Paul Helinski

Out of the cool closet comes a quad-rail for side by side shotguns from LaserLyte that would make even Doc Holiday come out of his grave and get out his credit card and laptop. The OK Corral would have gone a little different if he had a laser on that there doublegun, and whether you own a Rossi Coach Gun like you see here in the pictures or a fancy engraved high grade upland game gun, your home will be a little safer with this nifty easy to use device from LaserLyte. Read More…

The science of ballistics is not as simple as many would make it seem.  What a bullet does in flight can vary due to factors you would never think possible.  Modern ballistics calculators, available as hand held units in the several hundreds of dollars, have been around for some time.  With the advent of smart phones, you no longer need a separate hand held calculator (unless you’re in a situation where you need the physical toughness of the unit itself).
The problem is, all of the name brand phone calculators were developed for the Apple Iphone, which means if you are running the Android operating system from Google, you can’t use them.  Run a search in the Android Marketplace for “ballistics calculators” and you’ll find some free apps and some paid apps.  I decided to download several of them and see what the differences are, and if they actually work.
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As battle rifles go, probably the most misunderstood of them all is the AR-10.  It almost beat the M-14 in replacing the M1 Garand, and its design was actually copied for the AR-15.  Made by Armalite in 1956, when the company was owned by Fairchild Aviation and Eugene Stoner worked there, the Armalite AR-10 has a long and storied history. Fidel Castro even bought some. Today’s AR-10, brought back to life by Armalite Inc., is a more mature rifle than the guns of the  ‘50s and ‘60s. Read More…

Cool new guns always do well with the early adopter crowd, but seldom does a new firearm design last and thrive the way the KRISS Vector has since its introduction in 2007. You could not turn on the Discovery Channel back then without seeing the episode of Future Weapons that featured the KRISS. Now here we are in the future four years later, and the KRISS Vector has come into full consumer production, and it is again featured on TV. The Military Channel has named it the best close quarters combat weapon.

If you haven’t seen the KRISS on TV, it is truly a novel firearm. The patents are not just applied for, they are awarded. Compared to other pistol caliber carbines and rifles, the KRISS is just simply different. The bolt, upon firing, travels back and downwards, into the handle, and the recoil is absorbed in a spring in that downward position. The result is significantly reduced felt recoil and muzzle climb.

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New this year from Springfield Armory is their latest entrant into their line of XD(M) polymer framed striker fired pistols. This is what is being called the XD(M) Compact, and it is very similar to the XD(M) 3.8 that came out last year and that was built on their standard size frame with a shorter barrel and slide. The Compact has the same 3.8 inch barrel, and the slide is the same. But the frame is a new design for Springfield and it is made specifically for concealed carry.

Never to be left with a question about thinking about everything, Springfield gives you two different size magazines with the gun though. The flush magazine is the true “Compact” size and holds 13 rounds, but there is also a full size 19 round that comes with a sleeve to extend the grip. So with one gun you have both the new XD(M) Compact, a 2 finger grip for most hands, and the same gun with a full 3 finger grip, like the older 3.8 model. Read More…

How is it that 100 years after John Browning invented the 1911, it can still be the gun that everyone is talking about? Well, since SHOT Show of 2011, that has been true for the Springfield Armory “Range Officer,” or RO as it is being called. This is not a gun that could be termed “yet another 1911.” It was developed with World Champion shooter Rob Leatham, and seems to have hit he sweet spot with both 1911 enthusiasts and new shooters alike as the gun to have if you want to buy a competition 1911.

The plan for the gun was to create a basic, stable, high quality platform for the shooting competitor looking for a 1911, without all of the bells and whistles of guns costing into the thousands. The RO is made from match grade components and will stand up to tens of thousands of rounds per year, that a normal serious competitor would shoot, without deteriorating the way a standard 1911 would. Read More…

Bullet drop, and compensating for it, can be extremely confusing, even for those of us who are good in math. But bullet drop itself isn’t that complicated, especially if you always use the same factory ammo with the same bullet from the same manufacturer. Nikon took this realization, concept, whatever you want to call it, to the next level in their M-223 series and designed scopes that are specifically for the bullet drop of the .223/5.56 NATO cartridge. Read More…

Much to the relief of his hundreds of internet gun buyers who have encountered him first hand, Paul Steven Webster has been caught. He was arrested March 21st by Lee County Florida deputies after an exhaustive three year hunt by both state and local law enforcement. GunsAmerica was instrumental in both the opening of the case against Webster and in his eventual capture.

Webster has been known throughout the internet gun buying world as a most elusive purveyors of internet fraud operating in our small corner of the internet buying world. He has claimed victims from nearly every popular internet discussion forum, posting guns for sale several hundred dollars below their value, and he has also surfaced on all of the major gun buying and selling websites, as well as the internet gun auctions.
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I’m not sure anyone has any faith in the free gun cable locks you get with most new firearms these days. The ones I have tested are a struggle to get the key into, and when you do get the key in and manage to open it the cable stubbornly clings to the side of the action. It is hard to get the gun from a safe and locked up condition to ready to fire.

MagVault, who you probably know from their biometric handgun safes, has recently introduced two products that take the place of those pesky cable locks for not a lot of money. If you aren’t locking your gun in a safe and you feel you need to provide a foolproof measure to keep your gun safe from firing, one of these might be for you. Neither can be eliminated with a $5 pair of bolt cutters from Wal-Mart, and one is even on sale for a few days more for $13.95 Read the rest…