAC-10s. But even going back to that gun, MPA took what is considered [...]