Articles by Paul Helinski

When you think about it, we wear our guns a lot more than we shoot them, yet they are designed primarily for shooting. The new Taurus Curve fixes that. The grip on the gun is curved, so that when you were it on your hip or carry it in your pocket, the guns hugs the contour of your body. It is a 6+1 .380 ACP semi-automatic pistol with a consistent trigger pull for each shot. The MSRP for the introductory model is $392, and it will come with an integral LaserLyte light and laser combo built in. The Curve also comes with a Kydex pull-off trigger guard holster, and screwed onto the side of the gun is a steel clip for inside the waistband or inside a purse pocket carry.

From what I can tell, nobody is going to send me a Facebook notification 24 hours before Russia, China, “terrorists” (ie. our own shadow government), or the US under official license launches a nuke. Radiation is silent once you are outside the blast radius of a nuclear bomb, so unless news of the blast makes it onto Drudge, how would you even know that a blast has occurred? Up until now we have focused our attention on Geiger tube radiation meters, but I recently found out that those meters tend to BLANK OUT at radiation levels that aren’t even on the level of a CT scan. For this article I consulted with Shane Connor, owner of the famous radiation site KI4U.com. I bought potassium iodide from him and had him calibrate my Civil Defense meter back in the 90s. He is still doing it today, and he calibrated four meters for us for this article.

When I got an invite to the factory at Taurus Firearms, I thought I had just scored a free trip to Brazil! But little did I know, Taurus makes many of their guns right here in the USA, near my stomping grounds in Miami. Those of us who were invited from the gun media family got to see how they make the Taurus tipup pistols, called the small frame or Model 22, and many of the .380 TCP parts being made, as well as guns from Taurus’s Heritage cowboy gun series and even some of the OEM parts that Taurus builds for other manufacturers.

I had a conversation with several other gun writers yesterday about carrying a gun on your belt. The consensus was that if I am going to belt carry a pistol, it ain’t gonna be no pocket 380. My experience over the years is that belt carry is seldom practical unless you want your whole life to revolve around carrying your gun. For that reason, I pocket carry, and as a fairly big guy, I can easily get away with the Springfield XD-S .45 in my pocket. Once before in these pages I shared my “secret” $25 source for pocket holsters, and I will do so again, but this time I want to share some of the other products from this ingenious company. If you carry in a purse, pocket or other “pouch” type of concealment, or if you want to hang a Kel-Tec P32 from your neck, you should check them out. I call these deep concealment holsters.

Occasionally in this column we devolve into the reasons why many of us feel that some sort of survival strategy at this juncture is prudent. Most people are on a budget, so to divert some of your family resources to prepping that you may end up laughing about 10 years from now can seem a little, well… nuts.

For urban combat and self defense, many would argue that there is no better choice in a firearm than a pistol-caliber carbine. It has almost no recoil or muzzle rise, little muzzle flash and plenty of punch to get the job done in close quarters. The H&K MP5 is legend when it comes to SWAT and SPEC-OPS deployment, and it has achieved that status firing the 9mm cartridge, despite concerns of many that the 9mm is underpowered. The Taurus CT9 and CT40 are new entrants into the pistol-caliber carbine market, and they look and work a lot like H&K’s follow up to the MP5, called the UMP. The civilian version was called the USC, and is no longer produced (it was too expensive). The Taurus CT9 is a more full-featured gun than the USC, and with an MSRP of $879 and street prices under $750, this new carbine should fly off the shelves. As this article is coming out, the .40 S&W version was released, but we were able to test the 9mm gun. Our results showed the CT9 to be extremely reliable and tolerant of different types of ammo. The accuracy is at least as good as other pistol caliber carbines we have tested, and the features on the gun are all you could want for home and personal defense. This year is going to see a new emergence from Taurus since Mark Kresser took over the company. With the new focus on quality control and great customer service, the affordability of Taurus products will finally be backed up by a company that puts customers as #1. The CT9 is the first truly new product from Taurus for a while, and minus a couple peeves, it seems to be everything you could want in a pistol caliber carbine.

I have pondered the subject of perimeter security for some time and I have decided that it is probably the hardest to come up with a hard and fast rule. You have to sleep at some point. And even if you have enough people to keep watch, how much advance notice will you have? I have looked into 12 volt motion detectors, but so far I have not found a better option than these hand welded alarms on Ebay. They use a standard .22 short nailgun blank, available at Home Depot. If you are handy you could make them yourself, but at $20 each they are a pretty cheap investment for a pretty important aspect of long term survival.

When it comes to shooting gadgets it is very seldom that I want to jump up and down on my roof and yell “look at this look at this look at this!” But this is the way I feel about the Leatherwood M-1000 scope. I almost wish it was a $2,000 thing, because people would take it more seriously, but though it is based on technology going all the way back to 1970, and the MSRP is $459, with a generalstreet price under $400, it is one of the most excitingly nerdy thingamajigs I have ever encountered in the shooting world. It may be a little ugly compared to the more elegant scopes of today, but this largish awkward looking scope can give you the ability to “frame, aim and shoot, ” point of aim, point of impact between 100 and 1000 meters without ever having to lift your eye from the eyepiece. And you can change from one load to the next, or even one rifle to the next with two minor adjustments. Does that totally rock or does that totally rock?

In a survival situation you can’t take anything for granted. Cleanliness is absolutely required, and soap is something you already should be storing in decent quantities. You don’t have to make it yourself, but I just realized that I might as well share how to do it. I’ve been making soap for over a decade and my only warning about making soap is that if you plan to give some to your friends and family, don’t, unless you want to start a free soap business. Homemade, cold process soap made from vegetable oils will eliminate most dry skin issues, and used as shampoo, it will do away with the need for dandruff shampoo. Believe it or not, I’ve even had reports from friends that it gets rid of hemorrhoids. Soap is an interesting product because you aren’t allowed to advertise it with any health claims, but suffice it to say that store bought soap just isn’t the same as homemade.