Articles by Paul Helinski

In a perfect world one gun will do everything you need. Well, the world isn’t perfect and who really only wants only one gun anyway? But a little FLEX’ability never hurts. When President Obama talked about people clinging to religion and guns, the gun he was probably talking about was the Mossberg 500 shotgun. If you are going to cling to a gun, the 500 isn’t the worst choice you could make, and it is probably the best. Last year Mossberg came out with a new addition to the 500 line, called FLEX, and it is indeed meant to bring a certain “FLEX’ability” to your Mossberg. At first glance you might think the various accessories in the pictures just screw on and off like normal hardware, but they do not. The FLEX system, in this first incarnation, is made up of three linkage systems. One is on the forend. Another is on the wrist of the gun, where the stock connects, and the third is on the butt of the stocks. With the FLEX system, one Mossberg 500 can be converted from a full length duck gun to a tricked out tactical to a bare bones pistol grip in about 30 seconds. Different recoil pads adapt for different sized shooters, and it takes no tools whatsoever to change the parts. Both the 500 and 590 guns are out in the market as FLEX guns, and they retail in the $450-$550 range depending on configuration.

Any new gun in the market should face extreme scrutiny. This is particularly true of a new design, and even more so of a new concept, engineered into a new design. Back in 2011 we got our first look at a bullpup 15 round pump shotgun in the form of the Kel-Tec KSG. At the time, most gunwriters who got one were elated with the gun, including us. But part of that elation was that this entirely new concept had come from Kel-Tec, an American company that had already pulled off groundbreaking products like the PMR-30 and another bullpup, the .308 caliber RFB rifle. Nothing about the KSG was a disappointment. The engineering made sense, and the gun worked fabulously. This year a new 15 round bullpup came into the market called the UTS-15 from UTAS-USA. It has the magazine tubes on the top instead of the bottom like the KSG. It has a built in flashlight/laser combo, and it is made in Turkey. We were finally able to get our hands on one this week, and like any other newly designed mechanical device, there are positives and negatives to the gun. Overall it worked well, but we did have some light strikes and mis-feeds. Understanding the differences between the UTS-15 and the KSG will be a big part of deciding which gun to try to buy. The KSG is still extremely backordered, selling for up to twice MRSP, while the UTS-15, MSRP $1200, is currently available in the market at close to that price. The UTS-15 is a lot of gun for the money, and if a 15 round shotgun is in your future, this may be the superior gun. Is it a KSG killer? No. But is it a viable option? Possibly yes.

What is the best 22LR rifle? Every gun nut gets that question several times a year, and the answer always is a question. “Do you want a semi-auto or a bolt action?” If the answer is semi-auto, most people will suggest the Ruger 10/22. But until now, if they answered a bolt action, very few if any people would suggest a Ruger. Their 77/22 is a little known rifle and carries a price of about $700. Today Ruger changed that by releasing what is arguably the coolest and most investment worthy rimfire bolt action in the world. It is called the Ruger American Rimfire, and we got to shoot and test it extensively over the last couple weeks. It features a unique system to change the comb height and length of pull on the gun, and the receiver has both a machined rail for 3/8” rimfire rings as well as being drilled and tapped for regular rings. All this rides on Ruger’s patent pending Power Bedding (R) system, where the polymer stock has metal fittings embedded in it, just like a polymer pistol. This makes the rifle as solid as a rock for accuracy, and our testing of the .22LR model showed that the rifle has great potential to be a tack driver. It takes 10/22 mags, and the suggested retail price all four of the 4 models coming out now in both .22LR and .22WMR are $329. Your local gunshop will either have them on the shelf this week, or can order them through their distributors.

The amazing new rimfire we have all been gushing about since January’s SHOT Show has finally come to fruition. Winchester Ammunition, teamed up with Savage Arms, has introduced a new .17 caliber cartridge called the .17 Winchester Super Magnum that is capable of firing a 20 grain bullet at just better than 3,000 feet per second. That makes it the fastest rimfire ever created, and puts it in a class pretty much by itself for long range rimfire competition and varmint hunting. The problem until now has been that the only reviews out there were from print writers who all shot the exact same prototype rifle that was made for a print writers roundup, so it had very little relationship to the actual gun that you would later find in a store. Add to that the fact that the ammo was simply not available, period. Savage sent us this test rifle over two months ago, but we had no ammo, so like everyone else, we waited. Finally, as you can see from these tests, the ammo has started to trickle out. Several of our dealers have reported that they have gotten 40 box orders in (and quickly out) the door, and this ammo you see here was purchased retail at Bass Pro in Hollywood, Florida. We were only able to get the 2600fps. 25 grain load, but it is still a rip roaring monster for a rimfire, and the accuracy is acceptable, (though not fabulous for a Savage). The Savage “B-Mag” rifle is currently the only gun for the cartridge, and it carries an MSRP of $349. As a first effort on a new and revolutionary rimfire, the B-Mag performed well, and the cartridge looks to have great potential.

If you have already attempted to buy “high capacity” magazines at a gun show, you already know that all magazines are not created alike. If you haven’t, let us save you the trouble. If you don’t see big, reputable, American companies selling magazines other than standard capacity, for example, 7 rounds in a 1911, 30 rounds in an AR-15, or 20 rounds in an M1A, FAL or AR-10, STAY AWAY. Standard capacity mags are standard capacity for a reason. It is difficult to get more bullets of that caliber to reliably function in a magazine meant for that weapon. It isn’t like anyone ever said, “eh, I think 30 rounds is enough for an AR-15. It was simply the closest round number to get the mags to work as expected, and in the case of the AR-15, even those mags didn’t originally work so good.

In the aftermarket high capacity magazine market there are very few companies that have gotten it right, and that are sold by mainstream firearm retailers next to the guns themselves. X-Products, according to the website was “Formed by four gun loving Hillbilly’s with college educations.” They make a 50 round drum magazine in the USA for not only the AR-15, but also nearly every major battle rifle in the Western world. For the AR-15 you may say big deal. The 60 round Surefire mag is Made in USA, as is the original double drum 100 round Beta C-Mag, but the X-Products mag is an entirely different animal, and if you happen to own an M1A, FAL, HK91/CETME, or an Armalite AR-10, or other .308 AR-15, you have probably never used an actual working magazine that held more than 20 rounds. We were able to test both the AR-15 and M1A versions of the X-Products mags and they work great. There is nothing like them in the market. At $239-$280, the X-Products mags aren’t cheap, but as a one time investment, you couldn’t ask for a better mag to take into battle.

If you remember back to our original story on the Taurus Judge Polymer, one of the biggest problems with the gun was an almost complete lack of ballistic integrity. The most “cutting edge” round, from Winchester, wasted nearly a third of the total payload on steel BBs that travel at roughly the same speed as a Crossman BB gun. With all the popularity of .410 guage personal defense pistols, they looked to be something of a dud when it came to actual self defense. Seeing this, Hornady had engineered a new addition to their Critical Defense handgun ammo specifically for short barreled .410 pistols, called Triple Defense, and through powder blending and some interesting projectile choices, the .410 revolver can now at least be used as an effective self defense weapon. We tested this new round on the chronograph and with targets at normal close combat distances and this new Triple Defense round proved itself a formidable foe with enough flexibility to take advantage of the strengths of the .410 round at both short and moderate distances. The .410 revolver is still more of a novelty weapon than a serious contender or your best self defense gun, but for the millions of guns out there already, at least we now have a smartly made accurate round with enough punch to matter.

This has been a crazy year for guns. Back in November of 2012, the gun world was riding high on a tide of mainstream popularity, and you could buy just about anything you wanted for a reasonable price. By SHOT Show in January though, everything got flipped on its head as the anti-gunners didn’t let the tragedy of Sandy Hook go to waste, and they blamed it all on the guns. We escaped the legislation, for now, but a bi-product of this craziness is that a lot of guns we should have seen this year never materialized as the demand for any and every gun reached unprecedented levels. One of the tidbits we saw at SHOT Show was that Colt was coming out with a whole new line of “Hydro-dipped” AR-15s, and finally we have some in hand. Supply has finally caught up with demand on most guns at this point, so you should be able to find these nifty new gun toys at your local dealers now, or they could possibly order them for you. We were able to score both the “carbon fiber” and “Muddy Girl” patterns, and not only are they really sweet looking, we found them to be much more durable than other dipped guns we have tested over the years. We didn’t get an MSRP on these new dipped guns, but expect them to be a least a couple hundred dollars over normal Colt pricing. Both of our test guns are model 6920s, and they behaved just has honorably as our first test of these new consumer Colts that we did last year.

Convertible guns have never been that popular in the US. Putting the top up and down is such a pain, and… just kidding. This type of convertible gun allows you to change calibers, shooting two or more types of ammo through the same gun. Europeans, and especially European hunters have always loved convertible guns, but they never really caught on here for some reason. It could be our obsession with rifle accuracy. Even though the average hunter can’t shoot within two minutes of basketball (according to famed hunter writer Ross Seyfried), Americans really love the idea of an accurate firearm, one that can, if shot by the right person with the right rest, shoot into the width of a quarter or less at 100 yards, or 1 MOA, for “Minute of Angle.” That was the challenge when CZ-USA decided to introduce a rimfire combo gun to the US market. It is called the Model 455 American Combo, and the retail prices start just north of $400. In the box, the gun comes with both .22LR and .17HMR barrels, and changing them out takes only two Allen wrenches, included with the gun. We shot our pictures of the test gun in the field, so you can see how easy it swaps, and the accuracy on both barrels is closer to 1/2MOA than 1MOA. The CZ 455 comes in a polymer stock configuration, a competition stock, even a Mannlicher style stock with hi-lux wood, in addition to the basic Walnut you see here. If you have longed for an old world style bolt rimfire, this CZ 455 offers you both the classic look and feel of the 50s and 60s, with the ability to convert from a .22LR plinker to a .17HMR hunting rifle, and you can get a .22WMR barrel as well.

What do you buy the tactical nut who has everything? The answer is: A steel framed, bone charcoal case colored Doug Turnbull AR-15 called the TAR-15. It costs $2,750 with a plain American Black Walnut stock, and you’ll have to get in line if you want to buy one, because they are selling like hotcakes and backordered 5 months. Wait a minute, you ask? Wooden stock? Steel? AR-15? Something doesn’t add up here. But no, your eyes are not deceiving you. The king of firearm restoration, Doug Turnbull, has been making his own firearms for years, and his newest projects are on the AR platform, in .308, .223, and even 7.62×39 and .300 Blackout. We were able to test the .223 version of the gun, just to see if it actually works, and not surprisingly, the TAR-15 is as functional as it is beautiful. Steel and wood will never take the place of aluminum and plastic in the AR-15 world, but if you want a genuinely unique gun, no two of these will ever look the same, and the price is very reasonable for something that only a handful of people will ever own.