Articles by Paul Helinski

By Paul Helinski American Tactical www.AmericanTactical.us One of the niftiest AR-15 products to come out this year is a hybrid metal/polymer receiver from American Tactical Imports called the Omni Hybrid. Like all of the best polymer firearm technology, the Omni relies on a metal-to-metal fit at the major stress points. The ATI approach is a [...]

Bolt action rifles may not be a subject that keeps you up all night chatting on Facebook, but for gun fanatics, the bolt action rifle is a core product of our sport and our passion. If someone had asked, “Who makes the best entry level bolt action rifle?” five years ago, I don’t know anyone who would have answered Ruger. That all changed in 2012, when Ruger introduced the Ruger American Rifle. Made 100% in the USA as its name suggests, the American was a rock star from our very first test on the gun now two years ago. Since then, you can’t walk into a stocking gun shop without seeing one on the shelf, in several calibers. The line has expanded to include a new Redfield scope package, as well as some new guns with stainless steel All Weather models. We were able to test the newly available .223 caliber guns in both the full sized and compact, and WOW. If you are looking for world-class accuracy, great handling and an affordable price on a bolt-action .223, look no further than the new Ruger American. MSRP is $449 on the American, and I challenge you to find a .223 bolt gun that outshoots it, at any price.

You can always tell which guns are surprisingly good by how many fans they have. Howa, a Japanese firearm maker that dates back to WWII Arisaka rifles, is one of those companies that if you say a bad word, hundreds of defender fanboys and girls will appear out of the woodwork to explain how you are mistaken. Maybe not the biggest kept secret in the gun world, Howas are great guns, and they are imported exclusively under their own brand through Legacy Sports International. Howa also makes the Weatherby Vangaurd, and the two rifles are for the most part interchangeable. This Howa 1500 Zeiss combo is a new gun for 2014, and we were able to test it before SHOT Show. Our test gun is a .308 Winchester, with a 3-9x power Zeiss sporting optic. The Zeiss is likewise made in Japan, not Germany or America like the flagship Zeiss products, but like most Japanese optics we have tested, it is clear as a bell with great edge clarity. The rifle itself is flawless, and a tack driver with factory Hornady ammo. Howa also has a nifty three-position safety, so you can open the bolt to unload your round with the trigger blocked. The Howa 1500 is a high-end rifle with a middle-of-the-road price. We don’t have a price for this gun yet, but most Howa rifle/scope packages go for $650-$800, and this one should fall somewhere in there as well.

Sometimes the reviews here at GunsAmerica are driven by advertising, but not the way you have come to expect them to be in the print pubs. In the case of the Springfield Armory EMP Micro-Pistol, the first time an ad for it ran alongside one of our Digest emails, over 7,000 of you clicked on the ad, instead of one of the articles (ahem). This seemed to indicate that a lot of people were interested in the gun, so we asked Springfield for a test subject, in .40 S&W. The result was not only getting to shoot a genuinely nifty and useful firearm. It turns out that the gun is not just YA1911. (Yet Another 1911). Unlike all of the other 1911-style pistols in 9mm and .40S&W, the EMP was re-engineered to shoot these cartridges specifically. It is truly a “scaled down” 1911, and the components have been made to function reliably with both a smaller cartridge, and smaller barrel length, in the 1911 design. The grip angle is the same as the standard 1911 but the grip is thinner, and guts of the gun are smaller to work in a shorter space. We tested our EMP extensively, and it is both reliable and accurate. At a street price in the $1,200 range, this is not an inexpensive firearm, but with stock tritium night sights and custom shop grade parts, the Springfield EMP is a lot of gun if you want to carry a 1911 for personal defense. This gun has been available for many years in both 9mm and .40 S&W, but judging by how many of you clicked on the ad, there are still plenty of people who didn’t know about it.

Steel targets are the backbone of competitive shooting sports. Once a club invests in a good set of steel targets, it opens up a great deal of income-producing events that you just can’t do with paper. The problem with steel is that it is expensive, so buying it right the first time is critical. There are a lot of target companies, and Grizzly Targets, out of Tampa, Florida, contacted us to test one of theirs, a $279 three-paddle auto-reset called the “Trifecta.” Grizzly laser-cuts their targets out of AR500 steel and galvanizes the final product. They claim that the targets “can withstand almost anything,” so we chose the M1C Sniper Garand that we made back in the Garand series from a commercial Springfield Armory gun. The key to this test was to simulate abusive misses. We beat the target up pretty well, but at no time did the target cease to do its job. However, after repeatedly battering of the middle of the posts, the bottom of the posts, and the bolt area, you can see that if you buy a Grizzly target for casual match shooters, you probably will have some maintenance after a match.

SHOT Show may be still over a month away, but there are several distributor shows before SHOT where the new products for the year sometimes start to leak out. Here are a few that we found that seemed interesting, and that aren’t any info-embargo until 2014. Some of them are actually available now, or soon, so if you see something that you’d like to be one of the first owners of, be sure to ask your local gun dealer to get in touch with their distributors for a pre-order. We hope that 2014 will not be as crazy as 2013, because 2013, though very busy for guns, saw an unprecedented attack on our 2nd Amendment rights, and one that we barely escaped from unscathed. Going into SHOT Show last year was really scary, and President Obama actually gave his gun control address on the 2nd day of SHOT, that Wednesday morning. Hopefully that stuff is over for now, and we can just enjoy all of the new and useful guns and gun gear for 2014. Stay tuned for reviews of some of these products below, and we’ll again be bringing you two weeks of live coverage from the SHOT Show 2014 floor, with our host, Julie Mac.

This November 22nd will be 50 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The shooting itself has been the subject of movies, documentaries and countless books and articles; the legitimacy of any of them, including the official government explanation, called the Warren Report, is not within our purview to say. But we thought it would be cool to try to find one of the rifles that came from the same batch as Oswarld’s supposed murder weapon, and see what it looks like close up, and how it actually shoots. The 6.5mm Carcano we were able to find is serial-numbered C4880, and Oswald’s was C2766. That puts it only a couple thousand rifles away in the production line, and our test rifle has the original scope mount and scope found on Oswald’s as well, almost exactly like the rifle/scope combo he bought out of the February 1963 American Rifleman ad from Kleins for $19.99. We don’t know if the parts were originally on this gun and that they were part of that small batch of imports for Kleins, but it sure is cool, albeit a bit morbid, to shoot a nearly exact replica of the gun that changed the course of America, a course that still reverberates with the assassination today.

The finer things in life are sometimes just those things that technology can’t capture. If a gun is a classic, like the 1911, modern updates are great to carry an effective design forward. But there is a magic to the old guns that Cerakote and Picatinny rails can’t match for some. Doug Turnbull has been restoring classic 1911s, cowboy guns and classic shotguns for decades, with the correct bluing, case coloring and even the original roll engravings. If you missed our first article on Turnbull restorations, you really should read it. The problem with the old guns, though, is that there are only so many of them that are good candidates for restoration. And for 1911s, the further we get from the year 1911, the more any 100% original gun will be worth, regardless of condition. That is why Doug decided to bring the 1911 into his family of newly manufactured firearms, a list that includes the Winchester 1886, Colt Peacemaker style revolvers, and we recently reviewed the Turnbull steel version of the AR-15. If you have always wanted a 1911 that looked, felt and worked like a gun new in the box circa pre-1920, the Turnbull 1911 is the most accurate gun you could possibly own. We got to shoot Doug’s version of this modern classic, and sure enough, the safety is even stiff. These guns are available directly from Turnbull Restorations for $1,950.

Sturm Ruger & Co. knew back in 2009 that they needed to be in the semi-auto rifle market with more than just the Mini-14. They wanted an AR-15-type rifle, but soon discovered that the“Mil-Spec” AR-15 left a lot to be desired. A standard AR sends its hot gases back to the bolt, pushing on the bolt carrier and opening it for the next shot. This makes for a very hot and very dirty bolt group after only a few rounds, and this can and does hurt both short and long term reliability. So while most of the market was busy copying the standard AR-15 design with their own branded product, Ruger decided to take the less beaten path, and create their own design. That design was the SR-556, in 5.56 NATO, or .223 Remington. Instead of just gas, the 556 employed a rod to move the bolt, this rod rode above the barrel, and was controlled by an adjustable gas block. The design is very similar to the rifle that used to be called “the right arm of the free world,” the FN-FAL. This new Ruger rifle contained the gas/rod system of the FAL, yet had the weight advantage and ergonomics of the AR-15. Out of the gate the SR-556 was a hit for Ruger, and several variations of the SR556 are still extremely popular today.

The only thing is, the FAL is a 7.62×51 (.308 Winchester), not a 5.56. So since the introduction of the SR-556 the market has been screaming for a SR-762. About two weeks ago Ruger finally introduced one into the market, based on the exact design of the SR-556. The MSRP of the SR-762 is a hefty $2195, but as an “all you’ll ever need” rifle, we found it to be just that, and worthy of a lifetime purchase decision.