Columns

James H Cohen and Sons have been in the antique firearms business since 1898. If you are a collector and lover of rare guns you owe it to yourself to visit the Cohen’s shop. The store is on Royal Street in the heart of the French Quarter, and filled with the sort of guns you’d typically expect to find in a museum.

If you think about it, communication with the outside world is going to become really important in the weeks and months after a system collapse or major disaster. You may have food and water for months, but you don’t have it for years. And as I explained in my article on seeds, growing your own food just isn’t that easy. But as several commenters pointed out on the first radio article in this series, there is a strong argument to maintain radio silence. Any experienced radio operator can triangulate your position as soon as you press the send key, and in any survival situation, you can bet that there will be hostiles out there listening for where they can steal some supplies. Radio silence has to be weighed against the benefits of reaching out to the world outside.

Video footage of a Kentucky police officer accidentally shooting himself in an elevator was released this week.

We take a look at 5 guns that made a difference at the Battle of New Orleans 200 years ago. The British Brown Bess, the American 1795 Springfield and the rifles both sides used on line Jackson at Chalmette Plantation. No alligators minds were blown during the writing of this article.

Fans of the Ruger 10/22, listen up. The Charger, Ruger’s big .22 pistol based on the 10/22, is back. There are two new versions, and both come packed with features that I hope will be standard on every new Ruger. These fun guns look good, too–read our review.

Fans of the venerable 10/22 typically have only one gripe with the gun: the trigger. Even so, the stock triggers on 10/22s are better than much of the competition. But Ruger now offers an improved trigger for the 10/22 and Charger. The BX-Trigger is a vast improvement over the stock Ruger triggers and is incredibly easy and quick to install.

The Magnum Research Desert Eagle is a big gun. It is Hollywood large. The pistol is so big that it isn’t practical for much of what we use pistols for. Yet the beast of a gun is a heavy hitting .50 AE with a lot of personality. And now, in the all stainless version, the Desert Eagle looks even better. And the built in compensator makes it even more practical. A practical Desert Eagle? Yes. Read on.

Preserving BTUs is what survival cooking is all about. An armful of sticks can burn up in a few minutes and cook you nothing, or it can burn for two hours and cook you dinner, sterilize your water, and heat your bath. It all depends on how much oxygen you can keep from getting to the flames while the wood burns. Initially I thought “rocket stoves” were a gimmick, aimed at draining the well meaning survivalist of some cash and little else, but now I’m sold. The StoveTec rocket stove you see here in the pictures is currently $118 on the StoveTec website, and on Amazon, with free shipping. It works killer, and will likely cook your dinner every night for years, in return for a handful of small dried branches you pick up from the ground.

If you’re serious about auto-loading shotguns, you need to know about Freedom Fighter Tactical. The company makes serious upgrades for guns like the Benelli M4. We’ve had a chance to run some on our M4 and the we like results.