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So far the biggest story I have seen at SHOT Show 2012 is the XDS from Springfield Armory. It is a single stack .45ACP that holds 5 rounds in the magazine and 1 in the chamber. The barrel is 3.3 inches, and the overall length is 6.3 inches. It is only one inch thick. Empty the XDS weighs 21 ounces, and it is a striker fired pistol in the tradition of the XD and XD(M), with a polymer frame and forged steel slide.

I don’t know how many times we need to say that Springfield Armory is always raising the bar, but Springfield Armory is always raising the bar. Last year at SHOT Show about a half a dozen companies came out with single stack 9mm ultra-compacts. Over the past year they have all come into the market, with mixed reviews on most (our favorite was by far the Walther PPS). This year some of those guns have now been released in .40S&W, and it is common for 9mm and .40S&W to share the same frame in pistols. But when you want to make a pistol that small in a .45ACP, you have to go back to square one and make a whole new gun, and that is what Springfield Armory did.

A new 30mm tube riflescope from Zeiss with a retail street price around $1,000-$1,300 for illuminated and non-illuminated versions. Before you buy another rilfescope, make sure you check out the Zeiss.

Introducing the newest addition to the SP101 line. It has a 4.2″ barrel and an adjustable rear, and fiber optic front sight. If you know and love the SP101 series from Ruger, This is the same bulletproof reliable gun in a gun suited for all day holster carry, as a truck or pack gun, or as a backup for dangerous game.

Break out the party hats, Ruger’s LCR just got a little brother! The newest member of the LCR family shares all the great features of its brethren and is now available in .22 caliber. The LCR-22 is light, fast handling, and accurate for a 1.875” barrel, and it’s a ball to shoot.

If you’re not familiar with Ruger’s LCR (Lightweight Compact Revolver) which debuted in January of 2009, it is best known as the first production polymer framed revolver. Several others have come out since but Ruger was ahead of the pack with the LCR.

The polymer lower part of the frame houses all components of the fire control mechanism and is mated to an aluminum alloy upper which houses the stainless steel cylinder and barrel liner. Polymer is a rugged material, rust and corrosion proof, and light weight. The aluminum upper and heavy fluting on the cylinder contribute additional weight savings. My review gun came in at 14.8 ounces empty on my stamps.com electronic scale, but the reported weight is 14.9 ounces. The balance point is at the back of the cylinder which I consider ideal for a snub nose revolver. It comes on target out of the holster quickly, thanks in part to the great balance as well as the natural grip angle and excellent rubber grip from Hogue.

The hammer is completely enclosed making, this a double-action-only (DAO) revolver and eliminating a potential snag for anyone interested in concealed carry. The DAO trigger, like its bigger brothers, is very smooth with no stacking and little overtravel. It measured right around 12 pounds but didn’t seem that much thanks to the way they cam the trigger.

The LCR-22 is compact, little more than 6.25” long and 1.25” wide. It sits so lightly in a holster or in your pocket that you’ll forget it’s there

The big news, of course is that you can now get it in .22 caliber which opens the opportunity to do a lot more shooting since .22 ammo is inexpensive and widely available. The LCR-22 will handle .22 short, .22 long, and .22 long rifle ammo, including shot shells, which means that you can personalize it for your needs.

I see this fun little revolver filling a number of roles. The most important component to shooting any gun accurately, aside from the gun itself, is practice. No matter how good (or bad) you are, more practice will make you better. Unfortunately, center fire ammo can get expensive, especially if you want to shoot hundreds of rounds a month. With a .22, you can shoot for pocket change.

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This page is going to be the central location for all the SHOT Show giveaways we can come up with . If you want instant notifications when new giveaways are posted, you should log into your Facebook account, and “Like”: GunsAmerica on Facebook There will be surprise giveaways from some of these GunsAmerica Partner Companies, [...]

We are often so focused on the black guns these days that sometimes you miss what is going on in other parts of the shooting and hunting world. A lot of it is deeper and a more enjoyable than all of the tactical stuff combined. Cimmaron Firearms specializes in cowboy era firearms, from the percussion age of the 1830s through 1873, and the cartridge guns from Colt, Winchester, Smith & Wesson, Marlin, Sharps, and others through the turn of the century. The dawn of the repeating firearm is not only a lot of fun historically, you can actually live it and breath it through a very popular shooting organization called the Single Action Shooting Society, or SASS. Cowboy Action Shooting is a lot of fun, and if you are of the competitive bent, at the regional and national level the competition is fierce.

This “Evil Roy” model of the 1873 single action Colt Peacemaker is engineered to meet the needs of the discriminating SASS competitor. More than 90% of the people who shoot Cowboy Action are not competitive and have no interest in winning anything, but we all like to shoot good. And for that small percentage of serious competitors, they are really serious and like to shoot perfect, not just well, and win the prized trophy SASS belt buckles. All of the SASS shooting is on metal plates, not paper, and the plates are set as close to the shooter as is safe for splatter. This makes Cowboy Action really easy to shoot well, so the competition really boils down to speed. Hit the metal plates, every time, as fast as you can.

If you love to shoot it can get expensive. Factory ammo is not at its peak that it was during 2009 into 2010, but even cheap 9mm is still upwards of 30 cents per round. If you reload, you save the cost of the brass, and the savings are huge over factory loads, but you still have to buy the bullets. And while bullets have improved drastically over the last ten years in consistency and quality control, with these improvements have come higher prices. Spot metals on the commodity market have spiked as well, sending prices even higher. Bullets aren’t cheap anymore. You may pay almost as much for the box of bullets as you used to pay for the box of loaded ammo.

I started bullet casting about 15 years ago, and initially I treated it like some sort of black art, that only the gurus could get right. Back then you could get lead for next to nothing. Pipes were still being torn out of old houses that were made of lead, and every junkyard and tire shop had a good supply of used wheel weights, the kind with the steel clip. I tried my best to make perfect bullets with no lines in them, that all weighed the same, and I had some moderate success. But I can’t say I ever mastered that, and if I ever get back into being able to shoot BPCR (black powder cartridge rifle), maybe I’ll try again.

Recently it occurred to me that I don’t hear as much about bullet casting as I should these days. Did everyone forget about it? Jacketed bullets are too darned expensive to shoot all the time, but I like to shoot all the time, and I’m not alone. Once you start asking around, stopping in at tire places and developing a hawk eye for lead at the junkyard and flea market, you can usually get lead for free or extremely cheap. Once you buy the tools, you have them for life and they last. If you learn the basic skills of bullet casting, it could amount to a lifetime of free bullets.

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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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See a need, fill a need. That’s the foundation of American ingenuity. While browsing through new ads coming onto GunsAmerica a couple of weeks ago, I happened upon a nifty homemade tool for adjusting the rear sight on a pistol. We’ve all gotten guns that came from the factory not shooting to point of aim, and while it isn’t an expensive gunsmith visit, it’s still a gunsmith visit. I’d rather have a tool I can bring to the range and adjust it myself, and also have to help others who I see dealing with the same issue. Read More…